but i will not excuse it. i have not excuse did with her and i will just tell you without question it is unacceptable. i offer on behalf of the department by sincere apologies to your staff who experienced out that day and my commitment that it will not happen again and that you will receive absolutely with open arms and fully in support anything you need on any visit you gone. >> undersecretaries hickey can you explain why ms. rubens came to our offices to try to cover up what had taken place and gave a totally implausible reason. in fact i believe the excuse he gave was she did not say these things. she said that other people were saying these things and in fact staff should ignore those you are now saying that ms. rubens did lie when she came to her

office? >> chairman miller i was not present when ms. rubens came to talk to you. i know her entire purpose for coming to talk to you into your staff was to express persons here regret for her comments made on that piece of paper. >> i apologize but i'm going to take two more minutes. on this note, it talks about arrogance. it directs a person to ignore a committee staff person and then it makes another derogatory statement about a staff person. ms. rubens came to our committee offices and when she did she did not apologize for that. what she said was she had told the acting director to ignore what other people may be saying about my staff. and you're telling me this person is still employed even though she gave a directive, do

not tell an agent of this committee what was happening at the regional office. >> chairman miller i will say again without question, without question we respect the oversight of every single one of you on this committee and in these hollywood halls and anyone of you who would like to come at any point in time and many of you have, into our regional offices, we will affect every possible way to support you, your staffs and in the oversight you need to exercise. i commit that to you and i would please ask you to please call me directly if you ever see anything different. >> so i will take that as a no, that ms. rubens did not lie even though she did. again your commitment is appreciated but it is not believed and i appreciate you being here tonight ms. halliday

you are recognized for five minutes. >> chairman miller members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss the oig oversight work within vba. i am accompanied by mr. brent arronte project of the san diego benefits san diego benefits inspections division. oig provides cyclical oversight of operations performs national audit special reviews and reviews allegations to help identify antitrust problems. we see that vba is making some incremental process through its initiatives and in response to implementing oig recommendatio recommendations. but more work needs to be done. we have concerns that vba's performance goals are not realistic and compromised by data integrity issues. vba has appeared more concerned with reaching its goals and providing a balanced approach to

its workload management. we continue to find significant claims processing error rates resulting in improper payments that in some cases create hardships for veterans are you today we issued the results of the review with vba's special two-year initiative to clear all claims. this initiative was put in place so that the veterans who waited the longest to begin collecting benefits. vba implemented eight provisional rating process where we found it was less effective than vba's existing processing quickly providing benefits to veterans. instead we determined the va policies change remove provisional rates from the pending inventory while additional work was still required. once removed, the pharaohs did not place a party on finalizing these claims which were no longer considered part of the backlog.

the policy change led to inaccurate reporting of vba's workload statistics on pending and completing claims. we also projected that vba did not accurately process about 32% of the rating decisions completed under the initiative. we estimated these inaccuracies resulted in about 40 million in improper payments. vba is set parties to meet performance goals and a clearing the backlog of compensation claims. this approach has created additional backlogs and delays another critical workload areas such as appeals and nonraiding claims including changes to veterans -- other claims processes and activities such as the management of temporary disability evaluations, military drill compensation offsets and benefit reductions made improved

financial stewardship to reduce the risks to improper payments. we have been told by vba staff that higher priorities such as processing the compensation backlogged to the president over processing this up with her work with. we needs to ensure adequate resources are in place to reduce the financial risks and the improper monthly benefit payments and most of all provide better services to veterans. in the wake of receiving a large number of allegations of patient wait time manipulation and dha, we are receiving a number of serious allegations regarding male mismanagement, manipulation of date of claims and other data integrity issues in the baltimore, philadelphia, los angeles, oakland and houston arrows and today we received an

additional allegation regarding the little rock pharaoh. vba reported to us the male mismanagement problem at the baltimore there are a that led to confirming over 9500 pieces of unprocessed mail needed immediate attention. in response bba has moved quickly to take action to process this mail. we have teams on site and our work is not complete at the philadelphia there'll. i am asking my staff to understand why these problems are occurring and how they are impacting veterans needing benefits so that appropriate corrective action can be taken. vba continues to face challenges

to improve claims processing accuracy and timeliness. further we are concerned at how quickly the number of there'll's with allegations is growing and we are working to ensure appropriate oversight. moving forward should the number of allegations continue at this pace we will need to implement additional oversight and expand our benefits inspections to review more high-risk. >> undersecretary hickey you are recognized. >> thank you for the opportunity to discuss the progress in the veterans administration. as we work hard to find the best possible service to veterans and their families and survivors. before i provide a progress

report on our transformation efforts i want to make it clear to this committee to every veteran come every family member, survivor or supporter of veterans that vba take seriously our commitment to provide timely accurate benefits and maintain the integrity of our systems and processes. i have been saddened and offended by recent events within the larger va system for some of my fellow veterans have not been served with honor respect that they deserve. i know that the number one question on your minds is whether the accuracy of data within vba systems can be trusted by members of this committee or by the american people. we have many checks and balances on her systems and data and we are working to make that even more trustworthy. every plane has 11 letters of human intelligence there which is processed where any of those 11 individuals can catch an error. we also have valuable third-party validators liker vso

partners to review every claim we work where they hold the power of attorney. we don't close the claim unless they do. our data is held at the national level not on local data systems. it's updated and protected every night and controlled access. 90% of our work is now completed an automated system vbms which provides an odd trail and as such is a valuable to turn to data manipulation and misuse. we also have a dedicated analytics team that constantly refuse our work with data looking for anomalies of the system so management can respond quickly. even with all these controls and more and i have learned this through 27 year military career retiring as a general officer that there will always be someone you thought you could trust but instead used extremely poor judgment and total lack of integrity as they figured out ways around the system. in our vba business that means they have heard veterans and that is grossly unacceptable to

acting secretary gibson to me me and two pas dedicated employees 52% of which in vbr veterans themselves. we'll may find these individuals we can rest assure i will respond quickly to the situation and begin necessary actions. one of these actions to this to immediately notify the office of inspector general to home we -- intimidation or retaliation not just against whistleblowers but against any employee he raises a hand to identify a problem, make a suggestion or report something in law or policy of core values is absolutely unacceptable to me. i invite people to talk to me me and i've heard tonight that some heard tonight that some have made to prevent them from doing that when i invite him to. that is unacceptable to me. to ensure our organization is upholding our values we are doubling down our efforts to assure the integrity of our systems and processes.

acting secretary an expert team he assembled to brainstorm possible scenarios for where an individual might find a way around the system is further controls in further controls any. additionally i've directed a 100% facility in desk audit of the male documentation in all 56 regional offices. vba will also continue to provide publicly available performance data on the monday morning workload report. now let me please update your quickly on our transformation progress. as a direct result of the transformation efforts yes we have reduced the backlog of veterans claims by more than 56% from its peak of 611,000 to 271,000 today. last year our employees completed an all-time record-breaking 1.17 million claims. this year we are tracked to break that record again by completing 1.3 million claims. we will disperse $67 billion into veterans hans, that's 18 billion more than when i arrived in death by lebanon and

as of last thursday we have completed a million claims this year. more importantly its not come at the expense of quality. we have increased their claim based accuracy from 83% when i arrived to 90.3% today. no matter which way you look at it how it is viewed how you cut it in three, 12 month claim issue all of them are 90% say because employees are working hard at that but i get it. i know you still have questions. as a result i have recently attracted to vba to a fly for the 9001 certification. the ultimate global benchmark for quality management. as reprioritized disability rating claims we have not lost focus on our other areas. we have completed 2.5 million nonfading products the highest we have done in 15 years. we have also need to do a better job. we need to be more timely. that is why we initiated a seven

different efforts to focus on i'm happy to talk about today. we have not lost focus on appeals. the appeals rate is steady. it has stayed steady for 20 years at 11 to 12% however is a complete record-breaking numbers of claims at a 10 to 12% rate or 11 to 12% rate comics these map politics we are going to get more appeals because the rate has not changed but the volume house. it's unacceptable and i asked this committee for its continued support especially in the area for legislative solutions. while we have made good progress the employees have good progress, we recognize still more work needs to be done. i appreciate the support of this committee and i'm prepared to answer your questions. >> mr. bertoni you are recognized for five minutes. >> mr. chairman ranking member and members of the committee good evening. i'm pleased to discuss the department of up veterans affairs goals.

