e Information for National Partnership Council What is MyVA?afgenvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/150114... · get his flu shot. My . …that often results in a frustrating experience

Working Draft, Pre-Decisional, Deliberative Document – Internal VA Use Only

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Information for

National Partnership Council

What is MyVA?

“Ineffective systems and cultures are bigger barriers to achievement than the talents of people” - Secretary Bob McDonald

December 16, 2014


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What is MyVA about?

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• MyVA is not about change for the sake of change.

• It is not about “downsizing.”

• It is about putting the Veteran’s interest first.

• It is about empowering employees and helping them

deliver excellent customer service to improve the

Veteran experience.

• It is about improving or eliminating processes that

impede good customer service.

• It is about rethinking our internal structures and

processes to become more Veteran-centric and

productive.


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Right now, VA often provides a fragmented,

disjointed experience for Veterans…

Servicemembers/Veterans/Beneficiaries see

multiple VAs and must serve as their own

service integrator

must initiate contact with different parts of VA

must fill out many forms, but do not know where

those forms go in VA

receive uncoordinated, duplicative, and

sometimes inappropriate outreach from different

parts of VA

provide the same data multiple times to different

parts of VA

have no consistent visibility to their own data at

VA and benefits/services history

have no single place to update their data at VA

see discrepancies in how different parts of VA

understand them

have no consistent way to provide feedback to VA

use multiple call centers, hot lines, and 100’s of

Web sites to interact with VA X Outreach that does

not reach its target

Inappropriate outreach

BVA

NCA

VBA

VHA

X

X

X

X

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…that often results in a frustrating experience

for Veterans and beneficiaries.

I provided my

address to VA five

times, and my

prescription still went

to wrong place.

-- Veteran

VA sent a letter to my

father, a Veteran, to

enroll in VA health care.

My father passed away

20 years ago and was

buried by VA.

-- Son of Veteran

My daughter has received college

tuition assistance through VA, but

other parts of VA do not know she is

my dependent. According to VA’s

own on-line system, e-Benefits, it will

take 8 months to a year for VA to

verify her “dependency” status.

-- Veteran with eligible dependent

I got a call from VA

to remind my

Veteran husband to

get his flu shot. My

husband passed

away months ago.

-- Widow of Veteran

I went to the VA Medical

Center for my appointment

and was told it was cancelled.

The VAMC said they tried to

call but could not reach me.

They were using my old cell

phone number from years ago.

-- Veteran

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VA has an opportunity to accelerate change…

“The President, Congress, Veterans, VSOs, the American people, and

VA’s staff all understand the need for change. We must – all of us –

seize this opportunity. We can turn these challenges into the greatest

opportunity for improvement in the history of the Department.”

Sloan Gibson, HVAC Testimony, July 24, 2014

•Everyone understands the need for change, but we need to define the

scope and scale of change.

•This is an opportunity to effect a fundamental change in VA’s systems

and structures to align with our mission and values. We must assess

changes to leadership and governance; policies and procedures;

organizational structure; stakeholder and partner relationships;

knowledge, skills and abilities; facilities, acquisition and technology.

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The MyVA Vision: A VA of which all Veterans,

Employees, and Americans can be proud

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Vision and Guiding Principles

Vision: Create My VA that: 1) puts the Veteran in control; 2) measures success

by the ultimate outcome for the Veteran; and, 3) integrates across programs and

organizations to optimize productivity and efficiency.

Guiding Principles - any changes must:

• Be considered through the lens of the Veteran to enhance effectiveness and

efficiency from his/her perspective

• Optimize VA’s unique competencies in health care, benefits delivery, and

memorial affairs, while enhancing external partnerships to support service

delivery where VA is less well postured to directly deliver service

• Integrate operations to improve service delivery and realize efficiencies.

• Recognize the central role of VA employees in identifying challenges, crafting

solutions, and ultimately delivering world-class services to Veterans

• Focus on the future in terms of Veteran needs and demographics – “skate to

where the puck is going to be.”

