Week 6 Assignment 3

Evaluation of the Agency’s Budgeting and Cumulative Report

Lauren Riley

Professor Andre Lee

Public Administration Capstone

December 15, 2019

1. Observations about the success of the agency and areas for improvement.

The first observation is health; the department has done all it can to provide vital services to American veterans, and amongst them is their health. Apart from the physical injury, which most of the veteran’s face, other forms of injury such as traumatic brain injury are quite serious.

The second observation is the benefits programs. Currently, the agency provides benefit programs to injured veterans and their families. These benefits are meant for the upkeep of the soldiers and their dependents. Currently, the agency provides a specific amount of upkeep money to the dependents as per the grievousness of the injury to the veteran or even in the event of a loss of the veteran (Rugen et al., 2015).

The third observation is the access to the national cemeteries for the former military personnel. This has been done in a very seamless manner, and this is meant to ensure that veterans feel part of the American heritage of patriotism and that they are being cherished.

2. Recommendations for improvement

From the first observation, the agency can reach out to veterans in order to assess their well-being in totality. Well-being, in this case, can mean assessing their mental well-being and testing them whether they have a dramatic brain injury that affects their lives after resignation from active service. One of the areas that the agency can improve on includes testing the veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder. Such testing is done with the aim of ensuring that they can better cope with society even after they have resigned from active service.

The agency can improve on this by looking into the education of the dependents. Apart from the monetary benefits, it would be critical for the agency to ensure that the dependents are as successful as when their loved one was alive. However, this needs a rigorous assessment of the cost-benefit analysis of the project as a whole. Such a strategy, according to the works of VA. Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. (2019) goes a long way in ensuring that the loved ones and dependents of the veterans feel part and parcel of the American society in its entirety.

In addition to the third observation, the agency could reach out to the veterans who have resigned from active service. Some of them might not perceive the need to reach out for support, and for this reason, the agency can step in to reach out to them and find out if they need services such as financial aid and health reimbursements. What the agency can do in this case is followed up on the lives of the veterans right after they have resigned from active service. They can also serve as an inspiration to not only the veterans but society as well.

3. Challenges and experiences in the research in general.

The experience when researching the agency is an eye-opener into critical aspects of American society. It has deeply affected my career, especially when it comes to reaching out to the people whom I serve. The research is an eye-opener into different methods of inquiring into a phenomenon and analyzing the data collected. The research, however, could be more engaging had it been a quantitative one where I would have to meet the veterans themselves and incurred firsthand information from them. During the research, one of the biggest challenges faced was the time constraint where other activities such as interviews depended on the interviewees.

References

Rugen, K. W., Watts, S. A., Janson, S. L., Angelo, L. A., Nash, M., Zapatka, S. A., ... & Saxe, J. M. (2015). Veteran affairs centers of excellence in primary care education: transforming nurse practitioner education. Nursing Outlook, 62(2), 78-88.

VA. Office of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs. (2019, September 1). Veterans Affairs. Retrieved from https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=4007.