VBA’s compensation program pays monthly benefits, based on degree of disability, to veterans who have service-connected disabilities (injuries or diseases incurred or aggravated while on active military duty), regardless of whether these veterans are employed or have earnings. The pension program pays monthly benefits, based on financial need, to wartime veterans who have low incomes and are permanently and totally disabled for reasons not service-connected. When veterans submit disability claims, VBA’s 57 regional offices must follow newly defined requirements for assisting veterans in obtaining evidence to support their claims. For a disability compensation claim, the regional office must (1) obtain the veteran’s existing service medical records and, if the veteran has furnished information sufficient to locate such records, other relevant service records; (2) obtain records of relevant medical treatment or examination of the veteran provided at VA health-care facilities or at VA’s expense; (3) obtain any other relevant records held by a federal department or agency; and (4) provide a medical examination or obtain a medical opinion, if necessary to make a decision on the claim. Regional offices have three primary claims-processing positions for which TPSS is intended to provide training. Veterans Service Representatives obtain evidence required for veterans’ claims. Rating Veterans Service Representatives (hereafter referred to as Rating Specialists) analyze the evidence, evaluate service-connected impairments, and assign a rating for the degree to which the veteran is disabled. Decision Review Officers attempt to resolve veterans’ disagreements with regional office decisions and can grant benefits based on the same evidence used by the Rating Specialist. Two of these regional office positions are relatively new—the Veterans Service Representative position and the Decision Review Officer position were implemented during 1998-99 and 2000, respectively. If a veteran disagrees with a regional office decision, the veteran may file an appeal asking VA’s Board of Veterans’ Appeals to review the decision.The Board makes VA’s final decision on such appeals and can grant or deny benefits, but in some cases the Board may return (remand) the case to the regional office to obtain further evidence and reconsider the decision. In these cases, the regional office either grants the claim or returns it to the Board for a final VA decision. Our High-Risk Series states that human capital challenges pose a high risk for VBA, as well as other agencies across the federal government.Specifically, our High-Risk Series states that VBA’s training and recruitment programs may not be adequate to ensure a sufficient workforce of competent claims processors, and the lack of such a workforce could undermine efforts to reduce current problems of claims- processing backlogs and errors. We have published a human capital self- assessment checklist providing a systematic approach to identifying and addressing human capital issues. Our checklist states that an agency should make appropriate investments in education, training, and other developmental opportunities to help its employees build the competencies needed to achieve the agency’s “shared vision”—the mission, vision for the future, core values, goals and objectives, and strategies that define the agency’s direction and expectations for itself and its people. Such investments require an explicit workforce planning strategy, linked to the agency’s strategic and program planning efforts. These planning efforts should identify, among other things, the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to position an agency for its future. In addition, they should provide an explicit link between the agency’s training offerings and curriculums and the competencies identified by the agency for mission accomplishment. In VA’s Departmental Performance Plan for fiscal year 2001, VBA links the TPSS program to its strategic goal of providing world-class service to veterans and their families. In working toward this goal, VBA’s top priority is to improve the technical accuracy of claims-processing, and VBA states that the TPSS program is one of its most important initiatives for achieving this objective. To develop TPSS training modules for a specific claims-processing position, the job and tasks for that position must be analyzed in detail. After this analysis, VBA estimates that it takes 14 to 16 months to develop each module, which consists of computer- assisted instruction packages and written instructional materials designed to support cooperative learning by employees who train in groups of two or three. Under VBA’s direction, contractors develop the modules with the help of subject matter experts from VBA’s regional and central offices. Before a module is released, selected regional office employees take the training on a trial basis to validate its effectiveness. Each training module includes a pretest for determining whether an employee needs to take the training. Each module also includes a post-test requiring students to process test cases to determine their mastery of the tasks and work processes. Using regional office employees, these pretests and post-tests are also validated before the modules are released. The design and development of the TPSS program will take longer than planned