improper payment has been made and not returned, data manipulation, and various other gross misinterpretations of the law. instead of solving problems, i was and continue to be retaliated against by the va. i have been targeted by middle and upper management at the va for over four years, despite the fact that oig recently confirmed these allegations as will be reflected in their testimony for today. the va's problems are a result of morally bankrupt managers that through time and grade have moved up into powerful positions where they have the power to and continue to ruin people's lives. i can speak from experience. i do not believe in manipulating data to achieve monetary gain for myself while harming the veterans and their survivors. in 2013, the va issued fast letter 1310 regarding found or discovered claims. a simple reading of this fast letter established that these claims would be few and far between. to qualify for a new data claim rather than using the date stamped when the claim actually arrived at the va office, the claim had to be undiscovered and found in a claim folder. upon discovery, a memo was to be

attached and signed by someone no less than an assistant director. upon completion of the claim, an e-mail was to be sent to the va central office explaining the circumstances of the claim and why this claim was going to have an altered date of claim, a newer date. additionally, the claim was supposed to be tracked in a program by way of a flash which could be tracked. this fast letter was the va's solution for solving the issues with the backlog, because by 2015, the va promised that there would be no claims pending older than 125 days. philadelphia regional office took this fast letter to mean that they could change the dates of claims on every claim older than six weeks old regardless of the circumstances. when investigated by the oig, the pension center managers pled ignorance and stated they misapplied or misunderstood the fast letter. ironically, there is proof to the contrary. the memo was used to minimize the average dates pending of a claim to make the regional office's numbers look better. a veteran should have a date of claim of 2009 in some cases but because of this memo, the philadelphia regional office instead used a date of claim of 2014. therefore, making the claim appear new. he or she now has a

recent date of claim with no priority attached because the claim has a new date of claim and will not show up on any reports for claims pending longer than 125 days. i have been admonished and suspended because i was unable to work mandatory overtime because of a problem with child care one month and also labeled fraudulent by the pension center management which after two and a half years, were both reversed. no one else was given that severe of a punishment for things beyond their control. i was not promoted for a job when i was more qualified than at least one of the selectees and had to file an eeo complaint for lack of selection. i was followed around the regional office by management and my breaks were timed. an assistant pensions center manager had my direct supervisor come outside and retrieve me from break when we are permitted flex time. i was falsely accused of slander. i was lied to on numerous times and counselled. after my last whistle blowing attempt my name was forwarded to the people i reported. the next morning my car was dented. the following morning i came out to a mess of coffee thrown on the hood of my car. although i cannot prove this was

done by the people i reported i do not put anything past the managers at the philadelphia regional office. after receiving an annual eeo whistle blowing e-mail encouraging employees to report illegal activities as well as taxpayer waste, i contacted the numbers provided thinking i was doing something the department of veterans affairs would appreciate. i had tried using the chain of command to only find out the chain was corrupt and management, nor the central office, had any interest in hearing about any problems at the agency regardless of the extent. i whistle blew when i realized that the amounts of improper payments could be in the billions and included many supporting documents, sample cases and case law. what i thought was helping the taxpayer, the agency and the veterans proved to be the exact opposite for me personally and the beginning of a horrible nightmare i have been living for four years. i noticed that this was not really what the va wanted and they cover up nearly every impropriety to gain self-benefit via bones and promotion and they target anyone who steps in the way. i notice many employees around me were depressed and upon seeing me stick up for the veterans, taxpayers and employees others began to tell me horror stories.

i now spend my free time representing employees who have been treated adversely by the department of veterans affairs. i am here because i care about veterans and i care about va employees. the people that served our country and the employees that serve them deserve much more respect from the department of veterans affairs. the agency is unable to police itself and is operating out of control and the employees in the veterans expense. the unreasonable and unattainable production requirements that start in washington, d.c. that are placed on employees have required employees decide between what is right in helping the veterans or what is wrong in keeping their jobs. most employees have taken the easier route and are doing things they are bullied into doing to stay employed. anyone who does not comply will be targeted. the va needs immediate reform because it's filled with the systemic culture of corruption to make unattainable goals set by people who do not process claims. time and grade is a large parts of the problem. i will be available by e-mail to answer any questions regarding what i have experienced at the agency and welcome an opportunity to meet with anyone that is interested in fixing the many problems. i would like to thank you on behalf of myself and the many voices that could not be here

