we need to be lifted up. not pulled down. and this is done not by anybody else but the failed leadership of our organization. it is our organization as well. >> mr. soto, you are recognized for five minutes. >> i thank the chairman, ranking member and esteemed members of the community for the opportunity to be here. my statement relates to my experience at the saint petersburg florida regional office which i will refer to at st. pete. the problems, in may opinion, results from setting goals that

are fantastic and unrealistic that the result could have been predicted. management focused on creative number crunching and not the veteran. i point out i tried bringing out problems to management to verifyious

>> once the claim is given a provisional rating it isn't counted toward the backlog. however the claim has no rating and it is still unresolved. in summary, the employees work hard to serve the veterans and

complete their work with co competence but we have found employers avoid quality holes because they feel appraisaappra. they are overturned when they do appeal the errors at least 30% of the time. we did figuring out and we believe that if employees were not afraid to appeal the errors the total number of claims with errors overturned maybe troubling. to date, to excuse the backlog and another processing problems, many employees are on performance improvement plans were we were interested in and checked. the total number of errors

overturned can be great we just have to check no body is checking. any employee that complains is met with severe consequences. once again i would like to thank the committee for providing the opportunity to share my views and i will be happy to take any answers. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. we will start a round of questions and each of us have five minutes to ask. mr. soto, i will start with you and answer in a yes or no fashion, if you could. were you rated anything less than fully successful with the regional office? >> no, sir. >> did you receive a promotion in 2013? >> yes, sir. >> and i have letters signed by

kerry whiting who you talked about and i want to ask you ask you about them. july 24, 2013 is the first where a letter contested your transfer of official time which notes having readers taken on a regular basis hampers the flow of work. did you get a copy of this? >> yes. >> the second is a letter dated february 26th where the director denied your leave to attend training saying you were needed to the all-hands initiative. did you receive this document? >> yes. >> and the third is from the 23rd of june. it reads the leave without pay is granted at the discretion of the department and i understand they are preparing for various

changes within the organization and engaged in various projects mr. soto is a full-time rating as a representative and is needed to provide his duties in that capacity. did you receive this document? >> yes, sir. >> what happened after june 24th? >> i purchased a report containing the quality review and the vsr operations. on june 26th it was distributed to management. during this time i received calls saying management is looking into your folder, specifically bonnie wax called and said don't tell anybody but look at this. on june 30th, for lackf a better

definition, and i think the legal definition, i was laid off. i received a letter that said your services are no longer required and that was the end of my employment. >> mr. ruell, do you believe the policy that philadelphia violated the policy direction given in the fast letter 13-10? >> definitely. >> and how did they violate that policy? >> in our office, we would receive e-mails as we got closer to 2015 that the e-mails would change. they were instructing us to change the dates of claims on any claim regardless on the circumstances if they were older than a certain date. >> did you believe the management violated this on purpose or was it a

misunderstanding as the va has said publically? >> i believe, and i think it can be proven, that management intentionally violated the fast letter. the management will allege they didn't understand what the first part of the fast letter said however their actions show otherwise. the other paragraph in the fast letter explain that you are supposed to control the memos by placing a flash in a program called map d. that is the way to track how many memos philadelphia was issuing for changing dates of claims. you were supposed to e-mail washington after you processed the claims and explain the circumstances for changing the dates of claims. philadelphia didn't do either of those. it is my belief you have didn't understand the top of the letter i would question why you are charged this if you don't understand the language in the fast letter. and why then did you prohibit

any type of control on those claims so that if they were to be looked into at a later date no one could find them. similar to the vha paper waiting list our memos were on all paper. so if you wanted to find out how many memos were done in philadelphia, you would have to go to the file room and find the claims and memos if they are still there. map-d isn't a program that the managers are not familiar with and e-mailing they do everything day. they e-mail us list non-stop. i think they understand the bottom portion and they failed to do anything to control it. i think it was to hide it. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. the first few questions are a quick yes or no and starting with mr. soto and going down the

panel. did you believe that production is being driven over quality? >> absolutely. >> yes. >> definitely. >> and did you believe that non rating workload is being provided enough resources to be done in a timely and accurate manner? >> no. >> definitely no. >> no. >> and do you believe that vbms is making va more efficient than when you dealt with paper? >> at the present time i would say it is debatable. >> i say it is no because all the work arounds that we have negate the progress that they are making. >> i don't currently work on vbms but anything that is