last year they paid $51 million in 3.6 mayanne veterans. given the sums the number of veterans served as important a department have a robust credible quality assurance framework to ensure all that was received accurate and consistent claims three and prior work we documented shortcomings and quality assurance activities. more recently cancer seminars about the lack of transparency related to changes in agency's national accuracy rate for disability claims which is based on a systematic technical accuracy review or star. my remarks are based on the ongoing work before this committee and to the extent to which bp measures and reports accuracy of disability claims and the extent to which other quality assurance activities are complementary and coordinated. in summary the agency now measures and reports accuracy in two ways. by claman by issue. but its approach has limitatio

limitations. when calculating star accuracy rates for for either measure the day of statistical practices and that it doesn't wait the results to reflect examples in the same number of cases for all offices regardless of size and thus it produces imprecise estimates. absent this data this did develop accuracy rankings may be skewed nba may focus positive recognition on the wrong offices are preliminarily by taking waiting into account we calculated that pas read office ranking would improve from its current 34th place among all offices to 22nd place. conversely the los angeles office would drop from 46 to 56th place. further epa's approach to measuring akers is inefficient due to sampling methods which caused it to radio for 5000 more claims than necessary thereby diverting limited resources from other quality assurance activities such as conduct a

more targeted reviews in vero cases. beyond star vba's work includes local quality review teams that conduct reviews before claims are finalized and provide feedback to staff to avoid future errors. however in three of four offices we visited claims processes during overtime hours which can be substantial works looted from such reviews. it may undermine agencies that undermine agencies that pretend to help claims processors make consistent decisions when presenting the evidence ppa uses electronic questionnaires to test for consistency and administer to thousands of staff at once. however we found the agency has never pretested these documents to ensure the query of questions

or the validity of expected results. pretesting is a generally accepted practice and sound survey. wesley vba coordinates its efforts by disseminating national accuracy and related guidance to regional staff. they reuse the results of starter focused training and guide local quality reviews. however regional staff later be done at there are two many sources of guidance and searching for the most time consuming confusing and difficult. staff were concerned that vba's policy manual national training was not sufficiently opaque to help them avoid future errors. a conclusion of vba has made enhancements to its quality assurance programs at missed opportunities to fully demonstrate its commitment to quality amp in particular the agencies producing imprecise actress estimates used to guide programs management and improvements and also missed an opportunity to win the public's trust when introducing a measure

as a full explanation of this limitations. in other areas its failure to follow generally accepted practices has led to implementation shortcomings which otherwise are representative of sound quality assurance practices. however all these issues can be addressed with more focus and sustained management attention. going forward we'll continue to work with a b.a. in this committee to ensure veterans claims are adjudicated accurately and consistently. this concludes my statement about the apple ii and answered questions you may have. >> thank you very much mr. bertoni at first question mr. mr. murphy if you would sir. less than than you were here before this committee i asked you a question about discovery claims and i think you gave me half an answer. you are the signatory to the fast letter which directed all employees to apply the date of discovery for the date of claim for tracking and reporting purposes. however in your testimony you

said if there is a date stamp on it we receive it four years ago and it's sitting in a desk drawer somewhere that goes into the system as four years old. less than 48 hours after i asked you the question you resented the fast letter and deleted it from your repository and because of that canceled the scheme that was called discovered claims. you were sworn at the time to get the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. do you think that you told this committee the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> yes sir macri do. >> chairman miller bat as he was under my guidance in my direction to suspend the letter and that happened from me to mr. murphy and mr. murphy took the action. >> i believe it was a recommendation of the office of inspector general so you took their recommendation. it was not your idea, was that?

>> in fact chairman nye did take their recommendation from the inspector general but we were concurrently at the same time considering that the best thing to do while they investigated further. >> undersecretary hickey whited somebody sent out a memo basically that says though we may not agree with this procedure is a national guidance and we will follow it. >> chairman i don't know what memo you are referring to. if you would like me to look at it like could make comment to you. >> i think the subject line as assistant director huddles went out on july 10. and it was put out because of the hearing that we had several weeks ago. i would be glad to provide you a copy of that but i think it's very curious that folks would

say that they don't agree with the national guidance that they are going to follow it. >> chairman i will take that for the record and get you an answer. >> to all of the va witnesses i want to ask questions about the backlog numbers that you reported in your monday morning workload reports. it's important to know that in your report you don't include the end product 930 the number which in fact has grown substantially as of late and the end product of 400 which includes provisional ratings. if you were to include me and product 930 which is essentially a place to hold rushed and incomplete claims are backlog percentage would drop to 60% an and addition over 14 month period march of 2013 to may of 20:14 p.m. atari up and product 400 which again includes

provisional ratings surged from just over 29,000 to over 1007000 by 3607% increase folks playing to me what you are doing with the end products 930 and 400 simply makes them a secret category whereby you are able to hide prematurely decided claims to approve the appearance of your backlog numbers. >> secretary hickey. >> chairman miller i told you i would tell the truth when i put my hand up so i will tell you the truth. i don't know every number that is called in and product so i apologize for not being able to cite you. >> can you give me who does at the table. either one of those will know the answer. >> i will happily do that bad.

>> i have 38 seconds left. >> i will ask ms. rubens to please comment. >> mr. chairman i would point to the monday morning workload reports were in fact your numbers on the end product 400 are controlled correspondence and have been used for development and the 930 and product which are reviews including quality assurance are in fact reflected in the work that we demonstrate for completion. >> mr. chairman now that i note that i know the titles i can add to that discussion. >> no maam i don't believe that anybody at the table is telling me the truth from the va. i think you are using the numbers to high backlog claims. i think of included backlog numbers to make -- data -- mr. michaud you are recognized.

steve thank you mr. chairman. ms. halliday as you've done your investigation have continued to iterate that a singular focus on reading claims is starting to, the cost of other workload falling through the? what would you are or what would be your suggestions to address the situation? >> mr. met cod we consistently looked at the quickstart progr program, the special initiative to clear the backlog of claims. we have looked at appeals. there has been a constant reallocation of staffing away from some of these initiatives to work the pending backlog of compensation paid at some point if you want these initiatives to be successful you have to dedicate the workload to accomplish the job. >> thank you.

dependency claims have risen by 2000% in four years with the majority of those being backlog. when does the va anticipates ending the nonraiding backlog? do you have a specific date or a proposal? >> congressman michaud in 2005 was the first time under completely different administration the 125 day initiative was set. in 2009 the former secretary of va secretary shinseki said the aspirational goal of no claim all over the 125 days. prior to that i have been an average of 125 days and 90% accuracy. in all of these cases even dating back as far from history that i can take because i've only been here since 2011, the

focus has been on the raiding work and party and there's a really good reason for that. in order to access, and noted to be able to get a different benefit that the nonraiding bucket you first must have a rating so by example in order to get a dependency claim you have to have been rated at least 30% and a rating claim that you gave us. that's the reason why the backlog is focused on the raiding claims. i can tell you this. i can tell you that we have a that we ever really could plan around a special dependency claims. we have built a system called a rules-based processing system whereby when a veteran goes and files on line for their dependency claim that 50 to 60% of the time they are paid in a single day. that is what we are moving towards from a technology solution. but the ones that awaiting congressman i will tell you have also done a contract.

