After VetConnectNYC Review Finds Persistent Failures, Comptroller Levine Calls to Overhaul Key Portal Serving NYC Veterans

After VetConnectNYC Review Finds Persistent Failures, Comptroller Levine Calls to Overhaul Key Portal Serving NYC Veterans

New York, NY - A new review by the office of Comptroller Mark Levine found the Department of Veterans' Services' (DVS) VetConnectNYC, the primary online portal connecting New Yorkers who served with services, has been plagued by technological failures, procurement delays, and weak vendor oversight. The eight-year struggle to make government accessible for veterans online is a microcosm of the greater issue of outdated municipal systems, which are sometimes decades old, as the Cityseeks to modernize its functions and better serve New Yorkers.

"New York City owes our veterans more than gratitude - we owe them a Government that works," said City Comptroller Mark Levine. "The VetConnectNYC review is the latest chapter in the never-ending saga of City systems that are outdated, fail to perform, or rely too heavily on third parties with little oversight. New York City has a mandate to bring our systems into the 21st Century, and VetConnectNYC is a ripe target to do that."

The review examined DVS' efforts to make VetConnectNYC a one-stop-shop to connect New York's 122,700 veterans with services since 2018 - two years after the agency was established. Because DVS is a small agency with just 36 employees operating on a $6.1 million annual budget, the need for digital reliability has been essential for service deliverability. VetConnectNYC was launched as "the main way veterans request services" to provide that reliability, especially when more than half of former services members in the five boroughs are 65 or older. Yet technological hurdles persisted.

Eight years and more than $2 million later, VetConnectNYC has been marred by continued technological and procurement issues. After two vendors' engagements expired, DVS operated the portal meant to connect to housing, employment, financial and other services through Microsoft Forms for more than a year. Then, after contracting with vendor Combined Arms in September 2024, the contractor reactivated VetConnectNYC in July 2025 - eight months past its contractually obligated launch date. Problems arose from there, after a data migration in early 2026 led to more technological issues. That included veterans being unable to log into the portal with their correct credentials and DVS staff unable to review service requests.

The review team found the following issues:

• Critical system failures remain unresolved. Veterans and DVS staff cannot consistently login to the VetConnectNYC portal using correct credentials, service requests are routed to the wrong staff or not routed to any staff member, supervisory personnel lack access to program areas they oversee, and case statuses have sometimes changed at random, for example from "completed" to "initiated."

• The vendor, Combined Arms, failed to adequately test the system before launch, leading to service interruptions. Performance tests conducted by Combined Arms in March 2026, which assessed user satisfaction with application response time, and independent tests conducted by the review team in March, April, and May 2026, resulted in scores that indicate poor performance and the need for improvement.

• Service tickets marked as needing urgent remediation were often not remediated promptly. Only 13 of 24 service request tickets categorized as "highest priority" or "high priority" submitted by DVS to Combined Arms after the migration were resolved as of April 2026.

• Weak performance management limited accountability. The review team found DVS did not hold Combined Arms and its predecessor accountable for adequately tracking key performance indicators or other services to which they were contractually obligated.

The review team issued a series of recommendations, including:

• Ensure that VetConnectNYC meets its intended purpose of streamlining the service request and referral process.

• Enforce adherence to contract requirements and hold Combined Arms accountable for lack of required features and functionality.

• Complete annual performance evaluations for Combined Arms to document performance deficiencies and consider issuing a vendor caution in PASSPort.

• Develop requirements with Combined Arms for the collection of ratings and feedback from VetConnectNYC users and service providers on a recurring basis.

• Require Combined Arms to provide all required performance metrics including service requests and referral outcomes.

• Meaningfully engage with veterans and other stakeholders about their user experiences and satisfaction with VetConnectNYC and develop a plan for improving ease of use, functionality, service provision, and outcomes.

The Department of Veterans' Services agreed with the recommendations.

You can read the full review here: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/review-of-the-new-york-city-department-of-veterans-services-vetconnectnyc-portal

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