Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

20. Department of Veterans Affairs · Notable

Increase automation of VBA disability claims processing

Partially done

649 20. Department of Veterans Affairs

“Increase automation. Hiring additional staff to process claims is costly, is inflexible, and has yielded mixed results. … The best way to provide benefits faster and more accurately is by using technology to perform most of the work.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    A presidential directive aimed at the same delays, from the intake side. Executive Order 14426 of 2026-09-08 names "delays in healthcare coverage, benefits processing and payment" as the problem and orders the Secretaries of War and Veterans Affairs, within 180 days, to "create and deploy new digital tools using artificial intelligence and other emerging capabilities to streamline veterans' applications for and access to benefits" in a single source, and, within 30 days and at all times after, to share every Official Military Personnel File and Service Treatment Record with VA the moment a service member is discharged. The records half feeds the claims-evidence supply chain the ADS expansion already automates; the AI half is about applying for benefits, not deciding claims. A directive with no effect yet, and silent on VBA's decision work, so the Quote's test — technology performing most of the work — is no nearer. The `partial` repeats.

  2. Partially done

    Automation grew and is being extended, but it is nowhere near performing most of the work. The FY2027 congressional submission attributes the projected backlog reduction to "continued gains in automated decision support (ADS), overtime usage, and improvements in the claims evidence supply chain", and names two live expansions: C&P Claims Modernization, which integrates the Automated Review Summary Document into the VBMS interface and automates the intake of private medical records, and ADS Expansion, which automates retrieval of private medical records, VA treatment records and service verification records "in lieu of a claims processor devoting efforts to gathering these routinely required documents" and cancels supplemental claims that arrive with no new evidence. The scale is the limit: 258,592 ADS claims were established and completed in 2025 against roughly 3.0 million disability compensation and pension claims processed that year — under 9%. VA also cut 555 Disability Compensation FTE in the FY2027 request, which is the substitution the Quote wanted, and the IT investment behind it rose (Benefits Claims Processing +$13.9 million, VBMS +$10.0 million, VETSNET +$3.8 million). A mechanism in place and a piece delivered, so `partial`.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • partial rather than done because the Quote’s test is “using technology to perform most of the work”. Under 9% of 2025’s claims went through automated decision support, and the FY2027 submission still describes ADS as an expansion in progress.
  • Congress moved but did not act: H.R. 9237 §107 would require the Secretary to submit a plan to make a Compensation Service automation tool available “to the maximum extent practicable” across VA. Proceedings on the bill were postponed on the House floor on 2026-07-16 with no passage vote (§3b: floor consideration short of a passage vote leaves the rung alone).
  • VA’s claims-production press releases across the window (2025-02-25, 2025-05-22, 2025-06-24, 2025-08-13, 2025-11-18, 2026-02-23, 2026-04-15, 2026-06-10, 2026-07-07) attribute the gains to “focused leadership, hard work and targeted use of overtime”, not to automation; they are leads for the outcome, not Evidence for this ask.
  • 2026-09-11 (scan triage): published as Executive Order 14426, 91 FR 58003 (FR 2026-18738), and added to the 2026-09-08 event as its Federal Register citation. It reached the Corpus as a backfill — signed on the watermark date, published three days later — so the date scan could not print it. The Corpus record’s title, EO number, signing date and citation match the whitehouse.gov text read on 2026-09-10. The triage had no network. The review opened the Federal Register text at govinfo on 2026-09-11, and sections 2(a)(ii) and 2(a)(iii) read as the event note quotes them.
Action
expand
Object
Automation of VBA claims processing
ID
1789