the contract is lifting them up on paper and putting them into the rules-based processing system. >> do you have the date? >> i do not affect a congressman. there has never been a goal set that as a specific date associated with it. >> okay. mr. bertoni did you find any instances in which va is intentionally manipulating to present better outcomes than what is really happening? >> i wouldn't say it's intentionally manipulating. i think and as i noted in my statement's in several basic areas they are not fouling general statistical practices. that looseness inter-methodology translates to numbers that aren't accurate and aren't helpful in terms of looking at trends over time a performance and accuracy rates and comparing

offices in terms of relative performance. as i said when we applied simple waiting we had several swings and offices that suddenly improved relatively speaking. that's not good metrics and an organization where the mission is as important as as important is this the dollar symbol the numbers involved you need to have precise estimates. there's more work to be done to get there. >> thank you. general hickey quickly there are some pretty serious allegations and compelling allegations made by ms. ruell with regard to the sure shredding up 96 boxes and a cap of military returned mail documents. can you provide us with any additional information about how va handled the situation when it was highlighted by ms. ruell? >> i can't congressman an impact i reacted quickly. when i first heard the conversation ms. ruell said it

came to my e-mail. i dispatched director from pension service. he took a tame affair with everyone of those boxes to make sure there was not anything that was amiss in those boxes and in fact i believe that i can attest to the fact that it's not. let me explain what's in those boxes. the pension service works a little differently than a compensation service. they are not in vbms yet though i would like to see them at vbms in the future. what they do do is they work the claim in paper first and then they scan in documents afterwards. once they have this document scanned and afterwards then there is a normal procedure for the proper disposition of that paper. we will address the same issue on the compensation side. we are working closely with dod on what do we do with paper that we don't use anymore because it's all electronically scanned in the system. we will have to address that same thing.

i understand and i'm very concerned about any ideas that we might be inappropriately shredding documents and that is why we are taking our time figuring out what we do in the compensation business around that. >> mr. lamborn you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. ms. hickey, the people working to you at the veterans administration? >> congressman there are over 20,000 people. >> okay and an average given near how many of them get fired? and please consult with mr. murphy or ms. rubens if you need to. >> i will probably ask ms. rubens to further elaborate. what i can tell you as we go through a fairly extensive process before people are fired. >> i didn't ask you your process. how many in an average year? >> i don't know if i have that information but i will ask

ms. rubens if she does. >> sir i don't have the current number that were fired in the last year. currently across the workforce today we have 66 employees who are in performance improvement plans. >> they would be the ones eligible for firing if they didn't improve their performance? >> our goal first is to help them improve their performance and look for other things that they have been successful in other positions. >> you can't tell me how many people get fired an average year? >> we could do that congressman lamborn. i apologize i don't have an immediately available. >> the procedure you have to go there is probably small number i would guess. >> i believe it is probably appropriately a small number. we can certainly remind this great committee that i have 52% of those employees who are veterans and i have 46% who are a direct family members. >> of those who were fired how many of those are many of those are for cause versus how many of those are let go without being

given a recent? >> generally we do not let people go without giving them a reason. >> you heard javier soto's comment earlier in response to our questioning that he was let go on june 30 without being given a reason from the st. petersburg regional office. regional office. area where that's? >> congressman lamborn was made aware of it in the hearing tonight. >> okay and he was not given any reason. he got the letter on june 30. on the 24th of june he had given a report and i believe this was on behalf of local afge 1594 somewhat critical of the leadership on how they process the claims. and let's see, six days later he is fired without being given a

cause. is this a normal activity or something out of the ordinary? >> congressman and this is not a normal activity. i will look into the very specifics of it. i will not discuss out of protection for mr. support any specific issues associated with this employment. >> it sounds to me like we could have the whistleblower here who is being retaliated against. that's a really serious matter to all of us on this committee because we want whistleblowers to come forward when there something going on wrong but the public needs to know about are the committee or even you need to know about. >> i absolutely with you congressman. i want to know about it. i have employees that reach out directly to me via e-mail. i was disappointed to hear that they were told they could not. that will be rectified immediately. i need to be an avenue by which employees can talk about their concerns as well and i'm open to that. i do that on a routine basis.

in fact i have a pulse jet called that i do where i will only speak to bargaining unit employees that starts by saying banishment cannot tell you not to talk to me. management can't even look at you funny that if they slip you a note or anything of this is do not tell me something i immediately wanted to send me an e-mail. >> well you are saying something to sound good but the actions unfortunately happened always match the rhetoric. ms. halliday but me ask you in my short remaining time you talk about how vba's process misrepresented the actual workload and its progress toward eliminating the backlog. could you elaborate a little bit more on that please? >> today we issued a report on the review of the special initiative to process the rating claims pending over two years. as i said in my oral statement vba used to process, a new process they put in place to

issue provisional claims. what we found was those provisional claims in spite of not having a final decision were taken out of the backlog. what happened then was vba lost control over some of those claims so that they didn't get worked in a priority basis. we felt that had vba used its interim rating process, it had all the tools it needed to keep the integrity of the data of claim and to process these claims. they had to try something. they are working hard to try and clear the backlog but we feel it misrepresented the workload. essentially you took out incomplete claims out of the backlog that needed a final rating decision or its. >> thank you its. >> thank you very much and

mr. chairman i yield back. >> ms. brown you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. before i begin my questioning i just want to say on this note that was out of the bathroom, i hope no one ever loses their job for a note in the bathroom on a pad and i don't think anyone has any business reading somebody's pad in the bathroom. that's the first thing. now, to ms. hickey i am impressed with the amount of how you have been able to expedite the veterans process not only for the veterans but for the families and can you explain the process because it seems like part of the problem is that you go to a new system. they have expedited and it seems as if there's a problem with you

trying to improve the system. >> congresswoman i know from having change management environments that everybody adjust to change differently and i'm sensitive sensitive to that but i will tell you i don't know any federal agency nor any commercial company that has fundamentally taken a paperbound process in less than 18 months up a system done a billion images nearly and now works 91% of its work in a paperless environment. 1.4 million claims our employees have been on the system. 1.4 million you know what that does for veterans? it means they get answers faster and better in the system is the justice system. their tools are helpful things in the system to help make that employee better at making that decision more consistently. that's the whole reason we put tools later. i heard the conversations from our employees. the table and i know our

employees need help with the workload that's out there, i do. that is why we are building additional functionality all the time into the system to help it be better. what i can tell you is this. you don't do 1.17 million record-breaking one year and 1.3 million breaking the previous record this year and have all measures of equality. i will concede that there may be ways to improve on that even y yet. in that amount of time to not be doing stuff that's better for veterans. >> i have an independent verifier also. >> we do. i hear you loud and clear and i know you don't trust what we are we are saying. i went for the second time to another third party to ask for independent verification of the way in which we assess our quality. it's a person that doesn't deal with federal agencies at all and has no federal look about them. they do with businesses on the outside and how they look at quality. in addition to that i have directed we are going to go

after one certification because i want every veteran in this country and all of you to believe us when we say we are making good decisions. not because of us that because we care so much about those veterans and family members and their survivors and they deserve nothing less from us. >> thank you very much. some of us, with pre-existing conditions and perhaps we all don't have the same goals. i hope that the goal is to make sure that the veterans get the services that they need and that we work together to make sure that happens and not to grandstand. i cannot sit here and say i think all of you are just trying to hide the numbers. i don't believe that. i think it could be problems with the system but we need to work together to figure out how we can improve the system. i for one was very excited when

we launched educational system and then when i turn on the television it was problems with the system but it was problems with the stakeholders. the schools had to verify that the student was in school and they were in rolled and they had to drop the class before they could get additional funding from us. so it's not just the va. it's the va and i keep saying working with stakeholders. >> congresswoman brown we now put $42 billion in advance of 1.2 million veterans and their beneficiaries in 4.7 days using exactly that model which is exactly what we are trying to repeat and doing so with some level of success on the claim site. it was what was driving more and more of our dependency claims getting done and frankly we just released last week the ability for half of our survivors during the most difficult time if i -- their lives to be automatically paid their burial claim.

