How Colorado's Division of Veterans Affairs deepened statewide coordination with an AI-powered platform deployed in 30 days

A small team with a statewide mission

In Colorado, a small team of Veterans Service Officers (VSOs) serves the state’s 350,000+ veterans across 64 counties and 100,000 square miles. Thirteen state VSOs partner with roughly 90 county VSOs (CVSOs) who handle the frontline work — compensation filings, pension and burial benefits, eligibility questions, housing support, and more.

"When you have 90 county VSOs and 13 state VSOs, the value isn't in the 13," explained Bruce Cowan, Director of the Division of Veterans Affairs for Colorado. "The value is in the county VSOs — and how to get them to work better together to share their information." 

But leadership saw that coordination between the state and counties wasn’t working. "Those channels simply didn't exist. Everything was stovepiped," said Cowan. 

Critical communication had become white noise

But trying to run a state-county network on email had become a drag on everyone.

"Communication was hard," said Cowan. "You're sending out an email to 100 people. Some people comply, some people get back, some people don't. You're just constantly overwhelming people with information. And for some, they never read it. Others get tired of getting it. Pretty soon we just become white noise to them — and it's delete, delete, delete."

Out in the field, the costs compounded: regional VSOs answered the same question 20 times, VA updates got scrambled after passing through five layers of "supervisor telephone," and SharePoint files locked behind agency permissions meant outdated versions kept circulating in the field.

"It was a timesuck," Cowan said. "We had to find a better way to communicate."

A digital front door — launched statewide in 30 days

CDVA learned about Civic Roundtable’s platform through the National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs (NASDVA). Cowan and others saw an opportunity to replace the patchwork of email and SharePoint with one secure environment for the entire state-county network. 

To drive adoption, Cowan's team made the pitch about removing friction. "It wasn’t ‘here's a new tool,’ but rather ‘you won't have to deal with the old way anymore.’"

It worked. After a beta cohort launched, the platform scaled to nearly 100 active users — covering more than 90% of the state's CVSOs — in 30 days. "What surprised me," said Cowan, "is the engagement that we've had from county VSOs, and how many people are posting questions and comments."

The CDVA’s Veterans Services Supervisor, Eric Winterrowd, credits the rapid adoption to Roundtable’s design: "The platform's very simple. You don't have to be a tech wizard."

Now, CDVA is using Roundtable as the "digital front door" for statewide veterans services coordination. It’s the first place CVSOs go for policy and procedure manuals, forms, eligibility criteria, training materials, and updates from the state team. 

Instant answers and durable knowledge with secure AI

Within weeks, CVSOs were posting questions multiple times a day — replacing email chains and 55-page manual searches with instant, AI-powered answers grounded exclusively in CDVA-approved resources. "A veteran is deceased — how do I arrange burial benefits?" "Is a merchant marine who served from 1978 to 1981 eligible for VA benefits?" The answers come back in seconds.

"The correct answer’s on Roundtable. This is the one-stop shop," said Winterrowd. "All of us are looking at the same document at the same time, and there's no variation among the group." Instead of CDVA staff manually updating file versions on SharePoint, Roundtable’s AI organizers automatically tag, summarize, and transcribe content — making every resource easier to find, understand, and use. 

"I'm excited about what AI is providing us," said Cowan. Roundtable’s integrated AI flips the old equation of "answer the same question 20 times" on its head. Now every answer becomes institutional knowledge, instantly captured and surfaced the next time someone asks. 

With Roundtable’s built-in security and privacy, state and county staff grew accustomed to seeking advice from both peers and AI Answers. "It's a closed environment," Cowan explained, "so it's a fail-safe kind of place."

Outreach is improving, too. Roundtable's ecosystem CRM gives state staff one shared source of truth for contacts — letting Amy Demenge, Colorado Women Veterans State Coordinator, streamline communications to over 900 women veterans from a single list that updates everywhere at once.

Technology that keeps up with public servants

On a recent "Look, Listen, and Learn" tour, a CVSO told his supervisor, unprompted, "Hey, one of the best things you've ever done is this Civic Roundtable thing." For Winterrowd, this was "instant gratification that we're providing them a tool that's actually working for them." 

Next, Cowan wants to bring the CDVA’s $2.4 million grants program into Roundtable so any VSO can connect a struggling veteran to the right resource on the spot. 

For a small team supporting 350,000+ veterans, the margin for wasted effort is zero. And Roundtable helped close that gap. More than a tool, it’s become the everyday infrastructure where work happens — helping VSOs provide America’s heroes with the services, benefits, and support they deserve.