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Overall Progress this Milestone
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Identified 5 data improvements for this quarter
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Primary Uses
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The mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is to serve America’s Veterans and their supporters with dignity and compassion, and to be their principal advocate in ensuring that they receive medical care, benefits, social support, and lasting memorials promoting the health, welfare, and dignity of all Veterans in recognition of their service to this Nation. The primary uses of agency data support the Department’s mission to serve Veterans and their supporters: Planning, analysis, and decision-making activities through the collection, validation, analysis, and dissemination of key statistics on Veteran population and VA programs. Strategy development to integrate the organization's common customer data (identity; military service history; contact information; socioeconomic/demographic; utilization history) to effectively deliver high quality service. Employment data to help identify military skills that Veterans can leverage in the civilian job market. Efforts to empower Veterans to be entrepreneurs, helping them start a business, grow a business, or explore a new career. Determination of what veterans’ health and other needs are, what government is doing to address those needs, and identification of opportunities (using data on: Demographics and geography; Health and economic conditions; Utilization of government services and benefits). Research initiatives which provide data that policymakers, service providers, institutions of higher learning, and the general public can act on to support student Veterans, including the rate at which student veterans complete college compared with traditional students; how long it takes them to complete higher education; the highest degree attained; and their degree fields. |
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Value or impact of data
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Primary data discovery channels
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The primary channels for users to learn about VA data are agency-sponsored events, email, and non-agency sponsored events. On May 6, 2015, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Center for Open Data Enterprise co-hosted an Open Data Roundtable in Washington, DC. The goal of the Roundtable was to get input from internal VA stakeholders and external data users on ways to maximize the value of VA’s data and further the agency’s mission to support Veterans and their families. The Roundtable builds on the foundation of VA’s efforts to collect and publish agency data for public consumption and advance the department’s open data initiative. The VA Roundtable was a part of the Open Data Roundtables Series conducted by the nonprofit Center for Open Data Enterprise. The Roundtables are action-oriented dialogues that bring together government agencies and the organizations that use their data. These dialogues between data experts inside and outside of government are designed to help extract the value of each agency’s data reserves. The Open Data Roundtable report, published by the Center, combines observations, feedback, and suggestions on the topics discussed at the event. The final VA report is currently in draft, and will be released as a public document to encourage further input, dialogue, and improvements in open data. Recommendations for dataset proposals are also based on emails from data users sent to General Services Administration (GSA) Data.gov and The National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics (NCVAS). Non-Agency sponsored events, such as the White House participation in Global Mental Health Day and the White House Conference on Aging, highlight key VA data sets. |
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User suggestions on improving data usability
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Due to the size, scope, and complexity of increasingly challenging Veterans’ needs, VA has had difficulty providing Veterans, beneficiaries, and partners with a consistent, seamless experience. VA needs an integrated, authoritative view of Veterans’ and their supporters’ needs to achieve the most efficient and effective delivery of benefits and services. In 2013, VA initiated a Customer Data Integration (CDI) project to assess current processes and initiatives in order to identify gaps and overlaps in authoritative customer data across the organization. This assessment confirmed that VA lacks sources of customer data and associated processes across systems and Administrations. The current state of affairs places a burden on Veterans and their supporters to supply information multiple times to multiple parts of VA that are working to provide the best customer service. VA collects an increasing amount of high-value data that could be used to optimize VA’s engagement with its customers. VA is committed to creating a high level of openness with its data, while respecting privacy, to promote efficiency and effectiveness in its service to Veterans and their supporters. |
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User suggestions on additional data releases
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To better serve its constituencies, VA has been focusing on making improvements in data in a number of areas. Some of these include: Update to List of Accredited Claims Agents. This dataset allows users to search accredited claims agents and is now being published as machine readable. Update to List of Accredited Representatives. This dataset allows users to search Veterans Service Organizations representatives and is now being published as machine readable. Update to VA Annual Reports. VA added the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldier Annual Reports for 1866 – 1873. Request for access to SAS Data Files for older National Survey of Veterans (NSV). VA added the National Survey of Veterans final report, a 260 page document with aggregated data showing the results of the survey. VA Facilities Locator. VA is enhancing the ability to retrieve JSON-formatted data from the service. The option exists and the documentation is being added soon. VA Facilities Locator. VA re-directed the ability to access locations from data.gov to VA as the API data is not located on data.gov. |
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Digital Analytics Program on /data
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