they don't even have to tell us and they don't even have to claim it. at first notice we paid the claim and it goes straight to them. >> thank you so much for your service, all of you and i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you. mr. bilirakis ewart recognize. >> ms. halliday your mark in your opening statement that the vba has up reported an increase of the backlog of more than 50% since march of 2013. in your opinion do you see any issue with trusting these self-reported achievements by the department and of course the department has been plagued with inaccuracies and inconsistencies regarding reducing the backlog but i want to get your opinion on this. do you trust those numbers? >> at this point i would say no i can't trust those numbers. i think we have a lot of work ahead of us to address the

allegations we have just received. they all seem to focus on data integrity and they need to be looked at very carefully. i don't want to say i trust them. >> thank you. next question again for ms. halliday. during your numerous inspections of the regional offices you have consistently reported the same errors and accuracy and procedures. even after vba has concurred with the previous reports and recommendations. why do you think this happens over and over again? why are we seeing these errors? again it seems like these recommendations are not being followed. can you comment on that? >> yes. i think that we select medical disabilities to look at that we consider high-risk for processing errors. that is where we want to target our resources. we think that's the most important. what we find in something like

traumatic brain injury type claims the policy is very complex. it's very hard to ensure consistency in that application so we continue to see errors with that. general hickey has asked for the oig's help it matches recently. to put a team together so we can show her exactly exactly what it benefits inspectors, the teams that mr. arronte leads are coming across so that she can put the right controls in place. do you want to add anything? >> the only thing i think i could add is this year when we started our inspections and i'm speaking to reno right now because this is the only office where this occurred is we made a recommendation in the previous inspection of reno involving tbi claims to have a second-level

review look at these claims before they are finalized because they are very complex. when we went back this year we found an error rate that was not acceptable and what we found was local management discontinued the practice of a recommendation and the reason we were given his due process claims with a backlog. so with the maaco recommendation and we follow it and it's working why do you stop that? >> i want to know why. >> congressman i absolutely agree with this gentleman. i absolutely agree they should be following that process. they should not have done a second signature requirement. that is just wrong. i won't give an excuse for it. >> what are you going to do about a? >> i'm going to make sure that they are doing second signature review summary can do that. we will send out additional teams from, services to make sure. i will also double down on the

resources to make sure they are doing the second signatures. they are critical, is absolutely right. they are singularly the most complex kind of condition we can do because every experience of veteran has the tbi can be very different so therefore it's not a very clear-cut way to always determine secondary conditions associated with tbi and the like. i don't negate that was a mandate from us to do a second signature. if they are not not doing if they're not doing the right thing. >> i have no more questions. you mentioned in her testimony that employees would not receive a performance award unless they meet quality standards as well as production standards. we are all aware in previous years every employee received a performance bonus award received them. do you still stand by what you stated in your testimony and do you believe that every single

employee eligible to receive performance awards did in fact deserve them? >> congressman since the day i arrived and i had mentioned to this committee before that i came to this job with a deep background in quality management which is why i'm directing it and i know something about how it makes you better and how it validates what you are doing but here's what i say. i've said from the beginning we are production and quality-based organization. there is no war between those two words. i've made serious investments thank you to this committee for the budget to have given us in all kinds of capabilities to improve our quality. >> answer the question please. did they deserve those performance awards? >> if they successfully navigated their production quality they did but i will say in fy2012 or leader in vba got a performance bonus. >> okay thank you and mr. chairman i yield back. >> mr. turk condo for five

minutes. >> ms. halliday tenet thing about the history of the federal policy of performance bonuses and management? can you tell me about it if you do? i just want to know who's always been a part of our system and the federal government and whether something that was instituted? >> to my recollection performance benefits have always been in place to incentivize and reward good behavior and good results. i think for the past few years we really have done a better job federal government wide at focusing on results. >> mr. bertoni? as far as the use of federal performance? >> i can't speak to the history. i would say it's consistent

across the executive agencies that performance bonuses are there and they should be performance-based and they should be results based but certainly when you combine the allure of performance bonuses with metrics that drive in a certain way and drive certain behaviors that is when it gets perverse and that is where executive agencies and otherwise have to be careful about the metrics they put in place and a performance bonus associated with that. >> ms. halliday in the scenario of looking at the vba aside from the scheduling issues we have had in phoenix is there any indication to you that they performance bonus and the metrics have combined in a similar way for motivation to game the system for financial gain? >> i can't speak to that.

>> so nothing is revealed so f far? you say you are targeting in your investigation high-risk disability claims. can you say more about the high-risk disability claims you are looking at? tbi you said? >> during this round of our fy2014 benefits inspections we have selected to look at the management of temporary 100% disability valuations, tbi claims and the smc and ancillary benefits that bet -- veterans get for the more seriously disabled issues that they face. >> okay. something arose on the previous panel discussion about congressional advocacy when

congressional offices colon and it seems to divert attention of the staff and the other parts of the backlog gets maybe less attention. do you find that to be corroborated by the thing you have looked at or mr. bertoni you can comment as well. >> i can't speak to that issue. >> i'm not 100% sure exactly what you are asking that we get a lot of complaints to the oig hotline and we are looking at those complaints as to whether they are systemic problems are isolated problems with vba. is that what you are asking because i think the congressional offices get many the same calls. >> i was listening to the testimony of the previous panel in one of the complaints was that congressional offices often

get attended to and they have to neglect what they were doing on other claims. >> i could speak to that a little bit. i think it's one of many competing workloads and there are a lot of lines of work and activities that have to be done. i know that i get the calls from the public. i push it forward to the various committees so it certainly gets attention from us and i'm sure it gets attention from vba when i get those calls so i'm sure it's the workload that gets attention among competing workloads and you have to make choices. >> congressman here is what i will say. we have a prioritization for claims and we have some categories of those claims were when you call us about those they will sully get attention but if you are a medal of honor

recipient or someone who is ill or injured, someone, did i miss if you? please bear with me but there's a group of listings of people who need our participation and you often call us with often call is that people were in that bucket or if the claim right now today is nine months or older. though we have done 99.9% of all the wonder to your claims we are still working nine-month old clemson and we are going onto the next one but when you call us with a null claim which typically is when you will hear from a veteran and we understand that then we will do it because it's in the priority bucket. if you were to call me for a claim that was sent in last week but didn't have any of those other priorities on it he would probably get a letter from us that says we will work it when it gets an too the right prior to station. >> thank you. mr. chairman my time has expired.

