[ADD] VBA services (batch 1) to Service Taxonomy

[davidmpickett]

Which Taxonomy is this term for?

VA services taxonomy

Proposed term name/label

Label	Machine Name	Health Service API ID
Benefit letters and decision letters	benefit-letters-and-decision-letters	BenefitLetters
Burials and memorials	burials-and-memorials	BurialClaimAssistance
Disability compensation	disability-compensation	DisabilityClaimAssistance
Education benefits for family members	education-benefits-for-family	FamilyEducationBenefits
Education benefits for Veterans	education-benefits-for-veterans	EducationClaimAssistance
Home loans	home-loans	VAHomeLoanAssistance
Life Insurance	life-insurance	InsuranceClaimAssistanceAndFinancialCounseling
Military records	military-records	MilitaryRecords
Veterans Pension	veterans-pension	Pensions

Does this overlap with any existing term in the taxonomy?

No

Rationale for adding this term

These terms are supported by multiple rounds of research as part of the VBA Regional Office MVP.

Which products will this term impact?

VBA Regional Office

Have stakeholders from impacted products been consulted?

Yes, Michelle has communicated with VBA and also gave VAMC a heads up

Have you drafted content for all the relevant subfields?

• Original source of truth for all VBA services VBA Services (requires VA network)
• This content has been copy edited by CAIA
• And reviewed for accuracy with VBA stakeholders

Acceptance Criteria (Sprint 98) - 5 points

• Review/resolve feedback from ROs
• Draft machine names & API IDs
• Review machine names & API IDs with @swirtSJW & @omahane
• Consult with @mmiddaugh & @aklausmeier about need for Taxonomy Council involvement / approval
• If approved, a Drupal admin from Product team may add the term to the taxonomy
• Content for subfields is added in Drupal by Product team
  • Benefit letters and decision letters
  • Burials and memorials
  • Disability compensation
  • Education benefits for family members
  • Education benefits for Veterans
  • Home loans
  • Life Insurance
  • Military records
  • Veterans Pension

### Follow up approval and launch steps (could be a separate ticket) moved to #16445

[davidmpickett]

Exporting current state of excel document
VBA Services.xlsx

[davidmpickett]

I have consolidated the excel doc down to only the 11 services under consideration for batch 1 and put the RO feedback in main tab
VBA_Services_batch1.xlsx

A nice validation that we made good choices in selecting the first batch is that all 11 services were marked as "This is a core service offering at my location" by RO respondent(s)

[davidmpickett]

@swirtSJW Incredibly specific question for you. Facility Locator v0 documentation has a list of benefit service codes as a sibling of the health services codes. Should we use these in the Health Service API ID field? Or is that field specifically connecting to the Health Services Only and not the Benefit Services?

Or does this basically not matter since the only source of truth this would be linking up with is Sandy's DB which we are going to be replacing?

• ApplyingForBenefits
• BurialClaimAssistance
• DisabilityClaimAssistance
• eBenefitsRegistrationAssistance
• EducationAndCareerCounseling
• EducationClaimAssistance
• FamilyMemberClaimAssistance
• HomelessAssistance
• InsuranceClaimAssistanceAndFinancialCounseling
• IntegratedDisabilityEvaluationSystemAssistance
• Pensions
• PreDischargeClaimAssistance
• TransitionAssistance
• UpdatingDirectDepositInformation
• VAHomeLoanAssistance
• VocationalRehabilitationAndEmploymentAssistance

[davidmpickett]

Member

@swirtSJW Corollary question for lighthouse. Will anything break if some of these services ID don't have a service on our end?

For instance we won't be using ApplyingForBenefits for anything, because it's actually a task that applies to all benefit services, not a service in itself.

[davidmpickett]

Pulling these two terms out of batch 1 because they need more discussion on the actual term name

• Burial in a VA cemetery
• Compensation benefits for family members

[davidmpickett]

@swirtSJW and @omahane - here's the official list terms to add and terms to update for y'all to review / implement

New terms to add to VA Services

Label	Machine Name	Health Service API ID
Benefit letters and decision letters	benefit-letters-and-decision-letters	BenefitLetters
Burials and memorials	burials-and-memorials	BurialClaimAssistance
Disability compensation	disability-compensation	DisabilityClaimAssistance
Education benefits for family members	education-benefits-for-family	FamilyEducationBenefits
Education benefits for Veterans	education-benefits-for-veterans	EducationClaimAssistance
Life Insurance	life-insurance	InsuranceClaimAssistanceAndFinancialCounseling
Military records	military-records	MilitaryRecords

