Get to zero silent failures across platforms

[humancompanion-usds]

Problem Statement

Despite our best efforts we still have silent errors across our Platforms.

What is a silent failure?

A silent failure is silent to the Veteran or other user. VA has accepted their form, evidence, or other submission on VA.gov or the mobile app, but that submission failed somewhere in the handoff to downstream systems, and we never told the user that it failed.

Action plan

• [x] 1. Develop a resource plan for a team of federal staff that could be assigned to the task of ensuring every Digital Experience transaction has a method of identifying and remediating “silent failures.” Owners: Dingee, Albers (Self, Chapman also cc’ed)

• [ ] 2. Stop accruing new silent failures in EVSS, Lighthouse Benefits Intake API, and Lighthouse Upload API immediately Owners: Dingee, Theis, Chapman

• [x] 3. Team communication for Sept 5

  • Charles did discuss this effort into the 9/5 OCTO staff meeting.
  • Charles and MattD will present in next week's OCTO staff meeting (9/12) our more detailed plans to reach zero silent errors.
  • Owner: Worthington

• [x] 4. Clean up Silent Failure guide doc

  • Write missing guidance or delegating
  • Extract action items and put them into tickets
  • Owner: Theis

[humancompanion-usds]

All but item 2 are complete now from this initial action plan. Item 2 is where the majority of the work lies.