VA and OMB established a joint working group to identify options for restructuring the Department’s budget accounts. The ultimate goal of this account restructuring effort is to facilitate charging each program’s budget accounts for all of the significant resources used to operate the program and produce its outputs and outcomes. Among the benefits of budget account restructuring are to: (1) more readily determine program costs; (2) shift resource debates from inputs to outcomes and results; (3) eventually make resource decisions based on programs and their results rather than on other factors; and (4) improve planning, simplify systems, enhance tracking, and focus on accountability.

Four account restructuring options were developed by the joint VA/OMB working group. Using selected features of each of these options, a single account restructuring proposal has been developed. This proposal is based on identifying the costs associated with nine VA programs: medical care, research, compensation, pension, education, housing, vocational rehabilitation and employment, insurance, and burial. Medical education, which previously was identified as a separate program, will be included as a subset of the medical care program.

We will be in a position to discuss our budget account restructuring proposal with OMB representatives in FY 2000. Consultation sessions will then be scheduled with the authorizing and appropriations committees in Congress.