Existing terms that need to change

Label	Machine Name	Health Service API ID
Home loans	home-loans	VAHomeLoanAssistance
Pension	pension	pension
Veterans Pension	veterans-pension	Pensions

[davidmpickett]

I updated the source of truth doc on sharepoint. I renamed the column "roadmap" to "GitHub ticket tracking this term." Adding static copy of that doc for quick reference:
VBA_Services_2023_12_1.xlsx

[davidmpickett]

Also, gathered up all the terms that didn't already have a ticket into a new one: #16269

[davidmpickett]

Added draft content for all VBA subfields for Veterans Pension - https://prod.cms.va.gov/health-care/veterans-pension

[davidmpickett]

@mmiddaugh @aklausmeier @xiongjaneg - for conversation on Monday morning

1 - Establishing Minimum Viable Signoff needed to Add new VA Service taxonomy terms to Drupal

The term label, machine name, and health service API ID are the only three fields that A) are required to create a new term and B) problematic to change once created.

I have winnowed down this first batch to terms that:

• have been copy-edited by CAIA
• were reviewed by VBA stakeholders
• don't have open questions about the name or the scope of the service

Label	Machine Name	Health Service API ID
Benefit letters and decision letters	benefit-letters-and-decision-letters	BenefitLetters
Burials and memorials	burials-and-memorials	BurialClaimAssistance
Disability compensation	disability-compensation	DisabilityClaimAssistance
Education benefits for family members	education-benefits-for-family	FamilyEducationBenefits
Education benefits for Veterans	education-benefits-for-veterans	EducationClaimAssistance
Home loans	home-loans	VAHomeLoanAssistance
Life Insurance	life-insurance	InsuranceClaimAssistanceAndFinancialCounseling
Military records	military-records	MilitaryRecords
Veterans Pension	veterans-pension	Pensions

My question for y'all

• Do we need any other input/approval from any stakeholder (CAIA/VBA/VAMC/Vet Center) on these term names before adding them to Drupal?

2 - Using Drupal as source of truth for final reviews

Once a term is created Drupal by an admin, I will populate all the VBA subfields.

• Type of care (soon to be "Type of service")
• VBA description (soon to be "Service description")
• Online self-service
• Facility service header
• Facility service description
• Regional service header
• Regional service description

Then the term in Drupal can be sent to CAIA and VBA for final review/approval. Example: Veterans pension

My questions for y'all

• Any concerns about this as a process?
• If CAIA and VBA disagree, how to resolve? (Do we need to specify which fields are ultimately CAIA's responsibility vs VBA?)

3 - What about non-VBA fields?

I don't think this particular batch of terms will have much appeal to VAMC or Vet Center, but might be worth going through the motion of officially communicating the new terms availability and establish processes for them generating their product-specific content.

4 - Where are the rest of the VBA terms?

• [SPLIT?] Veteran connections vs. State and local benefits & Veterans service organizations #15700
  • Needs conversation with Vet Centers / RCS
• [ADD or CHANGE?] VBA services with similar names to existing services #15751
  • Blocked by technical enhancement to Service Taxonomy
• [ADD] VBA services (batch 2) to Service Taxonomy #16269
  • Catchall bucket for any terms that require more conversation

[xiongjaneg]

@davidmpickett In the meeting, you mentioned we might need a spike ticket for discovery post-MVP about care vs. service "at such-and-such Regional Office." Would you stub that please? We can discuss at our 1:1 if needed too. Thank you!

[davidmpickett]

@xiongjaneg Already stubbed - #15690

[davidmpickett]

I am currently blocked on further progress on this ticket by two items

1. Waiting for feedback from Lighthouse on this question
2. Waiting for an admin to implement these changes in Drupal

I defer to @swirtSJW and @omahane on whether 1 is a hard blocker to 2, or whether 2 could move forward while we wait for a response from Lighthouse (if it doesn't come during sync today)

[swirtSJW]

Thread involving LH on the question of benefit or health services

[jilladams]

From Adam:

Each list of services from the Swagger comes from a different enum in the codebase. I believe when we get a service payload, we do a lookup of the service id to see which enum it is valid in then add the service to the appropriate service array. So it should just know when it gets an ApplyingForBenefits id that it belongs in the benefits list.

[jilladams]

@swirtSJW could you comment here today to clarify if an admin could go ahead and make the changes Dave listed, based on Adam's response? And Dave / Swirt, if you need help from an Admin, I'm available.

[swirtSJW]

I think @omahane has said he would grab this.

[swirtSJW]

I just added these. However I got to wondering about the casing on the api ids. Have these been approved by LH?

