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By Hannah Parry
Associate News Editor
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President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aimed at speeding up veterans' access to federal benefits and employment opportunities, with the administration promising to tackle delays caused by outdated government systems.
The order directs the Departments of War and Veterans Affairs to modernize how they manage and share service members' records, while also bringing the Department of Labor into efforts to improve career guidance, training and employment opportunities for veterans.
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What Trump's New Veterans Executive Order Does
The executive order aims to reduce administrative delays that can occur when service members leave the military and begin navigating the VA system.
Under the order, the Departments of War and Veterans Affairs are directed to establish systems for sharing personnel files and service treatment records throughout a service member's military career and into their period of receiving VA benefits.
The order also calls for records to be transferred to the VA when a service member leaves the Armed Forces, with the aim of ensuring the agency has the information it needs to process applications more efficiently.
The administration says outdated systems can currently cause delays of between 90 and 180 days in transferring the profiles of transitioning service members. Those delays can affect healthcare coverage, benefits processing, education and job training.
The order also calls for new digital tools, including artificial intelligence, to help veterans access benefits and employment services.
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Will Veterans Get Their Benefits Faster?
That is the administration's stated goal, but the order does not guarantee that every veteran will immediately receive benefits faster.
Instead, it gives federal agencies deadlines to develop and implement new systems intended to reduce administrative delays.
The White House has pointed to a backlog affecting more than 70,000 transitioning service members as an example of the problem it wants to address. A White House official also told the Daily Caller that the VA's backlog had reached around 378,000 at one point during the Biden administration. Those figures are administration claims and describe different stages of the benefits process.
The practical impact will depend on how quickly the agencies implement the changes and whether the new systems work as intended.
The order is therefore better understood as an attempt to make the process of applying for and receiving existing benefits more efficient, rather than a guarantee of faster payments for every veteran.
How AI Will Be Used To Process Veterans' Benefits
Artificial intelligence is one of the more notable elements of the order. The Departments of War and Veterans Affairs are directed to develop digital tools using AI and other emerging technologies to help service members and veterans access benefits, employment opportunities and training.
The administration has not said that AI will independently decide whether someone qualifies for a particular benefit. Instead, the technology is being presented as a way to modernize a system that currently relies heavily on paperwork and older data-management systems.
VA Secretary Doug Collins previously said that the paperwork-heavy nature of the process can make veterans wary of filing claims and can make the system appear more difficult than it is.
Exactly how AI will be deployed, and what safeguards will govern its use in veterans' benefits decisions, will become clearer as the agencies implement the order.
What The Order Means for Military Personnel Leaving Service
The order could have its most immediate practical significance for people transitioning out of active military service.
The administration wants departing service members to be connected with a veterans specialist who can help them navigate applications for healthcare, disability, home-loan, employment and education benefits.
The order also directs the federal government to connect transitioning service members with relevant job opportunities or, where appropriate, education, training and apprenticeship programs.
The Departments of War, Veterans Affairs and Labor are being tasked with improving career guidance and employment opportunities for veterans.
The aim is to make the transition into civilian life less dependent on veterans figuring out multiple government systems on their own.
Does the Order Create Any New Veterans Benefits?
The executive order does not create a new category of VA benefit or increase existing benefit payments. Instead, it is focused on how veterans access benefits that already exist.
That distinction is important. The order seeks to improve data sharing, reduce paperwork and administrative delays, introduce new technology and provide more assistance to people leaving military service.
The administration is also trying to address fraud within the benefits system while making it easier for veterans with legitimate claims to navigate the process.
For veterans, the potential benefit is therefore not necessarily a larger check or a new entitlement. It is the possibility of getting access to existing healthcare, disability, education and employment services with fewer bureaucratic hurdles.
Whether that happens will ultimately depend on how the agencies put the executive order into practice.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jenni Fink and Gray R. Thomas
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