New York City promised veterans it would develop an online, one-stop shop to connect them with housing, healthcare, education, employment and legal help. But eight years and $2 million into that effort, city Comptroller Mark Levine’s office says, veterans still can’t reliably log in.
Levine released a review Tuesday of the long-troubled VetConnectNYC, an online referral system managed by the city’s Department of Veterans’ Services. The portal, the report found, has been “marred by inconsistent and poor system delivery” since its launch in 2018. As of May 2026, it still didn’t offer the sort of streamlined access to services the city has long promised.
In less than a decade, the system has cycled through three vendors. Syracuse University built and ran the system for a couple of years, before the city turned to Unite USA. When that contract lapsed in June 2024, the city had no backup. Instead, veterans seeking help online were told to use Microsoft Forms on the agency’s website.
“It was like going into a black hole,” said Joe Bello, a Navy veteran who previously served as the City Council's citywide veterans director. “Nobody knew where they were going.”
Throughout this time, advocates raised concerns with the city and the City Council held an oversight hearing about issues with the system.
Finally, in September 2024, the Department of Veterans’ Services turned to Combined Arms, a Houston-based veterans nonprofit, to remake the system and finally deliver a reliable online referral service.
Combined Arms was expected to launch the system by November 2024. Instead the company delivered the site eight months late.
The system has faced a series of bugs since its rollout, according to the report. Veterans and agency staff found themselves locked out of the system, even when they used correct credentials. Service requests went to the wrong staff or to no one at all. Automated reminders to follow up with veterans didn’t go out.
The comptroller’s office found that many of the issues could be traced back to a data migration effort in January that Combined Arms had said wouldn’t cause any issues. Nearly half of the 24 “high-priority” work tickets the department filed with the company after the migration were still unresolved as of May 2026.
Beyond the technical issues, the report said Combined Arms had failed to do stability and endurance testing for the site before launch. And the performance tests the company completed earlier this year all indicated poor user satisfaction.
Combined Arms did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Problems with veterans’ services have been previously documented. In April 2025, the City Council released a report card for the Department of Veterans’ Services, giving the agency a grade of “C.” At the time, the Council found that nearly two-thirds of survey respondents didn’t consider VetConnectNYC useful.
Bello, who has been raising this as an issue for years, said he’s been hearing from more and more veterans who are bypassing the Department of Veterans’ Services completely and going directly to providers for the help they need.
“Within the last year or so I would say a number of us were actually saying there's either got to be a better system or a better way, or get rid of the Combined Arms platform altogether and just go back to the Microsoft Docs,” Bello said.
The comptroller’s report's recommendations urge the Department of Veterans’ Services to better manage its relationship with Combined Arms, by enforcing contract requirements and conducting performance reviews. The comptroller also suggests that the agency “meaningfully engage” with veterans about their experiences with the stem.
In a written response to the comptroller’s report, Veteran Services Commissioner Yesenia Mata, agreed with the recommendations and said the department would adopt each of them. At one point she described her agency’s history with the VetConnectNYC system as “sordid.” But Mata also noted that the online portal was just one of several ways for veterans to reach the agency.
Bello isn’t convinced the comptroller’s report, while welcome, will actually mean the system gets the attention it needs. He suggested the City Council would have to keep the pressure on through oversight hearings.
As for the department itself, Mata's response suggests the city may be rethinking whether it will ever be able to deliver the sort of portal promised to veterans nearly a decade ago. She wrote that “most likely a perfect 'one-stop shop' online system is not technologically possible today — however, [the Department of Veterans’ Services] remains committed to improving the system by following the report's recommendations.”