>> thank you. mr. chairman i want to go back to where the chairman began with his legal pad here. i really find this offensive. the reason i find it so offensive is because we have heard over the last six weeks or so and our job as the chairman said his oversight. we have a constitutional obligation to do this. when we see someone wrote this in the staff space, this is their job to get this information to find this astonishing. i truly do. i don't see how anybody could explain and secondly anybody who is still working. i think mr. lamborn asked how many people have been fired. there would be one if they were under my watch who had rubbed their nose or thought of there knows i should at the veterans affairs committee news, this is our job. you are doing your job and explaining it and when then we have lost and that's one of the things general hickey that i am very concerned about is the loss

of trust we have had an rva. i think if you look at any organization in this country a year ago would have held the va up as a shining star in -- a shining city on the hill. i believe believe that we have lost that now. when veteran pilot claimed that they know if it has been moved over to a staff that's not going to look at and i appreciate you coming by. i certainly think you are making a government effort but somewhere it's failing. you heard me say and you were here before about what resources do you need and i certainly have heard the inspector general's testimony and have read it. what resources do you need if any from this committee to make sure that this backlog is done and those metrics are made? what do you need? >> congressman iysac here a few months back in a budget hearing

and i believe i said at the time i need an absolute unequivocal 1 i.t. budget, 100% not a dollar less and now in a world in which we are building a new scheduling system that's even more critical because now there's a happy competing interest there. we have got to have a full i.t. system. >> we have spent, no pun intended a widow's pension on getting all the i.t. money. it's mind-boggling to me. if i hear somebody say money and i've seen the va and dod take a thousand million dollars, that's a billion and flush it and i have no earthly idea where the money went to build a system that's integrated. i asked the secretary word of the billion-dollar scope? no answer and so i don't know that adding more money and you say in i.t. program if we give

you that money and provide that money this very generous congress does that we have provided the resources for the va. is that going to be enough for my going to be sitting here a year from now if i'm fortunate enough to get reelected and am i going to hear the same thing? >> congressman you were talking about i ehr. >> i'm just talking about i.t. money. >> let me tell you what you have given us. let me tell you what you have given us all of you have given us over the last three years in vba. for the first time in our history we have had dollars funding i.t. systems we should've had 20 years ago. 20 years ago we should've had a paperless i.t. system like the rest of the world went to and we didn't. we were still two years ago touching 5000 tons of paper. that's 10 and prior state buildings. that's that's tantamount everest. two empire state buildings with little rubber fingertips on our

fingers. you have given us the resources to scan a billion of our veterans most precious document in two and electronic system so they are not laying around in boxes. >> i understand. my time is limited and its about up. i want to go back to the inspector general and say i want to make sure we get this for the record. how does it claim that gets moved from way back here that is supposed to the current, how does that happen? how does the record go from the time it's back here long-term claim and it gets moved to a stack that is current? how does that happen? >> walk us through that fairly quickly quickly. >> there are several ways. we can talk about how they do the claim that let's talk about the provisional claim that was

just issued and it should be fresh. when they did the provisional ratings that provisional rating had an m. products of the end product to make it easy was it 110. 110 control this provisional rating. under their special initiative on the issue that provisional rating to the veteran that 110 was gone so that claim came out of the inventory. so they moved it to put it under an end product 400 to control blood and product four hundreds are not reported in the inventory that you hear from a monday morning workload reports so now that claim technically doesn't exist in the inventory. when the veteran submits new evidence to support the contentions in that claim now vba will create a new and product and process that claim in one day.

so it was an old claim pending over two years and they moved it to an end product that does not reported in the immaturity so that claim technically doesn't exist. when it comes to announce a new claim and it's claim and its one-day claim and it's one day older two days old and they work it in two or three days. colemack ..

there have been a few times when i have not carried. but in general we learn a lot of verizon. we value their imprint. we're putting you in a bind. that's what i'm going to get in independent review learn. >> anderson. to you agree with the general said? >> is giving you a big picture perspective from their view in all the initiatives they have worked. what i have given you is a very close inspection of certain initiatives that i do not feel have achieved hamas. >> you have conversations back and forth on the specific initiatives that you made public >> yes. we have monthly meetings with leaders.

i bring my teams and. we talk about the issues of our national audits, issues the weekend talk about. there are some things we may not touch on. normally we have a good discussions. recently i feel that general hickey tried to say i want the information early so that she can take corrective action. i think if you look and was done after today's. my team even though they only found 30 instances loma of manipulation of the date of the ge case claim, at that point we knew we had a problem. instead of waiting until we completed all of the work, did all the samples of all of the mail bins and everything else, i've engaged the general immediately so that corrective

action could be taken. i do think that there is responsiveness that is better today than it was a couple of years ago easily. >> thank you. and when have you, with the new acting secretary, but specifically the acting secretary, they have talked a lot about this. he believes we have to build back the truck to of the trust one veteran at the time. what directives has he given you what have you done in terms of, you know, very short term directives to your department and/or changes did you have made in the short term? we talked a lot about short-term issues and longer-term issues. i'm interested in what you have done differently in the short term. >> thank you, congressman. i will tell you three things.

the acting secretary has directed that we put our best and brightest minds together to figure out if there are any other vulnerabilities in the ways in which people can do what grounds. you will use a different language around that, but we are doing that in putting that together so that we can look at it. we've already asked a small group of people to do brainstorming to see if we have places we need better, stronger control. secondly, i have directed 100 percent facility, and we've been through in the government gsa cars for making sure we had the full 9 yards for every piece of mail, document, anything that might be out there. it has been directed and is a rapid response requirement they must do. >> my time is up. i yield back. >> you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank-you, chairman. one a couple of questions for

you just to point out to my colleagues again, when we're talking initiatives and workloads, i think the conclusion of linda halliday oral statement says a lot to that. them -- when we look at the hundred 25 no claim pending initiative, what plans are exempt from that? >> the focus is on the entire rating bundle. the rating bundle are the ones that were described in prescribed in the fiscal year 2000 well below when i was here and. was the result of measuring and reporting 350 different metrics and it was driving you nuts and driving veterans nuts as well. there was a big effort back in fyi 2000 where they bundled them

together, which is what you hear the term rating bundle and non rating bundle. they put like things together. effort even back in 2005 before this former secretary was here was put on the table and focused on rating bundle. that's what i tell you. generally these are clams and require the rating adjudicated decision. >> i get asked this all the time. how many plans they deal with. don't categorize. no category. how many claims? >> congressman, i will ask you the question. are you talking about the education claims? >> everything that you hold. i get asked that question all the time. >> i can get you that number, but when we do 5 million education plans dispersing

$42 billion that is work we are doing. when we are doing loan guarantee which we are doing record high levels and rates. >> i raise a question because we sit here and talk about how none of these metrics add up. i think the ig degrees and some of it, but we will look at the fully developed planned statistic posted on the viejo administration report website. as of 7-12-14. a fully developed claim to go under and 48 days to complete. now, we sit here and start imagining the massive workload that we have, are we ever going to get their when it is taking beyond a hundred and 25 to the spin of a fully developed plan. >> congressman under my watch a have done some deeper dive analysis.

i tell you, as a simple description how we will. we have done more than 300,000 claims in backlog in alaska who. we don't have that many left in backlog this year high. we are at 2,702,000 cahuenga. that's less than 300,000. if we did 300,000 last year, the men and women working hard, i think we can get their next year and we're not just bringing the backlog down. we're bringing the inventory down. when you think about flow mechanics, when you bring inventory down the cycle faster. i believe we will. we have the data says we can. >> we will go to kristen ruell. manipulating where it was a backlog in what was not. and this is the dilemma we erin.

