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The Official Newsletter for School Certifying Officials |
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Leadership Corner
Greetings GI Bill Partners,
On June 25, 2024, our Digital GI Bill team published the third video of the State of Education Service series. This video focuses on our strategic initiative of Continuous Improvement and discusses how, over the 80-year life of the GI Bill®, Education Service has modernized and improved to ensure excellent customer service as GI Bill programs have evolved.
You can see that improvement includes:
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Development and implementation of modernization upgrades to facilitate the integration of Post-9/11 GI Bill (Chapter 33) payments processing from the Benefits Delivery Network (BDN) to the Enterprise Management of Payments, Workload, and Reporting (eMPWR) system.
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Updates to our Resources for schools webpage to offer enhanced resources, like our School Certifying Official (SCO) Resource Matrix and GovDelivery message archive.
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Continuous collaboration efforts as we gather information from you and your peers via our SCO Resource Survey, so that we can continue to enhance the resources we have available.
As you read on in this edition, you will find further evidence of how Education Service continues to improve the use and administration of GI Benefits. For a brief history of how the GI Bill has improved throughout its 80-year life, please see our blog.
I would like to thank you for all you do, every day, in your essential role in helping Veterans, service members and their dependents receive their hard-earned benefits. I look forward to continuing to work with you and accomplishing great things.
Respectfully,
Joseph Garcia, Executive Director, Education Service
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Subscribe to receive all our updates!
Did you receive this newsletter as a forwarded message? As a reminder, you must be subscribed to our GovDelivery email list to receive routine communications (such as webinar invites or office hour notes) from Education Service.
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Enrollment Manager maintenance notice
Enrollment Manager will undergo maintenance to facilitate the integration of Chapter 33 payments processing to the eMPWR system. Enrollment Manager was unavailable from Wednesday, June 26, 2024, through Sunday, June 30, 2024. It is available again now and you may conduct daily work and certify as usual.
Enrollment Manager back-end claims processing for Post-9/11 GI Bill claims will experience delays from Monday, July 1, 2024, to Monday, July 8, 2024. Post-9/11 GI Bill certifications and amendments will be saved, and back-end processing of submissions will resume on Monday, July 8, 2024.
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GovDelivery message archive
Education Service will often release targeted messaging through GovDelivery to provide important information to both SCOs and GI Bill beneficiaries. We highly encourage you sign up through GovDelivery to receive the mass messages Education Service releases in real time.
To ensure that you have access to these messages though, we are making curated messages available on our GI Bill webpage. Please use the links on the webpage to access workbooks containing archived content released via the GovDelivery mailing list. We routinely update the current year's spreadsheet but please note that it is not updated in real-time.
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Free LinkedIn Premium eligibility
VA has a memorandum with LinkedIn to provide links for the premium account specifically to individuals receiving the Fry Scholarship benefit. Interested Fry Scholarship beneficiaries should reach out to EDUSTAENG.VBAVACO@va.gov and provide their full name and the email address associated with their VA file.
Service members or Veterans can apply for a premium account directly from LinkedIn at: https://socialimpact.linkedin.com/programs/veterans/premiumform. Similarly, spouses of a service member or Veteran, can apply for a premium account directly from LinkedIn at: https://socialimpact.linkedin.com/programs/veterans/milspouses.
Disclaimer Statement: Sharing of this information does not constitute an endorsement with any external groups or organizations. The VA makes no claims, promises, or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the contents of this information or survey, and expressly disclaims liability for errors and omissions in the contents being delivered.
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Transition from WAVE to Verify Your Enrollment
Enrollment verification for the Montgomery GI Bill Active Duty (Chapter 30) and Montgomery GI Bill Selected Reserve (Chapter 1606) benefits is presently reported through the Web Automated Verification of Enrollment (WAVE) system or the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) phone line.
VA will be transitioning from WAVE to the new Verify Your Enrollment (VYE) application. This transition will be completed in the near future. Once the transition starts the WAVE application will no longer be accessible, but users will be automatically redirected to the VYE application. They may continue to use the IVR phone line if that is their preferred route of verifying.
The new VYE application offers a modernized, more secure way for users to verify their enrollment. VA is confident that this transition will provide them with a smoother and more efficient experience when verifying their enrollment or accessing related services. In order to access VYE users will need to login using authenticated credentials.
If users are receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits, there is no change in how they verify their enrollment. Information and instructions on enrollment verification for Post-9/11 GI Bill students can be found on our GI Bill website.
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Updated resources for Enrollment Manager
We recently updated the Enrollment Manager’s FAQs to provide you the most accurate information when completing actions in the system.
The FAQs now include:
- Additional information on specific user training requirements.
- More guidance on enrollment processing for guest students, VBA remarks and more.
- Updates to the term definitions table.
Check out the updated FAQs today.
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New updates to the GI Bill Chatbot
Noticed anything new about the GI Bill Chatbot? On June 14, 2024, we made updates to some of the chatbot’s features to improve the user experience. A few of the top priority changes include:
- Updated responses for inquiries related to select VBA remarks, guest students and SCO role types.
- Users can access remarks by typing inquiries directly into the chatbot instead of navigating to the VBA remarks menu and then entering their remark.
- Removal and addition of VBA remarks in the GI Bill Chatbot to align with Enrollment Manager updates.
Log in to Enrollment Manager to experience these updates today.
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How VA kept everyone in the know
quarter three of fiscal year 2024
In future newsletters this section will be discontinued as all materials will now be available in the GovDelivery message archive.
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Newsletters:
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Messages sent to GI Bill beneficiaries:
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Messages sent to SCOs:
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Share your good news story!
Does your school have an exciting Veteran-centric event or initiative to share? We want to know about it and share your good news in an upcoming SCO Spotlight! Click here to find out how to submit your good news story.
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US Department of Veterans Affairs
Veterans Benefits Administration
1-888-442-4551, TDD: 711
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Do you have a question or concern about GI Bill benefits? Contact us safely and securely with Ask VA! |
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