During a House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing Monday, Chairman Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., pressed Kurt DelBene, the VA’s assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO, on his agency’s response to a Sept. 6 letter regarding problems with VA.gov.

The letter, sent by Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., chairman of the full House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, to VA Secretary Denis McDonough, sought agency explanations for recent VA.gov problems.

A VA IT investigation found that more than 56,000 veterans who submitted a request to update their dependents — mostly adding or removing spouses or children — “did not have those claims successfully processed by VA.gov,” VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement in September. Those IT errors and website issues had been occurring for some veterans as far back as 2011 and could affect their monthly benefit payments, the VA acknowledged in September.

Rosendale said that subcommittee members received the VA response to Bost’s letter less than an hour before Monday’s hearing. “It took two hearings by this subcommittee to shake this response loose, and that is absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

According to Rosendale, the letter stated that the VA’s Office of Information and Technology “brought on a new senior executive who directly reports” to DelBene, and that person “will ensure issues related to mishandled claims and veterans unable to access a benefit application are rapidly fixed.”

Rosendale then asked DelBene for the name of the executive and why they weren’t present at the hearing.

“I actually hold myself responsible for making any VA.gov fixes,” DelBene said, “and I’m not sure” who the letter refers to. “I’ll have to get back on reference to the actual executive” in charge, per the letter.

“I know all my senior executives, but I’m trying to give you the correct information in terms of who you’re referencing,” he added.

Rosendale expressed surprise at the answer and said that within a day, he expected DelBene to provide the subcommittee with the name of the senior executive in charge of VA.gov and explain why they weren’t present at the hearing.

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“Overall we still think there’s a ways to go. I don’t want to present the system as all set and ready to go,” Kurt DelBene, the VA’s chief information officer, said during a House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing on the implementation of the VA’s EHRM initiative with Oracle Cerner. 

Oracle Cerner did not send a representative to the hearing despite being invited to.

“There are places we have significant concerns that we’re working with Oracle on: the incident-free time, not hitting standards is important, the end user responsiveness we think still has a ways to go, we think there are still functional workflow issues that still have to be resolved,” DelBene added.

The VA partnered with Oracle Cerner in 2018 to lead the development and implementation of its EHR modernization under a 10-year, $16 billion contract. But since then, the program has faced a number of significant challenges, some of which have reportedly brought harm to veterans. 

This led to bipartisan congressional criticism of the program and, ultimately, the decision in April by the VA to stop the rollout of the system at veteran hospitals until major patient safety issues are remediated.

Multiple members of Congress expressed frustration during the hearing that the VA and Oracle Cerner were not moving fast enough with improvements to the EHR system while spending billions in taxpayer dollars. 

“[Oracle] training and change management are still woefully inadequate and user satisfaction is still critically low,” said Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., the ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization. 

“I’m disappointed that Oracle Health isn’t here to participate in this conversation. I would like to stress that they are not present with us today. The fact that they didn’t send a representative raises major concerns for me and I expect better. I’m constantly losing faith in the process,” said Cherfilus-McCormick.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough will next year make the final decision regarding the exact timing of the continuation of the EHR rollout.

Meanwhile, the VA continues to use the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) EHR system in almost all of its VA hospitals. The modernized EHR system meant to replace VistA was delivered to five VA facilities before the department halted its nationwide rollout. The legacy VistA system has faced its own issues, including a lack of interoperability and nationwide access for veterans who change hospitals or move between states. 

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During a recent investigation into the issue, a VA IT team found that more than 56,000 veterans who submitted a request to update their dependents — mostly adding or removing spouses or children — “did not have those claims successfully processed by VA.gov,” Press Secretary Terrence Hayes said in a statement earlier this month.

The VA stated that the IT errors and website issues have been occurring for some veterans as far back as 2011 and could affect their monthly benefit payments. 

Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, expressed frustrations with top VA IT officials regarding the dependent claims issue during a House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs meant to examine the VA.gov website.

“We discovered that in August of 2021, there were a number of dependency claims that were being [unfairly] rejected from the system and so we worked with IT to investigate what that issue was,” Raymond Tellez, VA’s acting assistant deputy undersecretary for automated benefits delivery, said in response to Self’s questioning during the hearing. 

“And it wasn’t until January 2023 when we discovered there was a different problem, a bigger problem when we got feedback from our call centers from veterans who were having challenges with dependency who weren’t on the list that we had,” Tellez said.

Rep. Self questioned Tellez and VA CIO Kurt DelBene regarding the VA website’s quality assurance and quality checks given that a decade went by between 2011 and 2021 when the dependency claims issue went undetected and unresolved. 

The VA only discovered the full extent of the error in 2023 while looking into a technical problem that caused issues for roughly 900 veterans trying to file online appeals of their PACT Act of 2022 claims. 

According to the VA, more than 574,000 veterans filed a dependent status update through VA.gov and other official portals online since 2011, and of those, the agency is investigating 56,000 to make sure appropriate claims adjustments were made.

Some veterans may be owed backdated benefits due to the dependent claims issue, while others may have been overpaid. Nevertheless, VA officials said during the hearing that they would not request reimbursement from veterans who have received excess benefits.

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According to the department’s inspector general, the VA was not able to provide records for 4,513 contracts, which represents 39% of the IT contracts signed by the agency between March 2018 and the end of fiscal year 2021.

Per the 2015 Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), chief information officers at federal agencies must have visibility of IT contracting decisions and the power of approval. Where appropriate CIOs can designate other agency officials to act as their representatives, but they retain accountability for the contracts, according to the law.

In its report, the VA IG said: “For each contract action, we asked the department to provide evidence of approval or a rationale explaining why a FITARA review was not required. We revised our list based on VA’s responses and excluded any contract actions that were approved, as well as those contract actions with valid rationales for not needing FITARA approval. Following the review of VA’s responses, we identified the remaining list of potential IT contract actions as lacking evidence of FITARA approval.”

The audit was conducted between February 2022 and March 2023 and examined IT contracts that were signed between fiscal 2018 and 2021.

Late last month, Democrats on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs introduced a pair of bills that are intended to fundamentally reshape IT acquisition and management at the VA.

Reps. Mark Takano of California and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida have proposed the Manage VA Act and the Department of Veterans Affairs IT Modernization Improvement Act, which are intended to spur a wider overhaul of how technology services are procured at the agency.

If enacted, the Manage VA Act would create a VA undersecretary for management post, which the lawmakers say would have the effect of consolidating and standardizing acquisition and IT functions across the department.

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