Texas Launches Redesigned Veterans Portal

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

The Texas Veterans Commission and Texas.gov are pleased to announce the launch of the redesigned Texas Veterans Portal, an important website that connects veterans and their families to the benefits and assistance they have earned as a result of their military service.

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"As the home to nearly two million veterans, Texas must be at the forefront of ensuring our military members receive the care and benefits they have earned in service to our great nation," said Governor Greg Abbott. "The Texas Veterans Portal will help veterans more easily connect with the services they need. I am proud of the Lone Star State's commitment to our servicemen and women and look forward to continuing our efforts to improve the quality of life for all Texas veterans and their families."

Texas veterans played an important role in the redesign effort. In collaboration with the University of North Texas Design Research Center, veterans tested the site to review the usability of the previous portal as well as the redesigned version. This exercise was invaluable to the redesign effort and provided important insights into how veterans wanted to interact with the portal.

Based on feedback from veterans and participating agencies of the Veterans Portal Advisory Committee (VPAC), new features of the Texas Veterans Portal include:

• Responsive design to better accommodate the more than 35 percent of users who access the site via a mobile device;
• Improved layout and organization of information to clearly highlight the most important topics that veterans, their families, and survivors need such as education, health and wellness, employment, disabilities and claims, and more;
• Plain language content that welcomes veterans with a simple, friendly tone and clearly informs them about different areas of the site; and
• The addition of a search engine to help visitors quickly locate exactly what they need.

"We are very proud of the new Texas Veterans Portal. For more than ten months, we have worked together to create a site that we believe will honor and serve our valued Texas armed service members, their families, and their survivors," said Thomas Palladino, Executive Director of the Texas Veterans Commission.

The Texas Veterans Portal is a collaborative effort of several state agencies that provide services to veterans, including the Texas Veterans Commission, Texas Workforce Commission, Texas Veterans Land Board, Texas Department of Information Resources, 2-1-1 (Texas Health and Human Services Commission) and TexVET (Texas A&M Health Science Center). The portal is provided by Texas.gov, the official website of the state of Texas.

About Texas.gov

Texas.gov is the official website of the state of Texas (www.texas.gov), and is a collaborative public-private partnership managed by the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR). Texas.gov helps state and local government entities web-enable their services, and operates without tax funds through a partnership between the state of Texas and Texas NICUSA, LLC (Texas NIC). Texas NIC builds, operates, maintains, and markets Texas.gov, and is part of digital government firm NIC's family of companies. Since its launch in 2000, Texas.gov has securely processed more than 288 million financial transactions and has collected more than $33 billion on behalf of participating entities.

About Texas Veterans Commission

Since 1927, the mission of the Texas Veterans Commission has been to advocate for and provide superior service that will significantly improve the quality of life for all Texas veterans, their families and survivors. More than 200 skilled counselors in 75 cities provide one-on-one guidance to veterans and their families to ensure they receive all of the benefits to which they are entitled. More information about TVC is available at http://www.tvc.texas.gov.

About NIC

Founded in 1992, NIC EGOV is the nation's leading provider of innovative digital government solutions and secure payment processing, which help make government more accessible to everyone through technology. The family of NIC companies provides digital government solutions for more than 4,500 federal, state, and local agencies in the United States. Forbes has named NIC as one of the "100 Best Small Companies in America" six times, and the company has been included four times on the Barron's 400 Index. Additional information is available at http://www.egov.com.

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