>> i hear you, congressman. i heard ms. roe was well. i heard her back when she first brought up the issue. i responded quickly. i will tell you it -- i told her, but shame on us are not telling her better. we change processes because of what she originally told me in an e-mail. fundamentally we're moving pension into an advanced scanning operation. two of the pension management centers have already done that. the last one was scheduled to do it in early fall. she has made a huge impact by raising that issue of that concern. i have processes -- i have adjusted processes as a result. >> one big process, and i think we all agree. we talk about this in the committee. we talk about stakeholder input.

your stakeholders are the people on that panel before you. that really needs to be addressed. >> congressman, i will tell you what i do today. i will also tell you i have a high degree of respect for mr. ron robinson to the point where i was one of the people when i first showed up that he started e-mailing. i started asking questions about what was going on where people were not feeling care for, not feeling compassion and not being treated very well to the point i got on an airplane, flew down there, sat with him for a complete day from 7:00 a.m. until late in the afternoon and had the director at that time sitting there with him. i was going back and forth and conversation. as a result of that the director was put on a management plan the required him to take certain

action to improve what was going on. when it did not improve -- and i still heard from mr. robinson, i changed leaders. it is now led by a bronze star winner who led the team up and down the road to baghdad, and i will tell you, i have been back. the employees in the town hall stood up and said to me multiple , thank you for bringing this new leader to us. i think i have reacted write command appreciate what mr. robinson did. >> thank the chairman. he'll back. >> you're recognized for five of its. >> think you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here and coming to talk to me. and know your taking a personal interest. i very much appreciate that.

it seems like every time an example is offer for the way things and not working is the reno office. what did it could management and there. i take this opportunity to make the pitch to move the office to las vegas where most of the veterans are. at the very least we get new management you put that manager and a loss vegas office. it will be easier to recruit somebody to come and take the job. so please keep that in mind. having said that, i would just ask, the believe that the whole problem of the discovered claims is limited to a particular office in the philadelphia or wherever that might be. we have seen through numerous hearings and some times when a problem crops up in one regional

office it turns out pretty soon that it is happening other places. to you have any indication that is the case? checking into places like reno. >> we have allegations of the same conditions occurring and some of the others. the issue here is now the general hickey has brought wrote the fast letter as that information gets out the corrective action from a national perspective is in place we're still going to look at the allegations we have just received in the past month there so. really run them down to the ground.

we want to make sure that integrity is put back into the system. >> one of the problems -- guard like to say one other thing. they did not report the transactions that fell into the staff letter to headquarters. it made it even more challenging to identify how many transactions there were. my team is still up there looking. >> if you don't have whistleblowers are you still going to go places where there might be a potential? >> let me tell you the minute we knew we had an issue in philadelphia we immediately get a deep dive analysis.

we immediately sent the list to the ig the set in the data analysis we think there are some -- are what some of there doing something wrong because we don't know yet, but we found data. before did it back. * for complete run up. we provided that. i would like to ask mr. murphy is he has second to respond. >> we did an analysis against the percentage of found claims that were in the inventory verses the total inventories of the overcompensated for reno as opposed to say beach, florida. we came out, anything that came too far off the average was the top five regional offices. thus the data we forwarded. in order that we not be looked

at as going back in changing data, we pulled all of those claims and the details on those claims first. then we went out to the regional offices and so now let's go look it these claims. i can go back in and recreate what was there when the flag when out. >> can you keep us posted? >> yes. >> i just want to say one thing about why we did decline. it was a pro veteran position to take. let me explain. fifteen years ago you may have come to us and said your leg hurt and file a claim and granted you. somewhere in the riding he mentioned your ankle hurt. fifteen years ago who ever raided that plan did not notice or did not do anything about your ankle. and you come back. your knee is worse. we are starting to work your claim.

the sitting there going through the claim and suddenly see this, for 15 years ago. their are now in a position of, oh, my gosh, have to go do this. i will suddenly have a 16- year-old claim. i wanted to remove the disincentives from our system to grab the ankle and give that veteran the effective date of the way back when the first mentioned it rather than have any disincentive in the system to do it and ignoring it. that is targeted that process. >> even though the data, when the benefits were issued they go back to the original. >> all the way back to when the first mentioned that their ankle hurt. >> you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary hickey, you mentioned you did an independent review, a

study. >> i have one years ago. i am repeating in right now. >> who is that? >> i cannot tell you. -- we require them because they had experience in doing this. >> you don't know the name? >> i don't. >> did they give your report? >> they have not yet. they have given me interim. >> an independent review. they're want to do better. we had an independent review. this one, they have given me independent comments. >> ago really have the independent evaluation. i'm curious. the earlier you implied that the

male was destroyed. that was the impression i got some seemed to say it was placed in a box. and it seemed like a different story. i have a question of what like to go into. in 2009 the inspector general audit uncovered improper shredding of mail. several regional offices. the va concurred with several recommendations back then. here we are again five years later. i guess i have a question and it relates to many of the reports that i follow up. no one seems to be responsible for following through with the reports. i can never get the name of the individual who is responsible

for complying. someone responsible for making that happen. i can never get that happening or find that person in. did that occur in 2009? awarded to stop doing -- awarded to stop dealing with this? wire we still dealing with this? cards congressman, in 2008 before there was even a record management officer there is now as a result of that 2008 effort coffee in every single office an office manager who has a responsibility. you have to react a loss of. >> i can't answer that question. he talks to you pretty ticket

under your interest. to solve this problem. the problem is, secretary, that you have 20,000 people working for you every one of them with the problem come to you? this problem of -- that this rule spoke of, a supervisor who has been firing people and is still there after apparently providing retribution to people who have been trying to improve the system, you need have a system where those people are removed and you need to make it stick because not everyone can reach you. you need have management that can manage 20,000 people in an effective manner. >> their race by an employee,

trusted chain of command. it raises the issue and we for it over. i will give you an example. the baltimore regional office male situation was raised by the chain of command. the ig was called by the chain of command and invited the ig into go of the cecils going on. we had that happen all the time. there are places. i am sensitive to the comments i heard. we have to have an environment where our employees -- >> how were you going to do that ? is not working now. >> congressman, it works in some places. does not work well, we will address the situation. >> i'm out of time. in none of us have any belief that unless something radically changes with the whole system that there will be changed. hmm out of time.

>> many of my constituents in arizona veterans service organization believe that the focus on ending the backlog has incentivized va plan processes to provide an 0 percent disability ratings were low ratings in an attempt to quickly complete claims and reduce claims. files from several veterans in my district and files that the disabled veterans of america gave my office suggests that some of these claims were improperly given a lower rating based on the evidence submitted a decline. as the claims backlog numbers continue to decrease we have seen an increase of a number of appeals pay 18 percent. my question, what is the bba doing to ensure claims are properly adjudicated the very first time?

what mechanisms are in place to prevent examiners from rushing through clans and improperly awarding lowered his ability ratings, in other words, can you describe your quality assurance process? [inaudible] >> for all of the ba to discuss. are will tell you, we have significantly ramp up our efforts in this area as indicative and a think even the gao commented that there has been extra effort. we have now the following, quality review team specialists the output in -- took 600 people off the line doing planes. that's how much i've out you this. 650 people and could have improved our backlog numbers faster. we have to do them better. they are now quality review team specialists. they, like their star

counterparts, must take and pass the skills certification tests to hold that position. that is not an absolutely easy test. they are in the regional offices doing two things. they're doing something new for us called in process review. it is basically, i'm going to check areas where we typically make mistakes and look at them on a higher level frequency. i'm going to come to you as an employee and not saying garcia. i will come and say let me show you what you did. we got out of that culture and into healthy culture. 250,000 of those nationwide every year. the second thing we did was of five employee people at the end of the month to see what the overall individual quality is. the next thing was a fundamental change of our challenge system.