today for my invitation to appear. >> thank you very much. mr. robinson, you are recognized for five minutes. >> good afternoon, chairman miller and ranking member michaud -- hope i got that right -- and members of the committee. on behalf of my fellow comrades and employees, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the progress to meet the veterans administration goals which was established in 2009 by former va secretary shinseki at 125 days to complete and 98% claims accuracy. serving veterans should never be about arbitrary and unplanned goals, but how can we serve them better? it has been proven that setting unrealistic and unplanned goals with long-term targets without short and intermediate targets to validate their effectiveness are a recipe for disaster.

the columbia veterans affairs regional office had the privilege of a visit from acting secretary gibson on last week, and it was refreshing to hear our top leader say it's not about metrics but ensuring that we are doing everything to serve our veterans and building trust one veteran at a time. he addressed transparency, accountability, retaliation of employees. he also acknowledged that it was his job to create conditions for employees to be successful. he is setting the tone for changing the culture of a lack of accountability, numbers, manipulation of numbers, retaliation and va talking points. in october 1995, when i arrived at the columbia vro as a work study, there was a poster in the hall, on the wall in the

hallway, that read making a difference in vba integrity, professionalism and accountability. i was impressed by the message and embarked on a journey to make it a reality as i served my fellow comrades. i visit the va central office in february of 2013 and to my surprise, the same poster was hung in the hallway. however, i have learned that words on paper are meaningless without corresponding action. the va is not a business but a service organization created to serve veterans, their widows and orphans. we serve survivors of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, those who have seen horrific acts of war and need comfort. those who have been mentally and physically disabled and need health care, those who are homeless and need shelter as well as support. those who are thinking about

suicide and need a lifeline. and all the others who have honorably and faithfully served our country. again, this is not about meeting goals and metrics but serving those who served and va providing the leadership, effective tools and creating an environment for employees that is conducive to providing accuracy and timely decision to our customers, veterans, survivors and their families. when unrealistic goals cause leaders to throw out common sense and intelligent analysis out of the window, it is time for a reassessment and shift the focus back on our only mission, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan. president roosevelt on the day he signed the g.i. bill stated

the members of the armed forces have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and they are entitled to definite action, definite action, to help take care of their special problems. gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen of this committee, i served 20 years serving this country. i served 18 years on the front lines in the foxhole of the columbia regional office. employees deserve better than what we are getting. we need tools to effectively do our jobs. 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. i'll be here to answer any questions. thank you very much. >> thank you very much, mr. robinson. thank you for your service to this country. mr. soto, you are recognized for five minutes. >> i thank the chairman, ranking member and esteemed members of the committee for the opportunity to be here. my statement relates to my experience as a former raider at the st. petersburg, florida va regional office which i will refer to as st. pete. in my opinion, the problems at vba result from setting goals so fantastic and unrealistic that the result could have been predicted. management focused on creative number crunching and not the

veteran. i point out that i tried bringing up problems to management through various processes that are established for that, but i got nowhere. they also took complaints personally. in my view, presently, we cannot tell what the accuracy rate for claims processing may be. that varies widely. if you look at it locally, regionally or nationally. at st. pete, this year alone, quality reviewers quote for quality review errors against raiders that contradict medical evidence. when we brought this to kerry woody, the director, she refused to do anything about it. presently, to address this, the union is preparing to arbitrate claims based on quality issues.

employees had been bringing issues to the quality review team regarding inconsistencies with their work for some time. when this was passed up to management, instead of addressing the inconsistencies, on january 27 of this year, management issued an e-mail directing employees to stop complaining to the quality reviewers and just tell their supervisors which employees reported did not resolve anything. shortly after that e-mail, we began seeing what i can only describe as a disclaimer whenever we got quality guidance or advice. it stated in so many words, and i won't say the exact wording so i don't identify anyone, but we don't know if our advice is right or wrong and don't rely on

