Kane County Veterans: Be Aware of ‘Largest Restructuring in VA History’
When United States Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert “Bob” McDonald recently visited Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, he hosted a Town Hall Meeting with VA employees and then another Town Hall Meeting with Veterans Service Officers and Congressional Liaisons.
Kane County Veterans Assistance Commission’s Superintendent Jacob Zimmerman took advantage of the opportunity to attend the meeting and learned about some of the changes that will be coming to the VA on a national level in 2015.
These changes are branded as “MyVA” and will result in the largest restructuring of the VA in its history.
Those changes include:
- One map of VA services instead of the nine that currently exist. The map will also result in pushing responsibility down from Washington D.C. to the management of the new regions that are established. It may also include consolidation of management and responsibility of the VA’s three agencies at the regional level. Right now, those agencies only come together at the VA’s Headquarters.
- One website for veterans to log in to instead of the fourteen websites that currently exist for the same purposes.
- Improve and emphasize customer service. A Chief Customer Service Officer will be hired to oversee these efforts
- The adjudication of all claims that are “backlogged” (pending 125 days or longer).
Click her for more information about the secretary’s visit to Chicago.
- Editor’s Note: This article was republished from the excellent quarterly Kane County Veterans Assistance Commission Newsletter.
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