i think this committee for the resources to do that. we pull everyone in. is just like basic training. you go through an intense program. the next thing -- and thank you. we have recently and are right now. we have what we call spark training. we have identified through volunteerism or people challenged on either their production of quality or bills, running them through a program that specializes in helping them with problems. a special monthly compensation. it's hard to do. we built tools to help, but we are retraining out there with the people who have been challenged. any number of other things, and if there is time will let mr. murphy had. if not, i'm happy to come over

and lay out every piece of what we do. >> i have about a minute left. the first panel suggested using specialized case managers to review claims might speed up the process. your thought? >> that is exactly what we are doing. we did it in record-breaking time. we get into a completely new organizational model. we have the express lane, one or two medical conditions not arrest for nearly complex, special operations lane said, complex claims that require high german level of ability and experience and the core lane which is sort of the same thing we do over and over again with lots of medical conditions, but not in the special operations category. that is what we do well in terms of segmentation. i did hear and listen closely to the idea that some employees feel like they cannot pick up

the phone and call a veteran and get a piece of information they need. after watching right now and hear me say that only can they but they should. i would love for them to engage in a conversation. >> thank you. my time has expired. >> recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first on an issue, a couple of hearings ago, and reference to the security, the va database. we tend to have a lot of hearings but not as much follow-through. in the assessment on whether the va has secured their database? >> are you talking about our federal information security act compliance? >> before this committee the database of 20 million veterans and their families had significant potential to be

hacked. of course we had a whistle blower that the va denied. they're is a pattern here, and i want to follow upon that. >> when we did our current review this year for 2013 information security was still low last standing material weakness. there are still problems. there are still many security vulnerabilities that need to be corrected. 0in t within va has put together a crisp initiative to try and work some of these vulnerabilities. they improved last year, but our contractor still said that there were problems. there was not a formal process in place to really make sure that we did not have the threepeat findings from the year before. in the current audit is in progress for this year.

>> i look forward to seeing that we had a lot of testimony, concerning testimony about hacking. the va denied that it occurred. finally admitted and said we're going to fix it. what i heard from you is not for certain. we think it's not quite fixed yet. it is not fixed yet. we hear from -- we will fix this. of one to ask that question. outside his room he brought a listing of your current disability : backlog. does that include every disability claim with those that make the performance reports? >> they include all of the ones that were decided as part of the rating bundle ag confirmed. >> what does it not include? >> it does not include non-operating work.

that is not included in there. >> disability claims. >> they are not. once you get a disability claim decision you have the honor charity to go apply for other kinds of benefits. >> we heard that this data may have been manipulated. that may be inaccurate. do you still stand by this claim even though it does not include all of your performance data. he lost his job because he revealed that. >> congressman, it includes everything in the rating bundle. i can provide you a list. 44 percent more worked. i left after as well. we're doing far more work than we have over the years. >> can you make a claim on accuracy? remind me how you determine independently? >> we do it for different ways,

as was described. we do a claim based, issue based. >> is that independently verify? >> -- our process has been independently verify. >> i directed it. i'm sorry than i've said it a couple of times. >> you said you were looking to receive certification. >> there's a long way between certification and achieving that . you know the difference. i know the difference. you have not achieved. >> i just made the decision last week. i want to build confidence. >> that is the only way that this committee is going to gain trust. if you independently verify data every bit of data, none of this is independently verify and my

wrong on that? who has independently verify the claims data? coor's congressman, that is what i am going to do because i want you to have confidence. >> so there is no different just for the record, independent verification of these members, claims work numbers outside for or is that all internal? >> i'm not going to say it is all internal. i will ticket for the record and find out if there are people outside that have already done it. have another group on contract right now. >> thank you. >> you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. thank you very much for being with this tonight i wanted to get back to the focus on veterans and in particular the

issue about the fully developed claims. this is something we have heard a lot about. i, for one, not the we could have a great deal more confidence in this. we have heard testimony this evening from our initial panel that this has not been a particularly successful process and want to see if we can start getting comments from all three parties as to whether you feel that the fully developed claim process is helpful to getting the veterans the decision that they need. >> we were in on this early. 2011. fully developed claims were key to the transformation plan. the issue we had, moving more

crimes and serving more veterans my issue and concern is that when i look at the numbers there were banking on doing a lot more and using that to break the backlog. at that time there were at 4%. the projection was 20%. they're making some pretty large assumptions. an effort to break the back court. at that time i did not think there would get there. i don't know where they are, but if they don't that's a significant amount of claims that will be processed to reply. >> thank you. >> we are at 40% today. county service officers, really driving home. we are at 40%, well ahead of

where we expected to be. i'm extremely appreciative of how seriously all of our veterans service organizations across the nation are doing. they're down faster. we have been clearing out old ones. we are working them. they are part of the prioritization bundle. that is how you get an early claim don we're basically doing knows, working them back from old to new. >> we also thought it was a good idea. we will be looking at this year's protocol, doing some testing to see if this is hitting the market or if it could be improved. >> thank you. i think it will be helpful. they definitely want to be a

part of the solution and help the veterans. i think the you can appreciate this is a bipartisan effort in this committee which is rare. we are all veterans focused and want to get these responses as quickly as we can. the next question is with regard to communication with the veteran during the process of the claim pending. what effect is your experience difficult to communicate with veterans because of the pressure on the employee's the word-processing claims and their performance metrics did not feel that they necessarily have time and it seems to me a false positive. if you don't have time you will get the answers you need to process the claims. again, if you would comment.

>> i definitely feel communications directly with the veteran would help to make sure that your very clear on what evidence and what conditions are present so that you can process the claim quickly. >> thank you. >> i think part of what i would say is we do that with by working when the sos. we highly encourage our veterans to work with our veterans service organization. we know this is complex. we know it's tough. we do it every day. we feel strongly and train to that, teach it. please use of veterans service officer to help navigate the system, one that is connected for many, many years.

>> observe the cut you off. i am being respectful to the chair at this late hour. >> thank you very much. >> as a gulf war veteran have a question for you. after a report recommended using the term gulf war illness in the pushed back favoring the va current terminology chronic malta said the bonus. it was subsequently reported that it the department has dodged references to gulf war illness and research into the condition because officials fear a threat of new disability benefits to mucklands and costly payouts, complicating your goal to eliminate the backlog of benefits claims by the end of

2015. this is confirmed by your dec. cod 13 testimony before the senate veterans' affairs committee where he stated and ' every time we get a new theme you are right. i am telling you, i will get to 2015 to 125 days except if i have a large perpetration of something like will we experienced in the agent orange and learn a. 260,000 claims in our inventory overnight in october 2010 will close. in response to i know him the chronicle to listen to know this technology was deferred because there could be experience from veterans from multiple conflicts including the current complex. however, note the 38 cf are section 317, the va regulation

governing compensation for disability to ton diagnosed and medically and explained chronic multi symptom ellis states that it pertains to a persian gulf veterans who exhibits objective indications of a qualifying chronic disability. further to my note than 308cfra section 32 regulation governing persons of four provides that the persian gulf war extends from august to 1992, a future date to be describing that legally there is no difference of presumptive eligibility for veterans of the current complex. given the va regulation.

can you further explain your comments, refusal to adopt the phrase go for elvis. >> i'm really had a conversation my conversation, i have concern that we do not disenfranchise of the veterans from other areas that may experience similar medical conditions for. they just did not know what it was. do we not think that they do? do not think that they were exposed to some of the other things? they may not be experiencing the conditions. my comment was to say other veterans from other areas might be as well. is it fair to categorize that under one era of a veteran rather than under the conditions

themselves that might apply to any veteran from any era. that did not want to disenfranchise any other veteran >> 2013 hearing before the senate, veterans affairs committee, the national academy testified that in order to achieve the 2015 goal everything will have to go exactly according to plan. he also noted that the department lacked any surge capacity. in other words, va could not accommodate the addition of new prison to benefits based upon the statements, the viejo 2015 goals restricting the department's ability to adequately assess veterans benefits needs. >> congressman, absolutely not. if i had iom come to me tomorrow and say it was a highly connected issue, and frankly they don't come to me.

