R499--RFI School Enrollment Reporting

RFI Digital GI Bill and Education Service Automation & Modernization 2 EDUCATION SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS (VA) Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) Digital GI Bill (DGIB) and Education Service School Reporting to VBA Date: August 11, 2026 Request for Information Request for Information GI Bill and Education Service School Data Exchange with VBA Introduction: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is seeking industry input on solutions to enable secure, standardized data exchange with educational institutions in order to (1) measure the full range of outcomes GI Bill beneficiaries achieve including graduation, persistence, and post-completion employment and earnings and (2) strengthen VBA's ability to proactively identify compliance risks, including violations such as the 85/15 Rule and other indicators of fraud, waste, and abuse. Any proposed solution must minimize reporting burden on schools and training providers and be capable of scaling to accommodate new data requirements as legislative and program needs evolve. This is a Request for Information (RFI) issued for conducting market research and for eliciting industry input as to the Government s requirement to gather/obtain and communicate with educational institutions about students enrolled in the VBA s educational programs. Accordingly, this RFI constitutes neither a Request for Proposal/Quote (RFP/RFQ) nor a guarantee that one will ever be issued by the Government; furthermore, it does not commit the Government to contract for any services described herein. Do not submit a Quote/Proposal. The VA is not, at this time, seeking proposals or quotes, and therefore will not accept, review, or evaluate unsolicited proposals or quotes received in response hereto. This notice is not to be construed as a commitment on the part of the Government to award a contract/order, nor does the Government intend to pay for any information submitted because of this request. The Government does not reimburse respondents for any costs associated with the submission of the information being requested, or reimburse expenses incurred for responses to this RFI. Please do not include a price or proposal in your response. The information provided may be used by VA in developing its acquisition strategy and Performance Work Statement (PWS). Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP/RFQ, if issued. Any information submitted by respondents to this RFI is strictly voluntary; however, any information received shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned to the respondent. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted, or competition sensitive information contained in their response. This is a request for information and does not obligate the Government in any way, nor does it commit the Government to any specific course of action. Background: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), administers education benefits under the GI Bill® program, serving Veterans, servicemembers, and their dependents annually across thousands of educational institutions nationwide. These benefits spanning Chapters 30, 33, 35, and 1606 of Title 38, U.S. Code represent a significant investment in the academic and professional futures of those who have served our country. The current Digital GI Bill (DGIB) ecosystem houses VBA's claims processing systems and supporting data infrastructure. This includes the Data Mart, which houses all education (EDU) benefits data, and CorpDB, which houses all VBA data and enables VBA to produce additional on-demand reports as needed. Despite the scale and importance of these benefits, VBA currently has limited visibility into student outcomes beyond the point of enrollment certification. The data VBA receives from educational institutions today is largely transactional in nature focused on enrollment status, credit hours, and tuition costs and does not provide the longitudinal outcome data necessary to assess whether GI Bill beneficiaries are successfully completing their programs of study, persisting term over term, or achieving the academic and professional outcomes the program is intended to support. Public Law 114-315, Section 404, requires educational institutions that receive payments under the Post-9/11 GI Bill® to report academic progress to VA. Additionally, Executive Order 13607 (2012) requires VA to develop a comprehensive strategy for Servicemember and Veteran student outcome measures that are comparable, to the maximum extent practicable, across federal military and Veterans educational benefit programs. VA has previously explored outcome measure types such as retention rate, persistence rate, transfer-out rate, graduation rate, and certificate of completion, and welcomes industry input on additional or alternative approaches to satisfying these requirements. This data gap has meaningful consequences across two critical areas: Outcome Measurement VBA is committed to understanding whether GI Bill education benefits are producing positive, measurable outcomes for Veterans and their dependents not only during enrollment, but beyond it. Without reliable, standardized data from educational institutions and other authoritative sources on indicators such as graduation rates, academic persistence, program completion, and post-completion outcomes including employment and earnings, VBA cannot fully assess program effectiveness, identify areas for improvement, or demonstrate the full impact of GI Bill investments on Veterans' academic and professional success. Compliance Oversight VBA has a statutory responsibility to ensure that GI Bill benefits are administered in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, and that educational institutions participating in the program meet required standards including compliance with the 85/15 Rule and other statutory and regulatory requirements. Enhanced data exchange with educational institutions would allow VBA to proactively identify discrepancies between school-reported data and VA records, detect potential fraud, waste, and abuse earlier, and support audit and oversight functions. Beyond protecting Veterans and their dependents from bad actors within the program, this enhanced visibility would also allow VBA to recognize and champion educational institutions that consistently demonstrate strong outcomes and program compliance. To address these gaps, VBA is exploring industry recommendations and guidance on solutions that would enable secure, standardized, and scalable data exchange between educational institutions, other public and private entities and VBA. The envisioned solution would allow schools to provide VBA with structured outcome and enrollment data on GI Bill beneficiaries on a regular basis, reducing manual reporting burden on School Certifying Officials (SCOs) while significantly enhancing VBA's ability to measure program outcomes and fulfill its compliance mission. Chapter 33 / Long-Term Solution (LTS) Enrollment Manager Non-33 Benefits Manager Workload Manager GI Billie Chatbot Approval Manager Claim Information Service Associated shared services, Application Programming Interface (APIs), infrastructure, and supporting applications The environment currently operates within Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud and utilizes modern cloud-native development and operations practices including: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) DevSecOps pipelines Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Containerized microservices Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)-hosted workloads AWS managed services Agile product delivery methodologies Intellectual Property and Technical Asset Inventory As of August 1, 2026, the Government has the following employed assets to manage the educational benefits process: Asset Category Approximate Quantity Source Code Repositories 775 Databases 50 Elastic Container Registry (ECR) Repositories 239 EC2 Instances 75 Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) 8 S3 Buckets 40 Supporting Technical Documents 730+ Database technologies currently include Oracle, PostgreSQL (Structured Query Language), Redshift, and DynamoDB (Database). Artifact repositories currently contain Maven, Node Package Manager (NPM), RAW, and other build dependencies necessary to support application development, deployment, and sustainment. The environment also contains Jira project repositories, requirements traceability artifacts, operational documentation, architecture documentation, security artifacts, and infrastructure configuration data. Requirement: VBA seeks to maximize innovation, automation, and customer experience by enabling and supporting structured data exchange with educational institutions on students utilizing VA educational benefits. VBA envisions an enhanced customer experience, improved mission outcomes and streamlined compliance processes through a secure, scalable and 508-complaint interface. Pursuant…