it. when asked about this at an employee town hall meeting, director woody stated i am not aware, i have to check into that, i don't know. this issue remains unresolved. the quality issue is further made worse by various changes to rating rules and i will discuss one example. there are many. provisional rating rules simply hid wait times. once a claim is given a provisional rating, it's not counted toward the backlog. however, the claim has no final rating. it's still unresolved. in summary, at st. pete, the employees work hard to serve veterans and complete their work competently. however, we have found that employees avoid appealing

quality error calls because they fear reprisareprisal. when employees do appeal the errors, they are overturned at least 30% of the time. we did some figuring out and we believe that if employees were not afraid to appeal these errors, the total number of claims with errors overturned may be troubling. to date, to excuse the backlog and other processing problems, many employees are on performance improvement plans. well, we were interested and we checked. not one manager at st. pete is on a performance improvement plan. the total number of errors overturned can be great. we just have to check. nobody's checking. any employee that complains is

met with severe consequences. once again, i would like to thank the committee for providing me the opportunity to share my views. i will be happy to take any questions. thank you. >> thank you very much, mr. soto. thanks again to all of you for your testimony. we are going to start a round of questioning. each of us will have five minutes with which to ask our question. mr. soto, i will start with you, sir. if you would, just answer in a yes or no fashion, if you could. were you rated anything less than fully successful during your time with the regional office? >> no, sir. >> did you receive a promotion in 2013? >> yes, sir. >> i've got some documents here that are letters signed by the regional office director, who you have talked about this evening, so i want to ask you about them. the first is a letter dated july 24, 2013, where the r.o. director contested transfer of your official time which notes

having raters taken from reoccurring duties on a regular basis hampers the flow of work. did you get a copy of this? >> yes. >> the second is a letter that is dated february 26 of 2014 where the r.o. director denied your leave to attend training, citing that you were needed due to the all-hands initiative. did you receive this document? >> yes. >> and the third is a letter dated the 23rd of june, just three weeks ago from the director, again, which appears to respond to an afge leave without pay request for you, which reads in part lwop, leave without pay, is granted at the discretion of the department. while i understand that afge is preparing for various changes within its organization, and engaged in various national projects, mr. soto holds a full-time position as a ratings veterans service representative and is needed to perform his rater duties in that position.

did you receive this document? >> yes, sir. >> so could you tell the committee what occurred after june 23rd of 2014? >> on june 24, i published a vsr accuracy report concerning quality review, and vsr operation. on june 26, it was distributed to all employees and management. during this period, i received calls from fellow employees telling me that management was looking into your folder, specifically bonnie wax from human resources called our coaches and said don't tell anybody, i need you to look at this, et cetera. on june 30, i was for the lack of better definition, and i think the legal definition is laid off. i received a letter that said your services are no longer required. and that was the end of my employment.

>> miss ruell, do you believe the policy or that philadelphia violated the policy direction given in the fast letter 1310? >> definitely. >> how did they violate that policy? >> in our office, we would receive e-mails as we got closer to 2015 that e-mails would change but they were instructing us to change the dates of claims, on any claims regardless of the circumstances, if they were older than a certain date. >> do you believe that the management at the regional office intentionally violated fast letter 1310 or was it simply a misunderstanding as va has said publicly? >> i believe and i think it can be proven that management intentionally violated the fast letter.

if you read the fast letter closely, the management will allege that they didn't understand what the first part of the fast letter said. however, their actions show otherwise. the other paragraphs in the fast letter explain that you're supposed to control these memos by placing a flash in a program called map-d. that's the way to track how many memos philadelphia was issuing for changing dates of claims. you were also supposed to e-mail washington after you processed the claim and explain the circumstances for changing the dates of claims. philadelphia didn't do either of those things so it's my belief that if you didn't understand the top part of the fast letter, number one, i question why you would be paid a gs-15 or gs-14 be in charge of the amount of money that our office is in charge of 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

lists, our memos were all on 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 open all the claim folders to find these memos if they're still there. but map-d is not a program that the managers aren't familiar with and e-mailing, they do every day. they e-mails us lists nonstop. so if they didn't understand the fast letter, at least the top portion, i know that they understood the bottom portion and they failed to do any of those things to control it. so i think it was to hide it. >> thank you. mr. michaud, you are recognized. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. the first few questions should be a quick yes or no and i will start with mr. soto and work down the panel. do you believe that production is being driven over quality? >> absolutely. >> yes. >> definitely.

