The Department of Veterans Affairs is turning to an automated tool to chip away at the remaining backlog of claims for education benefits, according to nextgov.com The VA has made substantial headway in processing the claims for veterans--210,000 of them--according to recent congressional testimony.

But the agency still needs to process 30,000 certificates of eligibility, Keith Wilson, the VA's director of the Office of Education Service, told nextgov.com. It's hard to believe but the problem is that claims under the Post-9/11 GI Bill are processed manually, using four separate IT systems that do not interface with each other, he said to Congress on Oct. 15.

Wilson added that the tool the Veterans Benefits Administration is slated to deploy in mid-November will provide increased functionality and additional automation for processing education claims.

Education claims, however, aren't the only backlog. According to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, the department currently has 400,000 pending disability claims, with more than 140,000 of them backlogged for more than 125 days. Shinseki said he has made solving information technology problems at the VBA "a top priority" to help eliminate the backlog.

Shinseki also said that he's committed to developing the Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record with DoD to help active-duty service members can easily transition health records to the VA when they leave the military.

For more on the VA's tech plans:
- see this nextgov.com article

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