Benefits Intake Optimization
Helping surviving families access the benefits their Veteran earned.
- ~2 months
- To deliver two production-ready forms. Conventionally, the same work takes about six months per form.
- First of four
- Of the four participating contractors, Agile Six was the first to deliver production-ready forms.
- 2 wks → 30 min
- Time savings from an Agile Six-developed custom AI scaffolding tool for initial form setup.
- 10–15%
- How much of the effort was AI tooling. The team did the rest.
- 0 a11y violations
- Tested with NVDA and JAWS screen readers and at 400% zoom, verified against WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508.
When a Veteran dies, the benefits they earned through their service can continue for their spouse and family. Currently, two VA forms handle those claims: the 21P-0537 confirms a surviving spouse's marital status so their Dependency and Indemnity Compensation can continue, and the 21P-601 lets a surviving family member apply for benefits the Veteran was owed but never received. Until recently, both forms were available only on paper, which meant printing the form, filling it in by hand, and mailing it back.
In 2025, the VA launched a dedicated initiative to bring eleven benefits forms online on an accelerated timeframe. The work was split between four contractors, and Agile Six was assigned the 21P-0537 and the 21P-601. Digitizing a VA form is careful work because each one moves through a series of reviews covering architecture, staging, accessibility, and analytics that protect the people who will use it. That thoroughness usually takes about six months per form.
What we delivered
Agile Six's six-person team delivered both production-ready forms in about two months, while navigating a government shutdown, code freezes, and two cyber incidents. Both forms passed architecture and staging review and went live on VA.gov once the government reopened.
To meet the deadline, the team built and used two internal AI tools to handle repetitive setup tasks. One tool read a form PDF and generated a starting code structure, matched to VA Design System components. As a result, setup that had taken about two weeks manually was roughed out in about 30 minutes. The second tool checked form code against VA's rules and drafted the staging-review documentation from the actual code changes.
Using AI tools accounted for about 10 to 15 percent of the effort, returning valuable time for the team to focus on the decisions a tool can't make: rewriting content in plain language, checking every accessibility path, and working through governance. The forms cleared accessibility scans with no violations, meeting WCAG 2.1 AA and Section 508 in full. They passed testing with keyboard navigation, NVDA and JAWS screen readers, and 400 percent zoom, and reached automated test coverage in the mid-90s.
For the surviving spouses and families who use these forms, the change is straightforward. What used to be a paper packet is now something they can complete online with ease.