>> do you believe that non-rating workload is being provided enough resources to be done in a timely and accurate manner? >> no. >> definitely not. >> no. >> do you believe vbms is making va more efficient than it was when you dealt with paper? >> at the present time, i would say that's debatable. >> i say that it's no, because all the work-arounds that we have negates the process that vbms is making. >> i don't currently work on vbms, but anything that is electronic at the department of veterans affairs has many problems and if i do a claim with a paper folder, i can see the paper, i can page through it quickly. when i look -- when it's in the computer, there's multiple

entries for the same documents, it wastes a lot of time and sometimes the program freezes and it hinders us from getting our work done. i would much rather use paper. >> miss ruell, to follow up on the chairman's question, his question was do you believe at the va ignored the -- let me back up. in your statement you suggest the philadelphia pension center pleaded ignorance with regard to found or discovered claims. do you believe that the vaoig findings were incorrect in suggesting that the center misapplied, misunderstood va's policy and procedure? from the oig? >> i believe that that's probably not 100% accurate because they only found 30 memos

but if they stayed there a lot longer, they would probably find thousands and they would see the instances that the claims were changed and it was, some of them had no reason at all. they just changed the date of claim. that's not what the fast letter said. >> do you have proof? >> i photocopied a few of those memos but if you just asked any employees that worked there how many they did on a weekly basis, you would definitely find out. >> in your testimony, you highlight that you believe a large number of documents were improperly shredded. can you walk us through va's response to your suggestions that more needs to be done? >> yes. did you want me to describe the shredding? >> yes. >> okay. i was working one day and i received an e-mail, a very disturbing e-mail from a triage employee. triage is where the mail comes in and gets stamped. triage clerk has to look at a

claim and they have to figure out in a very short time, because they are on production as well, what type of claim that is and identify it with the veteran in the system. a lot of people mail their claims in and they might not put their full name, they might forget to put their social security number, they might forget to put 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 you have to look at all these things and decide what type of claim it is, in a very quick time period, there really isn't time to investigate to try and identify who that person really is. so what was happening and various employees told me that the clerks were trying their best to identify these things but ones that took a little longer to identify because they were lacking all the identifying information, they were putting aside in a separate pile that eventually were stored in boxes. so 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, and i saw these boxes that were labeled 2010 claims, 2011 claims, 2012 claims, to be shredded. so i opened them, i took pictures, and i saw things in the boxes that are not supposed to be shredded. i saw dd-214s, i saw plenty of things that i could identify with a little bit of effort. so i reported it to washington. apparently they stopped the shredding of those boxes. unfortunately, there was a total of 96 of those boxes. the va, their answer to that was it's military return mail and the process for military and return mail is after you hold it for one year, you are allowed to shred it. but the law is assuming that you tried to identify it. the mail that was in those boxes was not easily identifiable but a lot of it was not impossible to identify, it just took a little bit of time. so because of these 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 intentions and put these aside. then they had gift cards that they were giving away for people who could process the most mail, so they gave incentives to get a lot of mail sorted, and i saw the boxes with my own eyes. i saw what was in the boxes. and a lot of that stuff should not have been shredded. the va told me that because i didn't see the shredding happening, that it wasn't shredded. however, when i did a little research about the shredding truck, i was informed that in order for the mail to be shredded it gets shredded on the truck and if i would have watched the mail be shredded i would have been shredded with it. so i believe there was circumstantial evidence when i saw the boxes headed towards the shred truck. however, i can't say that i saw it being shredded because again, that would be impossible.