[davidmpickett]

I just added these. However I got to wondering about the casing on the api ids. Have these been approved by LH?

The casing came from their documentation, but maybe there's a follow up ticket for you to confirm everything is working for them before we publish a VBA facility? Or is that part of #15366?

[davidmpickett]

@jilladams @xiongjaneg - this is going to continue into sprint 99 due to blockers and my thin capacity in 98

[jilladams]

@xiongjaneg need a follow up ticket here.

[xiongjaneg]

3 pts completedin 98, 2 pts in 99

[davidmpickett]

• All 9 terms in Drupal with subfields filled out
• For the sake of preserving the edit history, I have saved revisions with the initial copy-edited CAIA and then made subsequent revisions when I changed something based on VBA feedback. Example
• Not regional = I left the Regional service header & description fields empty as this is not a service that has regional centers AFAIK

Label	Notes
Benefit letters and decision letters	Not regional
Burials and memorials	Not regional
Disability compensation	Not regional
Education benefits for family members
Education benefits for Veterans
Home loans
Life Insurance	Not regional
Military records	Not regional
Veterans Pension

Field	Notes for content reviewers
Show for VBA Facilities	This is where the VBA fields begin
Type of care	Previously reviewed. Looking for final approval on wording (CAIA) and categorization (VBA)
VBA description	Previously reviewed. These have all been copy-edited by CAIA & updated with feedback from VBA. Looking for final approval.
Regional service header	Needs review from CAIA (wording) & VBA (correct task for region?)
Regional service description	Needs review from CAIA (wording) & VBA (correct task for region?)
Facility service header	Needs review from CAIA (wording) & VBA (correct local task?)
Facility service description	Needs review from CAIA (wording) & VBA (correct local task?)
Online self-service	Needs review from CAIA & VBA (wording & link)

[davidmpickett]

Made good progress, but didn't quite get this across the line today

[mmiddaugh]

@davidmpickett thank you for the helpful visual - it will support understanding with a variety of audiences

For efficiency, I suggest we seek VBA input before requesting CAIA input - hopefully that will avoid additional back and forth - is this set ready for VBA input?

Question: Are these accurate expectations for VBA service fields?

• A given service has one facility header and description
• A given service may have one regional service header and description
• A given service has one online self-service link (but no more)

[davidmpickett]

@davidmpickett thank you for the helpful visual - it will support understanding with a variety of audiences

For efficiency, I suggest we seek VBA input before requesting CAIA input - hopefully that will avoid additional back and forth - is this set ready for VBA input?

Question: Are these accurate expectations for VBA service fields?

• A given service has one facility header and description
• A given service may have one regional service header and description
• A given service has one online self-service link (but no more)

• Yes, that is how these fields are currently configured AND
• None of the fields are required, so technically any of these fields could be empty.
  • For example, there may be cases where a Facility Header & VBA Description are sufficiently explanatory and a Facility Description is redundant / not needed.
  • (See "Military records" and "Benefit letters and decision letters" for two cases where we could make that argument.)
• If there is a strong case for supporting multiple self-service links, we could consider increasing the cardinality of this field in the future. I think for MVP we should focus on the single best link, rather than opening the door to lots of links.
  @mmiddaugh

[davidmpickett]

For efficiency, I suggest we seek VBA input before requesting CAIA input - hopefully that will avoid additional back and forth - is this set ready for VBA input?

@mmiddaugh @xiongjaneg I think we should resolve this defect before sending the links for VBA. If y'all approve that as a sprint injection I can have a PR ready to merge today.

[davidmpickett]

@mmiddaugh @aklausmeier Now that bug fix has merged, these are ready to send to VBA for review / approval. Let me know if you need me to help in drafting any communication around that.

I have listed out the Follow up approval and launch steps after the ACs. It is up to y'all and @xiongjaneg @jilladams whether you want to use this ticket to track that, or separate that out into a VBA Launch checklist or something else.

[xiongjaneg]

@jilladams Let's talk at our 1:1 when we talked about talking about launch. Thank you!

[jilladams]

Ported those notes to the new ticket: #16445

[xiongjaneg]

@davidmpickett verified and closed defect ticket #16378
Moved pre-launch list to #16445

Is there anything else in this ticket awaiting PO/Prod review?

[mmiddaugh]

Ready to close from my perspective, thank you!

[davidmpickett]

@mmiddaugh of the 9 terms that you took to VBA for review, the only one I've seen feedback on is Disability Compensation (which I implemented today)

Does that mean the other 8 are all good from VBA's perspective and ready to send to CAIA for final approval? Or are you still waiting on feedback?

cc @aklausmeier