Niskanen study says VA rebuilt trust by changing how it delivers services

A new Niskanen Center case study finds the Department of Veterans Affairs improved service delivery over a decade by adopting a product model across the agency, not by technology upgrades alone. The research says the approach cut disability claim processing times, boosted veteran trust and offers a playbook other agencies can use.

Why it matters: - The study argues that government service improvements come from building lasting delivery capacity, not just buying new technology. - VA’s experience offers a model for other agencies facing aging systems, rising demand and public distrust. - The findings matter because the department used its operating model to absorb the largest benefits expansion in its history under the PACT Act.

What happened: - The Niskanen Center released two products on September 24, 2026: Built for the Veteran: How the Department of Veterans Affairs Built a Product Organization — and Rebuilt Institutional Trust (2015–2025) and Built to Deliver: A Product at Scale Playbook for Digital Modernization. - The case study examines how VA moved from the 2014 Phoenix wait-time scandal to sustained service improvements across three presidential administrations. - The research says VA changed how it understood veteran needs, governed technology, organized teams and measured service performance. - The companion playbook turns those findings into a framework for public institutions that want to improve services over time.

The details: - Veteran trust in VA rose 25% between April 2016 and December 2024. - Average disability claim processing time fell from 128 days in 2015 to 47 days in 2024. - VA built a unified digital front door and expanded mobile and online services. - VA also developed operational capacity that helped the department handle the PACT Act benefits surge. - The study says VA began treating trust as an operating measure. - VA asked veterans whether they trusted the department to fulfill the country’s commitment to them. - VA paired that question with measures of ease of use, effectiveness and whether services made veterans feel valued. - Those signals became part of the department’s feedback system for improving services. - Trust remains substantially lower among younger veterans and women veterans than among older veterans. - Major technology programs, including electronic health record modernization, can still reproduce familiar failure patterns outside the product structures used elsewhere in VA. - The playbook identifies 10 building blocks of delivery capacity: user-centered design, unified platforms, data as product infrastructure, enforceable governance, cross-functional teams, an operational backbone, product ownership, capability-based budgeting, durable institutional knowledge and customer experience as an operational driver. - The playbook presents a framework for assessing and building the conditions needed to own and improve services over time, rather than a model to copy exactly. - The study draws on interviews with 23 senior leaders and practitioners conducted from November 2025 to April 2026. - Interviewees included former VA CIOs and acting CIOs, senior career executives, digital service and customer experience practitioners, congressional staff and veterans from every service. - The interview pool represented more than 200 years of VA and government technology experience. - The research also used veteran interviews, program materials, customer experience data, legislative timelines and modernization records. - Interview participants were anonymized to support candid accounts of the transformation. - Solitaire Carroll led the work as Senior Researcher and Strategic Advisor for Niskanen Center’s State Capacity Team and former co-director of VA’s Veteran Experience Services Portfolio. - Sara Thomas, Holly Sydnor and Victoria Hernandez-Corretjer were supporting authors. - Kristie Dombroski is listed as the media contact for Niskanen Center. - Niskanen Center also shared social links for LinkedIn and X.

Between the lines: - The report’s core argument is that institutional trust improves when agencies build repeatable systems for learning, not when they rely on isolated modernization projects. - The mixed results on trust, especially for younger and women veterans, suggest the transformation was real but incomplete. - The warning on electronic health record modernization suggests product discipline may be harder to sustain in large, complex programs that sit outside the strongest delivery structures.

What's next: - The playbook is positioned as a guide for government leaders who want to assess their own delivery capacity and strengthen it over time. - The study is likely to be used as a reference point for agencies trying to link modernization, customer experience and operational performance. - VA’s remaining trust gaps and technology challenges suggest the next phase will be about extending the product model more consistently across the department.

The bottom line: - VA’s decade-long turnaround, the study argues, was less about technology replacement than about changing the organization behind the technology.