Which government or VA resources could be improved by going digital?

The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) is already digital, and it has many thousands of paid Civil Service employees who practice delay, delay, delay and have used Covid restrictions to close down a less than useful government facility to begin with. They try to blame the 1973 fire on many problems that could be answered more readily and correctly by just saying "We aren't able to find your records", but please come in and sit down with a living, breathing person who cares, and we will try to contact past unit members, or review their records, that you served with and maybe find some old orders, etc., with your name and theirs on them. Sometimes those old orders had serial numbers and/or Social Security Numbers, names of units departing, going to, and even enroute stops. Sharing of the data in each individual veteran's/retiree's records could solve many of the roadblocks the management and staff at NPRC have created, perpetrated and perpetuated for the civil service's obstructive purposes. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be an improvement over current Intelligence. The NPRC may as well be digital now, because for three years no living breathing veteran (unless an NPRC civil service employee) has been allowed entrance to the structure. I did not retire until after the 1973 fire, so it is not applicable to me, however my records were completely misplaced about 10 years ago, and I had to rebuild them from various sources and personal papers. At the time a lady manager and a gentleman staffer worked with me and helped me rebuild my records. I have had two Medals (The Defense Meritorious Service Medal (DMSM) and an U. S. Army, Meritorious Unit Commendation Service Medal, General Order 43, Headquarters, Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 29 November 1973, Passenger Service, Bien Hoa Detachment 5, 8th Aerial Port Squadron, United States Air Force) awarded to me and received by mail after my retirement December 31, 1982. The NPRC at first denied the DMSM because they had confused it with a previous United States Air Force (USAF) awarded "Meritorious Service Medal (MSM)". They are two entirely different awards for services rendered at different times. I have been able to locate a copy of the DD Form 215 within the past week by a visit to the Veterans Affairs (VA) unit at 9700 Page Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri. This was a surprise to me, and I asked the agent to search his records further, but no DD Form 215 for the Army medal was found, although I have documentation from the USAF that it was forwarded to NPRC. Please pardon this diatribe and wish me luck to live long enough to be buried with all the medals I earned.

1. I receive an email for my upcoming V.A. visits.
I also receive it in the mail - USPS - let me decide to not have US mail - save a few bucks.
2. Hines VA needs a better system for identifying "who is next" for care. Coming out and screaming a name to a bunch of elderly vets who don't hear so well - doesn't feed the bulldog...also those same hard of hearing vets had/have to deal with you wearing a mask and are behind plexiglass and told to stand 6 feet away - good luck with that. Set up some digital whiteboard showing which patient is next and what room to go to .

Digital forms & signatures for anything that still requires signatures. Even for those with access to computers, a printer, scanner, or the correct form can be a burden. Calls and showing up in person for a records release, privacy form or whatever can be a burden for multiple reasons. Nearly every biz including medical does this in private sector, cept notarized docs and court filings.

Scheduling our own appointments online would be helpful, I found the majority of the time it takes almost 2-3 weeks before an appointment clerk returns your call. In addition, trying to get to an appointment clerk or the right department can be a tedious process. By allowing the patient to to have the ability to schedule an appointment would cut down on phone calls to the facility and be able to manage individual appointments efficiently. My Healthy Vet has a platform that allows for individual scheduling of appointments but it still requires a clerk to call back to confirm and verify. This sometimes is not effective because typically phone calls cannot be answered by the veteran.

For every appointment, I get at LEAST the following:
1.) One, and sometimes two texts asking me to confirm that I will be at the appointment.. -- AND --
2.) One or two, folded postcards (tear off top and open) -- (and sometimes three ... and once, FOUR) reminding me of the same appointment. -- AND --
3.) Either one or two phone calls reminding me of my appointment.
GOOD GRIEF!!! All that to remind me of ONE appointment. What a waste of resources!!! It seems like you could find out a vet's preference and just use that. For me, a text will suffice ... if you're REALLY worried I might miss it, another text two days before the appointment to confirm would be plenty. Can't you train your computers to accept what we say instead of wasting paper, printing, postage and personnel time in making in-person calls?

Personally I believe the Government should have a Veterans Medicare and upgrade all the VA medical facilities to public use. With (lets call it VETMEDICARE) a nation wide health insurance for Veterans like Medicare or medicaid would save a lot of time and money and financially benefit Veterans and the citizens of this country. And it wouldn't be all that expensive to change to a system like that because when a veteran uses the mission care act the Medical care that Veteran receives is billed to the VA and the VA pays it the same as Medicaid. And the reality of that is the bill is actually sent to medicare and they pay the bill as though the veteran is using Medicare. It's like having two very large departments within the Federal Government with personnel performing the same job twice. If it was all centralized and there was a separate health insurance for Veterans like VETMEDICAID/VETMEDICARE that is just Medicare for veterans it would save a ton of tax dollars. If veterans used a health insurance where they must be responsible in the health care they receive and need just like none Veteran citizens. Just imagine how much money would be save and put to better use supporting nationwide health and human services within America. Of course this idea does come close to supporting national health care and medicine. Which far to many Americans have been given the idea that Socialized Medicine is one step closer to Socialist Government. And try and guess who has been behind that national propaganda BS. Think about who will not longer be making a financial killing off of the average American citizen if there was a NATIONWIDE MEDICAL HEALTHCARE STANDARD ACT and LAW put in place through out this country. ANd the truth of this whole matter is that THERE SHOULD NEVER BE ANYTHING POLITICAL ABOUT AN INDIVIDUALS MEDICAL HEALTH NEEDS. IT's EDUCATION and HUMAN Science NOT Politics!!!! Well that's my more than 2 cents worth on this digital subject!!!

ALL OF THEM!!!

integrate into the MyChart system that is being used on the non VA side of things.

Bring back VA Clinic ID scan check-in. Instead of waiting in line we used to be able to check into appointments by scannig ID and then ber seated.

I agree with the travel voucher kiosk and or check in kiosk