Strategic Goal: Honor and serve veterans in life and memorialize them in death for their sacrifices on behalf of the Nation. Veterans will have dignity in their lives, especially in time of need, through the provision of health care, pension programs and life insurance, and the Nation will memorialize them in death for the sacrifices they have made for their country.

Objective: Provide a level of income that brings eligible veterans and their survivors up to a standard of living that ensures dignity in their lives.

Performance Goal: VA is in the early stages of developing pension program outcomes and performance measures; as a result, there are no performance goals for FY 2001.

The purpose of the pension program is to provide monthly payments, as specified by law, to needy wartime veterans who are permanently and totally disabled as a result of disability not related to military service. The program also provides monthly payments to needy surviving spouses and dependent children of deceased wartime veterans.

VA is working with our stakeholders from Congress, OMB, and VSOs to determine outcomes and performance measures for the compensation program. When that task is complete, the C&P Service will begin the similar task for the pension program. We will begin this project during FY 2001.

VA will determine appropriate means and strategies after collecting baseline data and setting performance goals. Initially, VA will form teams to determine how surveys should be conducted in order to obtain the most reliable data. We anticipate contracting out for assistance in developing and administering surveys. We must also determine how to best capture income data, to include welfare payments, of veterans and survivors in receipt of pension, as well as a statistically valid sample of total personal income of like-circumstanced non-recipients.

Achievement of the goal is not directly dependent on other agencies. However, we may ultimately work with other agencies to obtain the socio-economic data needed to evaluate the impact of the pension program on veterans and their dependents.

Until we determine outcomes, measures, and goals, we cannot assess whether we have any major management challenges that will affect achievement of the performance goals.

Measuring how veterans perceive the pension program, or the impact the program has on the quality of their lives, is dependent on data not currently available.

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