Easing the sign-in experience for veterans

Partner

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) - Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)

Challenge

The VA planned to update its sign-in account options across VA.gov to help simplify and secure the sign-in process. They needed to carry out a comprehensive content strategy to move from 4 sign-in account options to 2, and to minimize disruption for millions of veterans.

Impact

We created clear guidelines, consistent language, and user-friendly instructions for both veterans and product teams creating content across VA.gov. Our content strategy—informed by in-person research efforts—helped veterans transition to the 2 secure sign-in account options before any options were taken away.

By early 2025, sign-ins with the legacy accounts dropped dramatically, and sign-ins with ID.me and Login.gov accounts increased substantially. Our efforts allowed millions of veterans to navigate VA.gov and access their benefits online. And it helped prevent scammers from stealing someone else’s benefits.

Millions of veterans rely on the Department of Veterans Affairs to deliver critical information and services—and many seek this information online. In 2015, there were 10 million monthly users of VA websites and mobile apps. By 2023, that number nearly doubled.

Between 2022 and 2025, Bloom worked with VA’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)—and more than 80 product teams—to help deliver clear and centralized content on VA.gov.

In 2023, veterans and military retirees reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) $350 million in losses to fraud. And at the same time, veterans and their family members also had a confusing and frustrating experience signing in to VA.gov to access their services.

In 2024, VA announced a plan to help solve both of these problems by creating a simpler, more modern sign-in experience—with 2 secure sign-in account options (Login.gov and ID.me). Before these changes could take place, VA needed clear content to help make the transition easier on veterans and their families.

After working closely with our sign-in partners, we shared information with product teams within VA: 

• We provided patterns for product teams. Veterans and their family members encounter sign-in alerts before they enter any kind of authenticated content—such as a form. Over time, the language in these alerts had become outdated and inconsistent. Replacing them was complicated. The language varied depending on the level of access and how the authenticated tool worked.\ \ We created a set of reusable sign-in patterns and sign-in alert components for product teams to choose from. And we created guidance in VA’s design system to help teams choose the correct pattern. 
• We published clear and findable editorial decisions. We reviewed research alongside our OCTO partners and documented decisions in our shared sign-in content brief. We then published many of those decisions in the VA style guide. The sign-in section of the style guide offers general guidance to any teams creating content related to signing in.

We followed content strategy best practices to create clear and accurate information for veterans and their families: 

• We maintained a central landing page to house critical information. We worked with our OCTO leads and communications team to edit and maintain a core landing page that explains the timeline and details for all the 2025 sign-in changes. We also helped to publish and maintain more evergreen multilingual resource pages with answers to common questions, organized by topic: Creating an account, Signing in, and Verifying your identity
• We used reusable content blocks to help disseminate that same information on different pages. Reusable content blocks in our content management system, Drupal, allowed us to use the same information in multiple places. This helped in 2 main ways: It made it easier for us to make sure veterans could find the information, and it made it easier for us to maintain the content. We could focus our efforts on updates to one centralized place rather than duplicating content. 
• We created a content audit and plan for pages that needed to change. As VA gradually implemented sign-in changes, we knew we needed to update pages at several points to make it clear for veterans what information was accurate at that point in time. We used our auditing tool in VA’s content management system to search for content with sign-in language. We then used a template to track which pages (or reusable content blocks) needed to change, when changes were ready to copy edit, and what date those pages were ready to publish.

Our strategy evolved as the environment and the needs of the community we served changed over time. We took these actions to make sure we were providing timely and helpful content: 

• We made it easier for veterans to verify their identity by explaining the process. To access certain services, veterans need to “verify” or provide certain personal information and identification. We knew that this part of the sign-in process caused specific challenges. We published step-by-step pages to guide people through the process of verifying their identity for a Login.gov account and ID.me account. We used our partners’ in-person research findings to inform the content based on pain points they observed. 
• We retired old and potentially misleading pages. As information became outdated, we retired pages that were no longer relevant and added redirects to point veterans to the most accurate and updated information. We also added and updated crosslinks on various pages to make sure that veterans could navigate to related information on VA.gov. 
• We updated content based on how people were searching. We worked with our information architecture experts to understand keyword trends. We used these keywords to inform headers, introductions, and meta descriptions, and to establish “best bets” that put the most relevant content at the top of search results on VA.gov. 
• We provided ongoing support to product teams throughout the transition. No matter how much centralized guidance we created, we knew that product teams would inevitably need to tailor and adjust the sign-in components, patterns, and related content to work for their products. In the months leading up to the sign-in changes, we held weekly sign-in content office hours and prioritized content support requests related to sign-in changes.

In July of 2024, we worked with our OCTO leads, the VA communications team, and the identity team to publicly announce the upcoming sign-in changes. A big part of that launch was clear content we had updated across the site. We adjusted about 15 pages to prepare for the sign-in changes. We also worked with OCTO to make changes to the main sign-in page on VA.gov.

We updated language in the reusable sign-in alerts, so that tools across VA.gov had updated and accurate information about signing in. We also updated guidance in the VA.gov design system that will continue to guide product teams whenever they create a tool that someone has to sign in to use. 

Our efforts helped veterans transition to the 2 secure sign-in account options before 2 other account options were taken away. By early 2025, sign-ins with the legacy accounts dropped dramatically, and sign-ins with ID.me and Login.gov accounts increased substantially. Clear and consistent messaging—informed by in-person research efforts—helped veterans transition their sign-in accounts proactively. These efforts helped minimize disruptions and maintain trust in VA. In 2024, veteran trust in VA reached an all-time high of 80.4%.  

In September of 2025, VA will complete their transition to 2 secure sign-in account options (Login.gov and ID.me).

Some examples of the work

• Help users to sign in
• Sign-in content brief
• Prepare for VA’s secure sign-in changes