>> mr. lamborn, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for your leadership on these vital issues. last week, we had another hearing involving whistle blowers, and it is so important that we have employees who come 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 so thank you for your work, your service, your putting it on the line to do that. i want to ask you, and i think i already know the answer to this, but let's do this for the record. have you experienced or do you know others who have experienced retaliation in response to bringing things forward as a whistle blower in the va? we will just go, miss ruell, start with you and go down the line. >> 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 fact, in this memo, there's a great line that says protecting employees from reprisal is a moral obligation of va leaders, a statutory obligation and a priority for this department. we will take prompt action to hold accountable those engaged in conduct identified as reprisal for whistle blowing and for that -- and that action includes appropriate disciplinary action. so that memo says those who punish whistle blowers themselves can be subject to discipline. and the statutory protection, the acting secretary refers to, is from 25 years ago. congress protected whistle blowers 25 years ago. mr. soto, is it true that you

were retaliated against after this memo came out? >> i believe so, yes. >> could you explain that, please? >> i was, again, i'm still trying to piece this together. i believe i was laid off june 30th, i believe that memo and other e-mails had come out. >> this was june 13th, the memo i just quoted from. >> yes. >> why were you -- what was the reason given for you being laid off? >> my services were no longer required. >> and had you been acting as a whistle blower prior to that time? >> yes, sir. >> can you explain what you did in that capacity? >> i put out various notices of wrongdoing in the workplace concerning possible violations of due process, concerning veterans claims and how they're processed. i put out two accuracy reports concerning the quality review process at st. petersburg. one was in december 2013

involving the raters and the rating process. there seems to be conflict in how we define various laws and various definitions of evidence that basically result in what i believe to be due process violations of the veterans. then i came out with a second study which was in june, june 26th. it was distributed which addressed the vsrs and the problems they were having in terms of receiving inconsistent quality review. >> mr. soto, i have the letter here that was given to you when you were separated, when you were discharged, and you have provided it to the committee. there doesn't seem to be a reason given for you being let go. >> correct, sir. >> how often is it that the va fires people, number one, for any cause and then number two, without giving a cause? >> being involved in the union, i would say -- i can't say -- i

can't 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. >> thank you. miss brown, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. mr. soto, right here. i'm corinne brown. i am from florida. of course, i'm very familiar with the system in st. pete and you all processed most of the casework in florida, and it really has improved. we was having so much kickback, you know, we would process it and it wasn't going through so i think it's very important to have goals. how long did you work at this center in st. pete? >> four years. >> you worked there for four years. have you seen an improvement in the system in the four years?

>> that's a difficult question to answer because -- >> well, what's the number of cases that you was processing? because, you know, for a long time we were having serious problems because you all process most of the cases in florida and we have a very high number of cases in florida. >> yes. i did some studies and part of those studies that i just mentioned, and essentially, we haven't corrected errors that have been occurring in the past three years, no matter what type of training we're doing, it's not effective. we are repeating the same errors over and over again. so i would tend to say in answer to your question that no, we haven't improved. >> you haven't improved. >> we have not. >> and june 30th was your termination date?

>> yes. >> and without cause? >> i was terminated because my services were no longer required. i'm not sure what that means. >> i'm not, either. but i'm going to find out. mr. robinson, thank you again for your service. you indicated that you all could do a better job if you had better leadership at the top. i don't quite understand what that means, when you say the top. are you talking about congress? when you say the top, what exactly are you talking about? because i have worked with every va secretary we've had, and some leave a lot to desire but i certainly 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'm talking about our leadership, and what sometimes we don't understand that employees are looking for leaders to lead them. we have lived through about nine years with a director at the local level. he's no longer with us. the things that he did and the things that happened in my office, i began to report in 2006 to the va chain of command because being ex-military, you take things to the chain of command. >> yes, sir. >> so for i guess from 2006 to when he retired, i reported,

sent letters to the va chain of command, and the things never ceased. >> so it hadn't been working like the military. >> it's not the military. it's about leadership. being a retired first sergeant, i think i know a little about leadership. it was not the director who was the problem. it was the system that allowed him to do what he did. so when i talk about leadership at the top, 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 photo like this, when that happens, i know that there's not accountability issue. >> miss ruell, you indicated

that you wanted -- you think paperwork's best. we have said over and over again we don't want paper, we want the computer systems, i mean, we want the va to get with the modern system, even though i'm not there yet, we want the va to get there. of course, that's going to take training, working with the employees. 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 systems at the va are outdated and they don't work correctly. so i would rather use a paper folder than use the computer systems that the va has to offer. the va had computer systems like maybe if apple designed the computer systems instead of whoever is, it might work a

