Having information on our Veterans and Veteran services is not an issue. The VA (VETERANS AFFAIRS) currently has petabytes of data on Veterans, the services they receive and the level of benefit to which those services align. The challenge we are aiming to solve through Confluent is the ability to publish eventing data in a manner consumable by various products - be they in–house applications or VA mobile apps - to rapidly notify a Veteran or service provider about key information concerning a claim or services received. Such information could include a change in status of a claim, requests for additional documentation to support a claim or appeal or what information should be shared when calling into the call center or what level of benefits are due when checking in at a hospital. This technology will enable the VA to provide accurate, real-time information on a claim, appeal or rating for our Veterans.

1. Improving Veteran Benefit Services through Efficient
Data Access across the Enterprise

2. Examples of Services Provided Under BAM
(Benefits, Appeals and Memorials Portfolio)
Example 3 – Rating
A Rating is based on the severity of your service-
connected condition. The disability rating is to
determine how much disability compensation
you’ll receive each month, as well as your eligibility
for other VA benefits. Multiple Ratings are possible.
Example 1 – Claim
If the Veteran believes that they have a
current illness or injury that effects they
physically or mentally and meet certain
conditions, they can submit a claim.
Example 2 – Exam
After a Veteran files a disability benefits claim, the VA
might ask for the Veteran to have a claim exam to
help rate the disability. Exams are asked for if there is
not enough medical evidence in the Veteran’s file.
Example 4 – Burial
Burial benefits inclue the gravesite, perpetual care,
headstone, burial flag and a Presidential memorial
certificate. These benefits can be extended to spouses
and dependents. Associated benefits might be a burial
allowance, survivor benefits or gravestone medialians.

3. Intake
Development
Rating
Award
Authorization
Possible ways to file a claim:
• In Person (VSO)
• Internet
• Postal Mail into the VA
Claim Example:

4. "To care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan.”
- Abraham Lincoln

5. To best support the mission of the VA and our Veterans,
we believe that all of the services and benefits should be
delivered as fast as technically possible and enable those
who deliver the critical services to best do their job with
real-time information and automation.

6. Veteran data is complicated and hard to get to. Data is
stored in siloed systems across the VA with their own
security and service level agreements. Each service creates
and updates their own data as well as other systems as a
Veteran interacts with the VA. These updates influence
services and benefits received.

7. With API’s:

8. Database Polling is Bad

9. Improving the service response time for our Veterans is now
requiring real-time data on events and status changes while
making it easier for agile teams to develop new features and
functionality in addition to being mindful of the resources
available.

10. EVENT: A document was uploaded as part of a claim
• Three distinct applications query this data from a
database or another applications API
• Each app processes work
• Each app updates either another application via
API/command or writes to a database, which is then
polled by other applications
Current State – Request Driven

11. We can do better

12. Implementing Confluent enables our agile teams to create re-
usable solutions that unlock Veteran data; provide real-time
actionable information all while reducing complexity and
load on existing data sources.

13. CICD Secure Pipeline
A process to create, test, promote, and deploy service
containers across the three virtual private clouds (Dev, Stage,
Prod). What enters as code exits as a deployed service.
Container Orchestration
Open-Source Kubernetes runs, coordinates, and manages
the lifecycle of containerized applications across a cluster of
machines.
Cloud Provider (AWS GovCloud)
Provides the platform infrastructure.

14. API Gateway
Kong
Build Systems
Jenkins
Code Quality
SonarQube
Messaging
AWS Simple Query Service,
AWS Simple Notification
Service
Artifact Repository
Nexus
Data Streaming
Confluent Kafka
Monitoring & Logging
Fluentd, Prometheus, Grafana,
CloudTrail, Kibana, SPLUNK
Security
Twistlock/ Prisma Cloud,
SonarQube, Fortify
Service Discovery, Health
Monitoring, Key/Value Storage
Consul
Secrets Management
Vault
Caching
AWS Elasticache Redis
Source Code Repository
GitHub
Container Orchestration
Kubernetes
Distributed File Storage
Amazon EFS/EBS
Document Storage
AWS S3, Glacier
Databases
AWS RDS
Toolbox

15. Benefits Innovation Hub – Self-service portal for agile & systems teams that automates on-
boarding, self-provisioning of CSP & Platform services, ability review key documentation and
metrics
Logging - Centralized for all tenants for easier and faster troubleshooting
Monitoring - Centralized at the application, container, and infrastructure levels
Storage - Built in AWS services
Security/ATO - Shared controls for all applications and an accelerated ATO process.
Major/Minor
Shared Services

16. Our Environments

17. Requirements
• FIPS 140-2 compliance, multi-tenanted
security
• Pre-built connectors, including Oracle
• Ability to manage external consumer access
• Long term & tiered storage
• Enterprise support
Bonus
• Confluent Control Center (C3)
• Large library of Community driven,
Commercial and Premium connectors
Why Confluent

18. • ACL based Authorization
• SSL Authentication
• Kafka Streams supporting Joins and
Aggregations
• Schema Registry
• KSQL
• Confluent Control Center
• Connectors – JDBC & Oracle CDC
What did We Deploy

19. EVENT: A document was uploaded as part of a claim
• All three applications consume messages from
document upload topic
• Each application processes work
• Each application produces output of work to next
step applications to topics or database sink
connectors for storage (closed loop)
New State – Event Driven

20. Examples
• Worker Queue
• Ratings
• Awards
• Claims
• Interactive Development
TBD
TBD

21. • Outreach
• Identifying strategic data sources
• Additional Connectors
• Tiered Storage
• Expanded RBAC
Path Forward

22. "To care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan.”
- Abraham Lincoln

23. We are Hiring!