if there was a presumptive that should be declared all bets are off. if that is a new presumptive, that is a new presumptive. that's hurting veterans. before the i'm here taking caref veterans. no, absolutely not i would never try to prevent that from happening. that is just absolutely not in my dna. >> i yield back. >> you're recognized for five minutes. >> i want to thank you for the progress in making across the board and, specifically at the waco regional office in texas which serves the veterans i represent. we have seen wait times for first-time service connected disability claims, 470 moving

much closer to our ultimate goal of one to five. the lace, starting tonight progress. everyone else's concern that is progress in numbers could be verified by independent third-party suits can confirm that this progress is real. from everything that we are led to believe things are moving in the right direction and a pretty good clip. before i leave, lot of serious allegations raised in the previous panel. can you provide answers to those that come back to this committee? >> yes, i can. >> thank you. >> one of the things he said in

your opening comments that struck me was that some of the success may be compromised by data integrity issues. anything that the secretary has said tonight that alleviates those concerns the raise in your opening statement? >> now. >> one of the numbers that you cited in your opening statement was -- and that did not catch the full statement. 32 percent were inaccurate. that was simply within a certain category. i wanted to better understand that and the discrepancy against the 90% accuracy rating. >> under our review of the special initiative to process rating claims pending over two years we pulled the sample of 240 rating decisions that included both final rating and

provisional rating and found that 77 of those ratings have inaccuracies. that is where the 32% is coming from. it was focused on just this initiative. in the general did agree to go back and review all of the provisionals. many of those were helpful in. >> and also we have heard in el paso that perhaps a consequence -- focus on first-time service connected disability claims is our rise in appeals. the secretary has told us that the rate of appeals has not changed over the last and a 20 years. you know, we have heard anecdotally again at our town hall meetings, veterans whose appeals so when they sign and

have not been such you can see, they looked at one of them. you know, veterans stood up at my town hall and said it's been two years since anyone touched this claim. that is anecdote. that is also how i started to understand we had a problem. anything you can tell me that would either confirm we have a problem or has the secretary states, natural given the number of first-time claims that we are processing and are coming through at the same rate. processing them at pace. >> our numbers -- well, we had a key point of concern, the increased appeals. the workload has continued to grow at an alarming rate. we had 220,600 approximately as of september.

2011. as of june 30th 2014 we see 268,000. just shy of that, about an 18% increase. we see that they -- their is a significant increase of 25% on the notices of this agreement waiting for appellate review. i think that is significant. it is growing over time. >> ten seconds. i don't know if you can -- >> review the backlogs. we did visit several locations. there was concern in anecdotal statements among staff that the focus on the backlog, the front end focus to divert staff away from that back and and was one of the causes. >> okay. thank you. >> you are recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman.

he talked about independent reviews. those are key in any business that you have. the question comes in, what do you do with the information you get? and you talk about getting certification. obviously it would be -- but there is also from that, 9,004 makes recommendations on improving what you're doing. i guess the question i have his gun either method, independent review, what do we do with the information? how do we go ahead and institute improvement that makes us better ? >> congressman, i will tell you that at the heart and core of what i bring to the table -- and they're is a negative thought. and dna that talks about process improvement. i don't sit on anything.

we don't relax. we continue to look for ways to get veterans to apply what we have gained. mr. murphy's organization gathers data consistently on the number of errors we make and will we make, different than with the ig looks at in terms of the way they look for errors. we taken immediately turn a trend line on a particular air. we turn that into training immediately. return that in the conversations with our quality review team and in fact tell them to start looking harder at those issues and making improvements. i also mandated that we start doing more face-to-face. we call the models and regional offices. >> are there instructions in the system that throw you down or prevent you from making improvements in the overall system? >> certainly there are.

i made mention of and will tell you, this is even more significant in the appeals process. that is, the appeals process looks. you know this well. the tax code that has been wired together by law over many years. it is hard to acquire it to make any process improvement. and so we struggle with the appeals process and finding definitive, major improvements. when i don't have an issue with law will sometimes find the stakeholder vested interest. as we did on something that should make sense to everyone. a standard form we should have the application for benefits. we heard from our stakeholders. they had some concerns about that. it is still in rulemaking. i can't talk about it. i am hoping we will have early this fall a solution that makes

a difference to both. >> you talk about blockades. you talk about trust. congress is a body that does not have the highest approval rating itself. not just within the agency the you're working with, but i would like to discuss your vision of oversight on the part of congress, zero ig, gao. are there -- everyone has a role are we actually accomplishing something? at the end of are we getting something done and making changes? >> i would tell you that 200,000 veterans this year alone will get answers to claims and higher-quality rate than they've ever gone before. i think you'll have made a

difference. thank your staff when they come and visit us, they put me on a little warning. when the ig tells me certain problems we look to see how we can apply solutions. >> do you feel you have access going in the other direction as well? you mentioned you are sometimes bound by law. see you feel you have access to come back to us and say and congress enact changes so we can make this better? here is where i am bound. >> i understand what you're saying. i will tell you, will often times before i take one step to come to you find out what my stakeholders might think of my taking that direction. oftentimes when i will come to you it's because my stakeholders have concerns about changing the law. they are my partners. >> i understand that. >> and i don't want to bring you something for which they have little to no support in the know you well enough to know you

won't do anything if we don't have the veterans service organization. >> i hope you feel free to have a dialogue. >> i do. >> you are recognized. >> thank you for coming here tonight. i feel like our reached an age where i say things like we go way back. i appreciate the work we have done, the quality of work you have done consistently has improved the quality of care for veterans. you have earned the gratitude of this nation with what you've done in uniform in the work you're trying to do. you knew when he took this job it was a hard time. it would have been easier to have retired. you also know, like i do, we are part of organizations or we get judged on the organization over individual merit. if you think you have a tough job, we have one to. that's why i bring it up and i want to make note, this to me is

more than just a note. this is a tangible example of the cultural problems. this in that disrespect shown to my this was to ignore the people of the eighth district of pennsylvania. this attitude, they were doing exactly what i said, go out and investigate so we can get data. i can tell you, imagine if you are a congressional staffer, imagine how intimidating it is to be an employee he tries to say. europe these folks come forward. it's just heartbreaking. i know this troubles you. i know deeply in a one to ask this question. you come from a successful career as a general officer. as the air force work better than that va?

>> congressman, every organization, every large organization klum klum has people who are all in who do absolutely everything right. every organization has people that don't call. you watch things that happen. you're watching things that happen occasionally in my current position. i love them both because of the missions they do and because of a great people who participate in them day in and day out working their tails off to make a difference. >> and maybe you can chime in. this is not unusual in a large organization for the disconnect between the 40,000-foot strategic vision and the granular level of someone doing the work. somewhat of a disconnect, but i would make the case that the

lack of a national strategy and a clear mission up and down is causing this. do you see the disconnect? >> we do see some disconnect. i think you have to have very clear policy guidance. i think some of the fast letter guidance that has gone out has really hit the core values of some of the staff. that is why we are getting all of the allegations we are getting today. i think you have to be clear on your policy. you have to understand what the intended consequences are in the unintended consequences. you have to deal with both. i would -- i personally went up in philadelphia to take a look at the issues up there. when i met with the deputy undersecretary for benefits they recognized a misapplication of guidance to his a risk. ..

and she didn't know that. that seems to me to be almost why that would happen and mammals have judiciously asked if she get a bonus for making those changes because the issue is you have employees trying to improve the system and they are such a disconnect there that those things never connected. >> yeah congressman everything we are doing todayas