The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is significantly expanding its use of agentic AI under a new $1.6 billion, three-year agreement with Salesforce to modernize care delivery, benefits administration and workforce operations across the department.

“Every minute a VA employee spends navigating disconnected systems is a minute not spent serving a Veteran. The goal is simple: Reduce administrative burden, help employees get to the right information faster, and give them more time to deliver the care and benefits Veterans have earned,” said Kendall Collins, CEO of Missionforce & Government Cloud at Salesforce.

The agreement will support the deployment of Missionforce, Salesforce’s government-focused platform, to help VA employees access trusted AI agents, integrated data and collaboration tools designed to streamline workflows and improve service delivery for more than 17 million veterans, their families and caregivers.

As part of its broader modernization agenda, the VA plans to deploy FedRAMP High-authorized and HIPAA-ready AI agents capable of assisting with patient triage, intake, care coordination and benefits-related processes. The AI-powered tools are intended to operate within existing workflows, providing real-time information, routing cases and automating administrative tasks.

Agentic AI is expected to play a central role in supporting 24/7 virtual contact center operations and enhancing care coordination across the VA’s network of 170 medical centers and more than 1,100 outpatient clinics.

The initiative also seeks to improve appointment scheduling through the VA’s Unified Patient Scheduling program. Salesforce said its technologies will support veteran communications, provider engagement and workflow coordination, with the goal of reducing scheduling times from an average of 28 days to minutes once fully implemented.