MyVA Advisory Committee holds first meeting

The Department of Veterans Affairs hosted the first meeting of its MyVA Advisory Committee on April 14-15 in Washington. The committee’s job is to help VA improve service to veterans, boost the performance of VA workers and set a course for long-term reform.

Committee members will work with VA Secretary Robert McDonald and his staff to achieve the MyVA program’s goals: improve veterans’ experiences, deliver exceptional customer service, empower the employees, and make VA’s internal structure more veteran-centric.

“I’ve been asking for the past seven months what VA’s best practices are,” McDonald told the group, “and I haven’t made any progress…. If we don’t improve employee experience, we won’t improve veterans’ experience. If we don’t fix facilities and providers to help women veterans, we’re going to lose many customers.”

While committee members have impressive experience in business and medicine, very few have any background in veterans issues and only one seat on the committee has been allotted – on a rotating basis - to veterans service organizations (VSOs).

McDonald said that many VSOs wanted to be represented on the committee, which still has several vacant positions. He explained the group had no union representative and minimal VSO participation because “this is a committee for internal purposes.”

The American Legion’s national commander, Michael D. Helm, has been pushing hard for Legion representation on the committee, but VA has yet to grant that request.