Strategic Goal: Provide One VA world-class service to veterans and their families through the effective management of people, technology, processes, and financial resources. VA will operate as a veteran-focused organization that provides high quality, accessible, and timely information and service through the development and maintenance of a high-performing workforce, the application of state-of-the-art technologies, the continuous improvement of processes, and the effective allocation of dollars.

Objective: Improve communications with veterans, employees, and stakeholders to share the Department’s mission, goals, and results and to increase awareness of benefits and services for veterans and their families.

Performance Goal: Improve communications and outreach by reducing the telephone abandoned call rate to 7 percent and blocked call rate to 12 percent.

Major achievements in telephone access continue. On February 1, 1999, a National Automated Response System (N-ARS) was made available to six regional offices with the highest blocked call rates. These offices improved from approximately 60-80 percent blocked calls to about 8 percent.

N-ARS will be expanded to include a case-specific routing feature. Veterans’ calls will be routed to teams/veterans service representatives (VSRs) using a five-digit extension. The testing of the case-specific feature is expected to begin during the second quarter of FY 2000 in conjunction with the service delivery network (SDN) 2’s Virtual Information Center Pilot. The Virtual Information Center will assess the feasibility of using resources at one regional office to handle overflow calls from another regional office. Successful implementation of these initiatives will significantly enhance telephone access.

Achievement of this performance goal is not directly dependent on other agencies.

There are no major management challenges that will affect achievement of this performance goal.

The abandoned call rate is calculated using data captured by automated call distribution equipment. The blocked call rate is based on data received monthly from Sprint (service provider) reports.

There is no independent verification of this information.

(For additional information on this performance goal, refer to General Operating Expenses, Volume 4, Chapter 2B.)