Delays in the Processing of Survivors' and Dependents' Educational Assistance Program Benefits Led to Duplicate Payments

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted this audit to determine whether the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) adjusted compensation benefits in the Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance (DEA) Program in a timely manner and accurately processed benefits payments. The DEA Program is VA’s second-largest education program with more than $553 million in benefits paid in fiscal year 2017. The DEA Program provides monthly payments for education and training to eligible dependents and spouses of veterans who have permanent and total service-related medical conditions and receive compensation at the 100-percent disability level. Also, veterans with dependent children 18 to 23 years old attending school are eligible to receive an additional allowance in their disability compensation benefits. However, the veteran cannot receive the additional allowance at the same time the dependent children receive DEA benefits. The OIG found that delays in the processing of DEA benefit adjustments led to overpayments totaling approximately $4.5 million through February 1, 2018. Continued delays could result in an estimated $22.5 million in improper payments over a five-year period. Causes include the lack of management over the electronic mailboxes at the regional and national levels, an ineffective notification process, and the lack of system functionality to flag cases with duplication of benefits. In addition, some workload distribution rules caused cases not to be distributed when ready for processing. The OIG recommended that VBA ensure monitoring of electronic mailboxes and timeliness of compensation adjustments, implement a process to ensure receipt of DEA Program benefit notifications by regional staff, develop electronic system functionality to identify cases with potential duplication of benefits, process DEA benefit adjustments as soon as they are ready, and take prompt action to adjust benefits for cases in the OIG sample in which payment duplications had not been identified.