Serving Veterans in the time of COVID-19: OIT tools to the rescue

In the time of COVID-19, Veterans especially need to be able to count on VA. That’s why an important goal of VA’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) is to use technology in ways that make accessing VA services increasingly more seamless, effective, efficient and easy for Veterans.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, with the extra stress and burdens on Veterans and families, VA and our health care and benefits staff faced new, developing challenges they needed to meet to keep continuous services going while also adding new ones.

The Office of Information and Technology had a key role, needing to quickly assess and implement tools to meet the new COVID-19 era challenges.

Three frontline digital technology tools VA rolled out, or expanded features of, this past year to significantly aid in expediting VA’s response and making a difference in delivering COVID-19 care and vaccine services to Veterans and families are:

• Keep Me Informed tool
• VEText messaging platform
• VA’s COVID-19 research volunteer registry to help connect Veterans with cutting-edge clinical research opportunities.

VA’s Office of Information and Technology is always seeking to improve customer service to ensure VA consistently delivers exceptional customer service to our Veterans.

If you have a suggestion for a helpful digital tool or other technology that can assist Veterans, let us know by visiting our It Starts With Us webpage, selecting the Share Your Experience button, summarizing your idea, and selecting message type Suggest a Customer Service Improvement.

VA’s Office of Information and Technology (OIT) contributed this report.