Veterans Experience Office codified under new law

A package of veterans’ legislation signed into law late last week by President Donald Trump includes a proposal that will officially codify the Department of Veterans Affairs’ customer experience office. 

One of the two sections of the recently enacted PRO Veterans Act permanently establishes VA’s Veterans Experience Office, or VEO. The department launched the office in 2015 to collect feedback from veterans and their families about their engagement with VA to help improve the delivery of benefits and services.

The White House announced on Aug. 14 that Trump signed the PRO Veterans Act into law.

Although the VEO has been around for a decade, it was never formally established within VA. That meant the office could have been cut from the department or had its mission significantly altered without any protections. 

The newly enacted law establishes the VEO within the office of the VA secretary and outlines the oversight structure and duties of its Chief Veterans Experience Officer. It also formally directs other agency heads within VA “to report regularly on customer experience metrics, action plans, and other customer experience improvement efforts to the Chief Veterans Experience Officer.”

The law also specifies VEO’s mission to collect veteran data to use during policymaking and “to determine veteran and beneficiary satisfaction with and usage of the benefits and services furnished under laws.”

The measure codifying the VEO was introduced in the House in May by Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., along with Reps. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., and Morgan McGarvey, D-Ky. A similar proposal was introduced in the upper chamber in February by Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and John Cornyn, R-Texas.

“Since it was established ten years ago, VEO has played a critical role in making VA services more accessible to veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors,” Budzinski said in a statement following the PRO Veterans Act’s enactment. “Now, this office will be able to keep serving America’s heroes for years to come.”

Both Budzinski and King previously introduced their measures during the 118th Congress, although a push to include the legislation in last December’s stopgap funding bill failed to materialize.

VA has previously used input collected from VEO and its veteran surveys to improve the usability of its website and provide retired servicemembers with resources to protect themselves from scammers.

Last year, former Chief Veterans Experience Officer John Boerstler also said the department was applying artificial intelligence capabilities to parse the surveys it sends to veterans and better identify those in need of more targeted assistance, such as retired servicemembers experiencing homelessness or expressing signs of suicidal ideation.