For many veterans, coming home from the war was hard enough, but the added financial hardships of paying last term’s tuition without the support of the G.I. Bill was an unnecessary stresser. Why? Because the IT systems of the Veterans Affairs office were slow.
According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued emergency checks in sums of $3,000 to 68,000 student veterans to help them get through fall term, while schools took on some of the responsibility by issuing emergency loans. Many of these student veterans had to put living expenses on credit cards, and some have had to withdraw from school entirely. The Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is available to all veterans who served on or after Sept. 11, 2001. It covers tuition completely and provides a monthly housing stipend in addition to a stipend for books. It is more generous than the Montgomery G.I. Bill that provides a lump sum to cover all expenses a student may incur.
The Tallahassee Democrat reports that part of the breakdown occurs between the VA and the Department of Defense when they verify whether a student is a veteran. The Associated Press reports that the VA’s aging IT infrastructure is also a contributing factor, taking up to an hour and a half to process a single claim which must pass through four separate IT systems.
The number of veterans awaiting processing has decreased from tens of thousands to around 5,000. The VA expects all claims filed by Jan. 15 to be processed by Feb. 1. Estimates point out that the VA expects to pay out $78 billion. Currently, they have paid out $1 billion to around 150,000 veterans. That’s a big number on the horizon.
It just seems to me that someone, somewhere along the line, had to realize that enlistment terms would start to come up. And that the mass amount of four and six-year enlistments after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 would also start to return en masse. I mean, do the math: 2001 adding two 4-year enlistments is 2009 and 2003 adding one six-year enlistment is 2009. Would you be expecting something? Also, when this new G.I. Bill was being drafted, there had to have been a realization that a lot of people would use the bill since it’s better than the old one for four-year college students.
Also, when this new G.I. Bill was being drafted, there had to have been a realization that a lot of people would use the bill since it’s better than the old one for four-year college students.
So why was no new IT infrastructure added for the 2009-10 school year? Why was such a clunky and inefficient system left in place to handle what can only be described as a deluge of new claims? It makes no sense. We have the most technologically advanced and best-geared military Earth has ever seen. And yet we don’t even ensure that those who fight and use all this expensive equipment get what they were promised. The military shuffles off a lot of excess computer equipment. Surely, some of this could have been donated to the seemingly forgotten Department of Veterans Affairs.
Seemingly forgotten until now, at least.  According to whitehouse.gov, as part of President Obama’s Recovery Act, $1.4 billion will be given to the VA to improve services to America’s veterans, including the hiring of 1,500 (400 so far) temporary claims processors. Hold the phone, here: So you’re saying you can give people what you owe them and provide a source of jobs for our rampant unemployment? Wow, so glad that was phoned in at the eleventh hour; it’s certainly not something that should have jumped to mind in the planning phase!
As any good IT professional (perhaps any professional for that matter) knows, you work smarter, not harder. Hiring on zounds of people to do the same thing the same slow way is only one solution, meant to hemorrhage the failure of the system.
Luckily, a fully automated IT processing system is expected to be in place by December, which is of little reassurance to the people currently wanting to attend school during our economic doldrums. Hey, it’s only a year too late; at least there will be a system in place for when the war finally ends.
More importantly, why are they letting us enroll in school with promises of payment that are still coming? I’m just glad I chose the Montgomery G.I. Bill.
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