“There’s a lot of media coverage of the work of federal employees responding to the epic health, economic, and social effects of the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s also impressive work going on in federal agencies not directly related to the pandemic response, and in many cases this work is being done from home.”
“One of those agencies, the Veterans Benefits Administration, has even exceeded its performance targets set before the pandemic. And at the same time, Veterans Affairs Department Undersecretary Paul Lawrence, who leads VBA, has accelerated his personal outreach efforts to veterans via state tele-town halls where he’s connecting with tens of thousands of veterans in each state.”
“Lawrence, a veteran himself, started fiscal year 2020 back in October with a campaign to make 2020 VBA’s ‘best year ever’ in terms of productivity and service to veterans. After successfully cutting the backlog of pending benefit claims in 2019, he set even more aggressive performance targets for 2020.”
“The pandemic almost derailed those efforts. However, the VBA team set up a ‘war room’ in headquarters and developed work-arounds for how its 25,506 staff could get their jobs done via distance work arrangements…” Read the full article here.
Source: Veterans Benefits Administration May Be Having Its Best Year Ever – By John Kamensky, May 19, 2020. Government Executive.
