The Challenge

Helping veterans receive the benefits they deserve. Filing a disability compensation claim is cumbersome and complex. The user facing experience, backend processing and leveraging of available data requires rethinking in order to improve the Veteran’s experience and drive digital adoption. In order to claim benefits after experiencing a service-related injury, veterans were forced to fill out a confusing form known as 526EZ. The form is a 12-page document that begins with seven pages of instructions laden with bureaucratic language. In addition to facing barriers to simply filling out the form, veterans also had to wait an average of 3 to 4 months for a decision.

The Solution

The VA wanted a new digital tool that simplified and sped up the disability claims process. The Disability Compensation Claim Tool migrated the paper form, 526EZ, to the web, and transformed the experience to focus on the veteran first. The customer-facing side uses plain language and UX-optimized design for a seamless experience. Veterans now follow user-guided prompts that translate their answers into responses for the 526EZ form that the adjudicator relies on to process the claim. The tool also integrates relevant data and conditional logic for the adjudicators to process the claims much more efficiently. Gray Co-founder Randall Weidberg led the initial discovery sprint period with a team of digital service experts at the U.S. Digital Service.

“Designed with veterans for veterans….the Disability Compensation Claim Tool is the result of a two-year long collaboration between the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), VA’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT), DSVA design and engineering experts, and hundreds of Veterans who provided feedback during the development process… Designed based on Veteran experiences, the tool features new interactive questions to automatically populate the claims form. The form is now more transparent, which lets users review their responses before submitting the form online. Users can then track their claim’s applications and progress.”

- The U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs

The Results

The new tool has been a vast improvement for users on all ends. It has helped process tens of thousands of new claims, and veterans report a much smoother experience. Due to integrations in the tool, adjudicators now process the claims in half the time.

Areas of Expertise

• Digital Transformation

• Product Management

• Human-Centered Design

• Service Design

• User Research

• User Experience Design

• Agile Development

• Accessibility

• Stakeholder Management

• Discovery Sprint

Press

This new tool cuts VA disability claims’ processing time in half

Collaboration and human-centered design are keys to new digital Disability Compensation Claim Tool

** Gray Co-founder Randall Weidberg led the initial discovery sprint period while serving as Product Lead at the U.S. Digital Service