Former Veterans Experience Chief Reflects on 3 Years at VA

Former Department of Veterans Affairs Chief Veterans Experience Officer John Boerstler left behind a legacy increasing veteran trust in the agency, creating anti-fraud task forces and helping veterans understand and access their benefits in the wake of the PACT Act.

Boerstler stepped down from his role last month he held for three years and spoke with GovCIO Media & Research on VA’s accomplishments during his tenure as well as how his work contributed to the larger digital transformation of the agency.

“I think what I’m most proud of is … developing more communication channels with our veterans directly, especially those communication channels that got disrupted by COVID,” said Boerstler. “That was important for me especially when we have PACT Act and this massive expansion of care and benefits, which made millions of veterans eligible for benefits and care from VA.”

A Texas native and former Marine, Boerstler oversaw aspects to the overall veteran experience including reducing wait times at hospital visits and making its platforms easier to use. Boerstler’s work largely contributed to veterans’ trust rating in the VA rising from 55% in 2016 to an 80.4% score in 2024.

As the PACT Act dramatically increased the number of veterans applying for and receiving benefits from the VA, Boerstler’s office was responsible for making sure those veterans could better transition to civilian life, protect them from fraud and provide them information on how to access the benefits they earned.

One of Boerstler’s first priorities was improving VA engagement with veterans in the early stages of a veteran’s journey map, namely leaving the military and becoming a veteran, and then finding out how to enroll in VA benefits.

“We’ve done really well for the middle onward, making sure that we’re taking care of the existing customers and patients who are already enrolled in VA health care and improving their experience once they get there,” Boerstler said. “But what about those first four moments that matter on the journey map whether they’re veterans still in the military, they’re transitioning out of the military, they’re starting up and they’re figuring out their benefits?”

VEO had to “redesign [its] megaphone” and meet more veterans where they are to help them understand their eligibility for benefits, Boerstler said.

He tried new outreach methods like qualitative surveys following visits. He also engaged veterans on gaming forums and conferences by placing peer support coordinators and mental health experts in those communities to drive veterans to understand their benefits and potentially address crises.

“It’s thinking how do we make that experience more immersive instead of ‘death by PowerPoint’ in that eight-hour course?” Boerstler said. “Veteran folks in the military now, which are mostly Gen Z and millennials … want things prioritized based on what they think is most important to them in their transition, and they want that information in a digital format much further upstream of their transition date, their [expiration terms of service] or [end of active service] date.”

Boerstler emphasized that although the office’s focus is on the veterans experience, the agency also had to focus on its employees to ensure they had more training and resources to enable them to reach out to veterans directly.

During Boerstler’s time at the office, he worked frequently with VA leadership and the CTO office to make the transition to civilian life and VA health care less of a “confrontational” experience and deliver more clarity to veterans on how to receive care.

Boerstler, as a veteran himself, drew on his own experiences receiving VA care in the past to better shape the veteran experience. He emphasized his own journey and said he looked for ways to readjust the onboarding for new veterans to reduce their administrative burden and make their transition seamless.

“It’s really overwhelming for someone who doesn’t really know how to navigate those insurance systems if you use private health care like I did for my second knee surgery or trying to find your military records. We wanted to make sure that that was pretty loud and clear on easier ways to do that, especially in the digital experience,” Boerstler said.

With the launch of the PACT Act in 2022, the VA began taking on more veterans and doling out more benefits than ever before, which required more insights into how the new veterans were responding to the agency.

The office’s surveys offered qualitative feedback through free text comments. If a veteran left a low rating following an experience like a check up, patient advocates and veteran experience officers would reach out to that veteran to understand and address their pain points.

On top of these surveys, the office also stood up the Veterans Scam and Fraud Evasion (VSAFE) Task Force to identify and coordinate fraud and scams against veterans.

The program became so successful that the White House expanded the task force beyond VA and created a government website to help report malicious activity against veterans within a multitude of agencies.

In addition to working across the VA and government, Boerstler helped develop the Vet Resources Community Network, which engaged partners like food banks, veteran clubs and other community organizations to increase outreach to unaffiliated veterans.

Boerstler added it would “mean a whole lot to the revolution that we started” if the VEO became codified into law so that it could continue its work without the fear of being shuttered.

“I think that we’ll get from 80% enterprise trust to 90% if we really focus on delivering better experiences on the benefits side, but also focusing on better arming our employees, so improving that employee experience, so that you can’t have one without the other,” he added. “You can’t have a world-class customer experience without a world-class employee experience.”