electronic at the department of veterans of affairs has many problems. if i do a claim with a paper folder i can see the paper and page through it. in the computer there is multiple entries for the same document and waste a lot of time and sometimes the program freezers and it halters us from getting our work done. i would much rather use paper. >> ms. ruell, to follow up on the chairman's question his question was do you believe the va ignored, you know, the pension and ignorance -- well let me back up. you suggest the philadelphia center pleaded ignorance with regard to the found or discovered claims. did you believe the va findings were not correct in suggesting the center misapplied or

misunderstood the policy and procedure from the oig? >> i believe that is probably not hundred percent accurate because they only found 30 memos. but if they stay a lot longer they would probably find thousands and see the instances that the claims were changed and some had no reason at all. they just changed the date of claim. that is not what the fast letter said. >> do you have proof? >> i photo copied a few of the memos but if you ask employees how many they did on a weekly bases you would definitely find out. >> in our testimony, you highlight that you believe a large number of documents were improperly shredded. can you walk us through recommendations that more needs to be done? >> do you want to describe the

shedding? >> yes. >> okay. i was working and receive an employee from the triage clerk and they have to look at a claim and figure out in a short time what type of claim it is and identify it with the veteran in the system. a lot of people mail claims in and may not put their full name, forget their social security number, their birthday -- a lot of people have the same names in the system. if you are on production and you have to open the mail and look at the things and decide what claim it is in a very quick time period there is not time to investigate or try to identify who that person really is. so what was happening, and various employees told me the clerks were trying their best to identify these things but the ones that took longer because they were lacking the identifying information were put

aside in a separate pile that was stored in boxes eventually. i went down to the file room that night after i got this e-mail and i wanted to see for myself what was going on. i saw the boxes that were labelled 2010, 2011 and 2012 claims to be shredded. i opened them and saw things that were not supposed to be shredded. so i reported it to washington. i took pictures. apparently they stopped the shredding of those. there was a total of 96 boxes. their answer was it is a military and return maim mail and the process is after you hold it for a year you can shred

it. but the law is if you try to identify it first. because of the production requirements the clerks had a choice to pitch it to another box and hopefully get to it later or lose their job and do it the right way. so most people had good intention and put these aside. then they had gift cards they were gave -- giving -- away to those who could process the most mail. i saw the boxes with my own eyes and what was in the boxes and a lot of that stuff shouldn't be shr shr shredded. when i did research about the shedding truck i was informed that for the mail to get shreded

it gets shreded on the truck and i would have been shreded with it. so i cannot say i saw it being shredded because that would be impossible. >> mr. lamborn you are recognized. >> thank you for your leadership on this vital issues. last week we had another hearing involving whistle blowers. it is so important we have employees who for forward and disclose what they have seen with their own eyes. it can be critical to exposing things that need to come to the light of day. thank you for your work and your service and your putting it on the line to do that. and i want to ask you and i think i know the answer to this but let's do it for the record. have you experienced or do you know others who experience retaliation in response to

bringing things forward has a whistle blower in the va? ms. ruell we will start with you. >> unfortunately, yes. >> yes. >> absolutely, yes. >> mr. soto, let's talk to you for a second, you probably saw the letter, the memo from acting secretary gibson dated june 13th saying we will not stand for retaliation against whistle blowers. in this memo there is a great line that says protuckecting employees is a moral obligation and a priority for the department. we will take action to hold those accountable for those engaged in behavior identified as whistle blower and that provides punishment. so the memo says those who

punish whistle blowers can be subject to treatment. congress protected whistle blowers 25 years ago. mr. soto, is it true you were retaliated against after the memo came out? >> i believe so, yes. >> could you explain that, please. >> i was, again, and i am still trying to piece it together. i believe i was laid off june 30th. i believe that e-mail and other memos. >> the memo i quoted from was june 13th. what was the reason given for you being laid off? >> my services were no longer required. >> had you been acting as a whistle blower prior to that time? >> yes, sir. >> can you explain what you did? >> i put out notices of wrongdoing concerning violations

of due process and veteran's claims and how they are processed. i put out to accuracy reports concerning the quality review process at st. pete. one was in december '13 involving the raters and how there is a conflict in how we define various laws and definitions of evidence that results in due process of the veterans. june 26 it was distributed and addressed the sars and the problems they were having in terms of receiving inconsistent quality review. >> i have the letter given to you when you were discharged and there doesn't seem to be a reason for you to being let go. >> correct, sir. >> how often does the va fire