to complete. According to VBA’s current schedule, the development of the full TPSS program will not be completed until at least calendar year 2004, or about 2 years later than VBA had planned. Also, based on our survey of regional offices, 49 of the 57 regional offices had used TPSS, but great variation existed in the extent to which they had implemented the available TPSS modules to train employees. In fact, until December 2000, VBA had not established a requirement that regional offices use the TPSS modules. In general, the regional offices reported that the most significant hindrance to using the modules was lack of time for training due to workload pressures. In early 2000, VBA projected that the development of the full TPSS program would be completed during calendar year 2002. However, as of March 2001, the earliest projected completion date for the full program would be calendar year 2004 (see table 1). As of March 2001, VBA had provided the regional offices with 9 training modules out of an estimated 50 modules expected to constitute the full TPSS program. According to VBA, delays in the TPSS program can be attributed to two primary causes—the creation of new claims-processing positions and legislative changes in VBA’s duty to assist veterans in obtaining evidence to support their claims. VBA is waiting for the duties of the new Decision Review Officer position to stabilize before conducting the task analysis necessary to develop the training modules for this position. In addition, after completing the task analysis for the new Veterans Service Representative position, VBA learned it will need to develop many more training modules than originally expected because the position encompasses more tasks and greater complexity than anticipated.Moreover, VBA has decided to give priority to developing modules for the Veterans Service Representative position and thus delay the development of training modules for other categories of employees. Finally, because the Congress enacted legislative changes in the duty-to-assist requirements in November 2000, VBA decided to include these new requirements in the remaining basic rating modules. Doing so delayed releasing those modules to the regional offices. At the time of our survey in October 2000, the extent to which regional offices had used the six TPSS modules that were available varied widely. Of the 57 regional offices, 8 had not used any of the available TPSS modules to train employees. Of the 49 that had used TPSS, their use varied greatly. For example, 41 regional offices had used the original compensation module, but only 11 had used the routine future examinations module (see table 2). Only 5 regional offices had used all of the available modules to train employees, and 10 regional offices had used only one module. VBA had strongly encouraged, but not required, regional offices to use TPSS in their training programs. However, VBA conducted a survey of its own in October 2000 and found that some regional offices still were not using any TPSS modules. As a result, in December 2000, VBA issued a letter mandating the use of TPSS in all regional offices. According to VBA officials, the December mandate required that regional offices use the available basic rating modules to train all new Rating Specialists and use future modules for Veterans Service Representatives to train all new employees filling this position. VBA officials told us that these new training requirements for specific types of employees have also been communicated to the regional offices via nationwide conference calls. Based on responses to our survey from the 49 regional offices that had used at least one TPSS module, the most significant hindrance to implementing the modules was lack of time for training due to workload pressures. About 47 percent of these regional offices said that workload pressures affected their use of TPSS to at least a moderate extent. As we reported in May 2000, persistent backlogs of pending claims have resulted in veterans having to endure long waits to receive decisions on their claims. Consequently, regional offices face pressure not only to improve accuracy in processing claims, but also to reduce the backlog of pending claims. A contractor evaluating VBA training reported in April 2000 that “training time is too easily given up to the press of productivity.” The six modules that had been released at the time of our survey were designed to require a total of about 24 workdays for an employee to complete. In 1998, VBA prepared a rationale supporting the adoption of the TPSS program. In this rationale, VBA outlined several objectives of the TPSS program related to human capital management, including providing training for new employees replacing the expected wave of retirees, shortening the training period for employees, and improving employees’ claims-processing accuracy and consistency. We found that many TPSS modules will not be available when needed to train new employees and that TPSS may not substantially reduce the training period for employees. Also, VBA has not developed a formal plan to evaluate the program’s impact on claims-processing accuracy or consistency. In its rationale for the TPSS program, VBA stated that the program would allow VBA to effectively train employees hired and promoted as replacements for the expected wave of retiring claims processors.