Hearing held on VOWS Act

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Labor are on “an excellent track” to implement provisions of a new law intended to help more unemployed veterans get jobs, according to Curtis Coy, VA’s deputy under secretary for economic opportunity. Coy was one of three panelists who testified Dec. 15 before the House Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity.

Coy acknowledged that some challenges would be encountered while turning provisions of the VOWS to Hire Heroes Act into reality by July 1, 2012. He said differences had to be worked out between information technology systems used by VA and DoL, especially given the relatively short time frame to complete the integration. Apart from this potential difficulty, Coy was confident that implementation could be achieved before the deadline.

The subcommittee also heard from Ismael Ortiz Jr., DoL’s acting assistant secretary for the Veterans Employment and Training Service. His testimony focused mainly on the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), and on training and rehabilitation for veterans who have exhausted their unemployment benefits.

Ortiz said that DoL, in the course of fulfilling its VRAP obligations, will monitor high-demand occupations and share available job opportunities with qualified veterans who are unemployed. He said that DoL will most likely make use of established One-Stop Career Centers across the country to help implement programs required by the VOWS law.

Ortiz also specified five milestones that DoL and VA needed to complete by next July: establishment of a memorandum of authority and project charter, seek consultations on project design, implement application processing systems to integrate VA and DoL responsibilities, implement and enrollment tracking system, and develop new outreach programs for unemployed veterans.