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MyVA effort to date has focused on concept

development, with a major emphasis on listening…

…to employees

• 45+ SecVA and 50+ DepSec visits to various facilities

• Over 20 site visits conducted with 2,000+ employees, across all levels and

grades

• 2900+ ideas submitted to the Idea House by employees; 122,000 votes on

ideas; 41,000 unique users accessed the system (as of December 17th)

…to Veterans

• Veteran interviews as part of the “Voice of the Veteran”

…to Stakeholders

• VSOs

• Congress

• State directors of VA (NASDVA)

• Union leadership

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…and we’ve heard very common themes

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• We have employees that care deeply about customer service, but they feel they do not have the

resources, particularly adequate knowledge of VA and proper training, to deliver quality

customer service to Veterans and beneficiaries.

• Inadequate staffing and poor recruitment, hiring, and retention practices seem to be

universal problems throughout the system and the most pressing needs across the

enterprise. Depending upon the facility, other support functions such as IT and contracting are

identified as additional needs.

• Many also feel that our performance evaluation system does not incentivize customer

service.

• VA does many things well and there are pockets of excellence throughout the system, but

operations are not standardized, and we do not share best practices.

• Likewise, integration and cooperation between business lines varies significantly from locale

to locale.

• Common perception of the field is that VA structures and operations are too complex; decision

making is too centralized and takes too long.

• Employees see a need for additional investment in infrastructure, e.g. parking, IT, space, etc.

• There are opportunities to establish better local relationships with private sector, local/state

governments, VSOs, and other organizations that serve our Veterans.

• Communications between leadership, employees, and Veterans needs to be simplified and

consistent.


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Ideas Submitted by Type

11/11/2014 – 12/17/2014

276

319

516

30

1049

733 Identifying and improving

shared services

Implementing a Veteran-

centric Restructure Plan

Improving the Veteran

engagement and experience

Moderator Review

Open Idea Challenge

Process Improvement


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As a result of preliminary analysis, SECVA has

issued the following guidance

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Establish a new VA-wide customer service organization with the mission to

design and implement a superior Veteran Experience, to include integrating

the mechanisms to deliver it. A Chief Veteran Experience Officer, who reports

to the Secretary, will lead this organization.

Establish a single regional framework that will simplify internal coordination,

facilitate partnering, enhance customer service, and allow Veterans to more

easily navigate VA without having to understand our inner structure.

Establish a national network of Community Veteran Advisory Councils

(CVACs) to coordinate better service delivery with local, state and community

partners.

Realign internal business processes to achieve support service excellence

in which organizations across VA leverage the same support services in

standard ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase productivity.

Engage employees in performance improvement teams to eliminate or

improve processes that impede excellent customer service or service delivery.

Expand strategic partnerships will help us coordinate Veteran-related issues

with local, state and community partners, as well as VA employees.


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Performance Improvement Teams are active right now, working with employees. Some

examples of projects underway include:

• Update VA’s onboarding process:

• Regardless of where in the organization we work, all employees should be

knowledgeable at a base level about the benefits and services available to eligible

Veterans

• Improving VA’s signage and “way finding”:

• Making sure Veterans know where they are going and that directions are easy to

follow

• Seek methods to provide guest access to WIFI in all VHA facilities

• Enable call center staff to provide basic services to Veterans over the phone and cut out

layers

• Making life easier for these employees so that they can upload information from

phone calls directly into the benefits system

• Pilot opportunities to streamline Veteran patients seeing certain limited specialists

without requiring they first be referred from their primary care physician.

The number of engagements will expand as we develop more capability and more

teams.

Right now we are working on:

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Purpose: Analysis of alternatives and recommendations for reorganizing

specified VA structure and processes, while providing initial planning and

capability building for select functions and offices with the ultimate goal to orient

all VA operations to the needs and expectations of our Veterans and beneficiaries

MyVA Task Force is an enabler:

• Small in size, augmented by FTE from VA Administrations and Staff Offices

• Task Force itself is temporary, with an initial two year charter

Develop and guide required new initiatives

Develop and incubate enabling capabilities to permanent organizations

Fortify and integrate existing efforts

• Ensure VA initiatives are aligned to achieve Veteran-centricity and integrated

operations

Success requires the talents of the best and brightest across VA, and support of

employees at every level of the organization.

To coordinate the effort, the Secretary has

created the MyVA Task Force

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The job of the MyVA Task Force is to operationalize the VA Strategic Plan


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Questions?

14

Documents

e Information for National Partnership Council What is MyVA?afgenvac.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/150114... · get his flu shot. My . …that often results in a frustrating experience