VA Modernizes Cemetery Visits With Digital Maps, QR Codes

The Department of Veterans Affairs is turning its national cemetery kiosks into digital guides, giving visitors new ways to find gravesites, navigate cemetery grounds and learn more about the veterans buried there.

The National Cemetery Administration rolled out upgraded software at 100 kiosks across 83 national cemeteries, replacing an older gravesite search experience with tools designed to make finding a specific location faster and more accessible.

The interactive kiosks allow visitors to search for a veteran by first or last name, military branch or war period. The upgraded software, which began rolling out in April, also includes accessibility improvements such as higher quality map graphics, 508 compliant design and audio features for visitors with visual impairments.

The changes are part of a broader effort to make technology a more integral part of the cemetery experience, including connecting visitors from a physical gravesite to digital information about the veteran.

From Printed Maps to Smartphones

The upgraded kiosks print higher quality maps showing visitors where a gravesite is located, while QR codes give them another way to navigate the grounds using their smartphones.

Marshall Murphy, director of the Fort Snelling National Cemetery Complex, said the combination of a physical map and smartphone navigation gives visitors flexibility in how they find their way around the cemetery.

“People are very comfortable with the digital aspect of it being on their phone, and so that combination of features is very nice,” Murphy told GovCIO Media & Research.

Plus, the QR codes enable visitors to connect to the VA’s Veterans Legacy Memorial, a digital platform that provides biographical information about veterans interred at VA cemeteries.

At Fort Snelling, Murphy said, visitors sometimes use the kiosk to look up several people they know, spending an additional 10 minutes exploring information about veterans buried at the cemetery.

The technology is particularly useful at large cemeteries, where finding a specific gravesite can be difficult even after visitors know its general location.

Fort Snelling, for example, covers more than 250 acres, and the layout of sections and graves can make navigation challenging.

“Everything looks the same,” Murphy said, describing the challenge visitors can face when navigating the grounds.

Making Visits Easier for Families and Staff

The upgraded kiosks are already changing how visitors interact with cemetery staff.

At National Memorial Cemetery at Quantico, Cemetery Administrator Damion Jacobs said the previous system could be difficult to use, particularly when visitors were searching for a veteran with a common last name or were unable to find the person they were looking for.

The new system makes those searches more efficient, he said, while also allowing visitors to find information without relying as heavily on cemetery personnel.

That can be especially important outside normal operating hours and on holidays, when staff may not be available to help visitors locate a gravesite.

The result is a cemetery experience that is increasingly supported by digital tools — from the initial name search to navigation across the grounds and, eventually, potentially using a smartphone to learn more about the veteran or dependent.

For families and friends visiting a national cemetery, the goal is to make it easier to find the person they came to honor and give them more opportunities to learn about that person’s service and life.

“Hopefully, what they end up taking away is the modernization that the National Cemetery Administration is moving towards, trying to make things a lot easier for family members and friends of veterans to locate them with those that they serve with, or that they want to remember and honor,” Jacobs said.