Research note
What the Data Shows VA Got Right
Measurement that only surfaces problems is advocacy, not measurement. The same FOIA releases and government data behind our critical reports also document things the Department of Veterans Affairs is doing well. This note collects five of them, each computed from the same sources, with the same caveats, and with links to the full datasets.
Independent research; not peer reviewed. Corrections and version notes are published under our Corrections Policy.
1.VA scaled PACT claim decisions roughly tenfold
In the law's first partial month, VA completed 10,010 PACT claims. By July 2025, it completed 109,624 in a single month, and it has granted 2,665,059 claims in whole or in part, 72.6 percent of all completions. Standing up that decision capacity in three years, while the law added millions of newly eligible veterans, is an operational achievement the criticism of individual outcomes should not erase.
Source: VBA FOIA case 26-23669-F (full grant), published in our PACT Act Claims Report with the complete dataset.
2.VA's public numbers reconcile exactly with what FOIA releases show
When we reconciled the FOIA monthly series against VA's public reporting, the cumulative grant count matched the dashboard figure of 2,433,377 exactly, and the completion count matched VA's open data portal figure of 3,624,719 exactly as well. Agencies do not always keep their public numbers consistent with their internal extracts. VA did, to the single claim. That is evidence of data discipline, and it is why our reports can use VA's own publications as validation anchors.
Source: VA PACT Act Dashboard Issue 55 and VA Open Data, cross-validated monthly in the PACT Act Claims Report.
3.DIC grants hit a record, not just denials
Our DIC report led with the doubling of denials, and that finding stands. But the same workbook shows new DIC award beneficiaries, a definition VBA confirmed in writing on August 25, 2026, rose from 45,070 in FY 2023 to 55,700 in FY 2025, a 23.6 percent increase and a record for the released series, with 42,485 more already awarded in partial FY 2026. More survivors received the benefit than in any year VA released. Both facts are true at once; honest measurement reports both.
Source: VBA FOIA case 26-23676-F (full grant), published in The Quiet Doubling with the complete dataset.
4.The automated pipeline decides burial claims in days, not months
Across 258,103 decisions in VA's automated claims pipeline over 12 months, 74.6 percent were granted, and the monthly median decision time ran 5 to 10 days. Burial claims moved fastest: 79.9 percent granted with median decisions in 3 to 5 days. The caveat we published still applies: survivors pension claims in the same pipeline were granted only 32.8 percent of the time, which is why the speed story and the outcome story must be read together.
Source: VBA FOIA case 26-25140-F claim-level extract, published in Two in Three and tracked monthly on the Pension Automation Tracker.
5.VBA answered every one of our FOIA requests faster than its own published averages
Every answered request came back in 28 working days or less, with a median of 22, against VBA's own published FY 2024 averages of 47.47 working days on the simple track and 48.82 on the complex track. Most of our requests were released in full, several with complete datasets attached. An agency that answers substantive statistical requests inside a month, without litigation, is doing transparency work that deserves to be on the record alongside the findings it enabled.
Source: our public FOIA log and VA's Annual FOIA Report data on FOIA.gov; full comparison in the log's speed benchmark.
Why this note exists. Variation, declines, and gaps are what make findings newsworthy, so critical results surface first. That is a selection effect, not the whole record. This note is our standing correction for it: every figure above is computed live from the same released records and VA publications the critical reports use, none of it adjusts for case mix or measures decision quality, and the linked reports carry the full caveats. When the data hands VA a good number, we publish it with the same rigor as a bad one.
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