little better. i can do more on my iphone faster than i can -- >> we have given them money to upgrade. i mean, that is unacceptable. we have discussed it over and over and over again. we have got to take them into the next century. we have got to have the new technology. >> i totally agree with you. but if you came and sat next to one of us for a day and watched us do our job, you would see probably why there's backlog. we have to click on a large amount of documents. there are sometimes hundreds that you need to look at on the computer. when you click to open one, sometimes it doesn't open. sometimes the wrong person's information is in the folder and if you care, you need to take time and put it in the right folder. sometimes the computer systems go down and you're not sure when they're going to go back up again so when everything's computerized, you have thousands of employees sitting there and they can't do their job because the only way you can process a

claim is with all of the information. >> this is something that we have got to work on. little babies, 2 year olds, can work the computer system. we've got to be able to move to the next level with the va. thank you. i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you, miss brown. mr. bilirakis, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i appreciate it very much. thank you for the testimony and thank you for your courage. mr. soto, your testimony spoke to the matter of the production and accuracy measures create hostility in the workplace for employees, quality reviewers and management. could you relate how management's focus on these metrics is affecting the service connected veteran who has a claim pending in a regional office? >> the thing is production. for lack of a better word, they want the numbers and for

whatever reason, the numbers seems to validate what they're doing. it tends to show that i gather, i don't see it but i gather for them essentially they're progressing in their backlog fight, and what that means is that they start pushing and bullying employees into simply following changes in rules that sometimes may not serve the veteran and one of the things i saw, for example, and there are many, of course, is for whatever reason, to ensure that we clear the backlog, we have begun shortening the evidence collection period. our decisions are based on evidence of record. anyone that's an attorney knows that there's nothing of record, well, we deny the claim. in essence what i have seen is shorter duty to assist periods, shorter periods to gather evidence from private providers and that seems to be how we have

been moving which shifts the burden to the veteran to prove his claim. >> thank you very much. next question for the panel, there has been a lot of discussion in your testimony about how vb ahma manipulates d by using certain end points which is not tracked as part of what vba considers backlog. first of all, define, whoever would like to go first, define end products and then -- end products, excuse me, i said end points. end products, and how vba manipulates their use and what consequences this has on the veteran. >> an end product is a three-digit code that identifies what type of claim that we have. for example, if i say a 110, that represents an original claim with less than eight issues. if i say an 020, that represents a claim that the veteran has

submitted after he has submitted the original claim. you only get one original claim in your lifetime. anything else that you submit gets a different code depending on what type it is. >> thank you. >> if you use the end product 930, which in most cases refer to rating decisions that were prematurely decided, if you look at the report, a 930 is not included in the rating bundle. so the 930s, which the majority of them are, claims that were rated prematurely, they are not counted in this inventory of backlog claims. that's just one example. >> does anyone else wish to comment? >> i agree with him. i don't have as much experience with that sort of processing because i have worked the rater

side, but i agree with this gentleman. >> thank you very much. question for the panel. we will start again with mr. soto. can the acting secretary, mr. gibson, succeed with this current vba leadership, or should we hold this current vba leadership accountable and start with new leadership? mr. soto, yes or no? can the acting va secretary, mr. gibson, succeed with this leadership? >> my answer would have to be i apologize, i don't know. they have been in office for some time now. if the problems are still persisting, it's time for a change. that's my opinion. >> yes. thank you. >> no. >> ma'am, would you like to respond? >> i think that the people under the level of the undersecretary

are letting the undersecretary down. i don't think they are being truthful to the undersecretary about the regional offices. so i feel like somebody is responsible for the va and all of its problems, but in my office, there's far too many people to hold accountable. >> thank you very much for your testimony. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you. mr. takano, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. soto, i understand you had worked at this office for four years, is that correct? >> yes, sir. >> had you served the va in this capacity prior to other offices? >> yes, but i prefer not to discuss that, please. >> i just want to get a sense of how long you have been serving in the va. >> i have been a government employee for about 15 years. >> all within the va? >> no. >> okay. so how long have you been at the va in total?