people for any cause number one? and for number two without giving a cause? >> being involved in the union i cannot say -- i cannot answer that question. >> have you ever seen that happen? >> i have not heard of somebody being told their services are no longer required. >> without a reason? >> yes, sir. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> ms. brown, you are recognized. >> ms. soto, i am from florida and i am florida with the system in st. pete and you process most of the case work in florida. it has improved. we were having kickback with processing it and it wasn't going through so i think it is very important to have goals.

how long did you work at the center in st. pete? >> four years. >> you worked there for four years. have you seen improvement in the system in the four years? >> that is a difficult question to answer -- >> what is the number of cases you were processing? for a long time we were having serious problems because you all processed most of the cases in florida and we have a very high number of cases in florida. >> yes, i did studies and part of those studies that i just mentioned and essentially we have not corrected errors that have been occurring in the past three years no matter what type of training it isn't effective and we were repeating the same errors over and over. so i would say no, we have not improved to answer your

question. >> you haven't improved? >> we have not. >> june 30th was your termination date? >> yes. >> and without cause? >> i was terminated because my services were no longer required. i am not sure what that means. >> i am not either. but i am going to find out. mr. robinson, thank you for your service again. you indicated that you all could do a better job if you had better leadership at the top. are you talking about congress when you say the top? what exactly are you talking about? i have worked with every va

secretary we have had and some leave a lot to desire but i think the last va secretary did a lot based on what he had to work with with the congress. >> when i talk about the top i am talking about the our leadership.

>> it wasn't working like the military. >> it isn't the military. it is about leadership. being the retired first sergeant i think i know a little about leadership. it wasn't the directive that was the problem. it was the system that allowed him to do what he did. when i talk about leadership at the talk, when you have a problem and you allow it to go on, even to the point of discrediting the president of the united states by placing his photo in a place where no one could see, in a little folder

like this, when that happens, i know there is not an accountability issue. >> you indicated, ms. ruell, you think pay -- paperwork is the best -- we said over and over again we don't want paper, we want the computer system and want the va to get with the modern systems. even though i am not there yet we want the va to get there. of course that is going to take training, working with the employees, and what would you recommend? because, you know, you cannot process the number of cases and caseloads that need to be processed by hand. >> i totally agree. the problem is the computer system that the va uses are outdated and they don't work

correctly so i would rather use the paper folder system than the computer system. the va had computer systems like maybe if apple designed them it might work better. i can do more on my i-phone faster. >> we have given them money to upgrade. we have discussed it over and over and over again. that is not acceptable. we have to take them into the next century. we have to have the new technology. >> i totally agree with you. but if you sat down next to us you would see why there is a backlog. we have to click on a large amount of documents and sometimes hundreds you need to look at in the computer. when you click to open it and sometimes it doesn't open,

sometimes it is the wrong person's information and you have to move it, sometimes the computer systems go down and you not sure when you will get back up. so you have thousands of employees sitting there and they cannot do their job because the only way you can process the claims is with the information. >> little babies, two-year-old children can work the computer system, we have to move to the next level with the va. thank you and i yield back the time. >> thank you, mr. chairman, and thank you for the testimony and your courage. ms. soto, your testimony spoke to the manner that production and accuracy measures create hostility in the work place for empl employers, quality reviewers and management. can you relate how management's focus on the metrics is

affecting the veterans who have claims pending? >> the production is the problem. they want the numbers and for whatever reasons the numbers seem to validate what they are doing. it tends to show, i gather but don't see it, they are progressing in the backlog fight. they are starting to push and bullying employees into simply following changes and rules that sometimes may not serve the w t veteran. and one thing i saw, for example, is for whatever reason to ensure we clear the backlog we shortened the evidence collection period. our decisions are based on evidence of record. there is nothing of record. we deny the claim and it is seen

as a shorter duty to assist periods and shorter periods together and evidence from private providers. and that is how we are moving. >> next question for the panel. there has been talk about how vba manipulates the data using certain endpoints. define, whoever want to go first, define end products and how vba manipulates their use and what consequence this has on the veteran. >> an end product is a three-digit code that identifies what type of claim we have. for example, if iy