VA Forms Engine Pilot

From paper to digital at scale

The VA maintains thousands of forms — applications for benefits, medical questionnaires, appeals, and more. Each form traditionally required custom development to bring online, making digitization slow and expensive.

The Forms Engine pilot set out to change that. By creating a reusable platform for building digital forms, we dramatically reduced the time and cost of digitization while ensuring consistency and accessibility across all VA digital services.

How the Forms Engine works

Rather than building each form from scratch, the Forms Engine provides:

• Reusable components: A library of accessible, tested form elements that can be configured for different use cases
• Schema-driven rendering: Forms defined in JSON that the engine automatically renders as accessible, mobile-friendly interfaces
• Built-in validation: Common validation patterns that ensure data quality without custom code
• Integration patterns: Standard approaches for connecting forms to backend systems

This foundation allows form development to focus on the unique aspects of each form rather than rebuilding common functionality every time.

Capabilities delivered

• Product development: Defined requirements and roadmap through user research and stakeholder collaboration
• Design systems: Extended the VA design system with specialized form components
• Frontend engineering: Built the rendering engine and component library in React
• DevOps: Automated testing, deployment, and monitoring pipelines
• Accessibility: Ensured all components meet Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA standards
• Documentation: Created guides enabling other teams to build forms independently