>> about i would say over ten years. >> ten years? and mr. robinson? similar question. you have been at this office for nine years. have you served the va in other capacities or in similar fashion longer? >> i have been in the columbia office for 18 years. >> 18 years? >> yes, sir. >> and the past nine years, you have been in this current capacity you are in now? >> in the past nine years, yes. >> okay. miss ruell? >> i have worked at the va for seven years this august 20th. >> let's start with you, miss ruell. has this situation with these narrow metrics and this management regimen which is focused on certain outcomes and which could only be described as sort of perverse incentives, have they existed that entire

seven years that you were in the current capacity you are now? >> yes. >> so you know nothing other than the current -- than the way that things have been happening at the va? there wasn't a time that was better? >> no. now, our office used to have -- we started doing original claims a few years after i got there, so philadelphia didn't have jurisdiction of as many things as we do right now, so when i first started there, we had a lower volume of claims and i believe we were able to give more time to the claims. we didn't have to know how to do so many different types of claims because each claim has so many different laws and rules that go with it. when you work at a regional office, if you have 15 or 20 types of claims, it's kind of like being a lawyer with 15 or 20 specialties. so the more claims that philadelphia has, i have noticed that it's much harder to know

more laws for all these types of claims. >> is it fair to say they grew in complexity as far as -- and variety since you got there? is that what you're trying to tell us? >> i believe that you can never figure out how complex a claim is. sometimes they think this is a small little folder so this claim should be fast. every claim has unique circumstances but because each veterans service representative is responsible for doing so many types of claims and doing them perfect, the more that we inherited and the more types of claims we're expected to do, the less accurate i believe it is. >> we have heard a lot about performance bonuses in the va maybe motivating some of this behavior. can you tell me something about what kind of performance bonuses were available to employees at your grade level? >> at our grade level, you had to achieve a rating higher than fully successful to get a bonus.

so if you received an outstanding or an excellent, you got a small bonus, a couple hundred dollars. >> for the year or for the quarter? >> yeah, for the year. >> for the whole year. so as much as, what was at stake for employees at your level is maybe a couple hundred dollars? >> yep. >> mr. robinson? can you answer that same question? >> it depends on what -- in my office, the bonuses were like $2,000, over $2,000, and they had different types -- they had three ways that you could get a bonus. it was production, they had a numbering system one to three. if you got a three or you got a nine, you would get a higher bonus, and you would get three for production, three for accuracy and three for what they call organizational support. but it was over $2,000. >> so up to $2,000 was at stake

for employees -- >> it was mostly -- it was based on grade so the higher your grade, the more money you got. >> okay. mr. soto? >> similar. we had fully successful, highly successful, i believe, and outstanding. they are supposed to be given based on some sort of points structure. you achieve a certain amount of points for production or accuracy and you receive a certain amount of bonus. we pulled a lot of appraisals to see how they were distributed and what we found was that there seems to have been some sort of curve in terms of application of the standards at our regional office. the lower level employees that did not achieve points were declared fully successful based on a unique station challenge. there were a few employees that were given outstanding without reaching the outstanding criteria based on unique station challenge and the middle group that made their production and

accuracy were simply lumped in with the lower group and just made fully successful, but no use in the appraisal of unique station challenge, that term. >> thank you. mr. chairman, my time is up. thank you. >> thank you. mr. runyan, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, chairman. first question is for mrs. ruell. in the rg's testimony, it was reported that there were 32,000 inquiries that went without a response. can you elaborate? i know mr. cook would love this. elaborate on a little of what that is and why this happened? >> there are different ways to file claims at the va. one way to inquire about or file a claim is through a program called iris. you can e-mail the claim in, you can call a claim in on the phone. then a little report is generated and we call it an

iris. you are supposed to read these and you are supposed to figure out what the claimant needs and address it. at our office somebody reporte to me a couple months ago that we weren't doing these at all, and there were 32,000 pending. why that's a concern to me is some of those are dates of claims for benefits. you can call in and that can be called an informal claim when you would like to apply for benefits. if we're not processing the irises, we don't know the real date of claim for some of those people. not everybody calls in for irises and asks the status of their claim. some people use those to file a claim. >> thank you. and to follow up, i know miss ruell already testified to this, but mr. robinson, mr. soto, the staffs at columbia and st. pete also violate guidance provided in the fast letter 1310?

>> i don't have an incident that it did. >> okay. >> i don't know. >> same here. i'm not sure. >> okay. go back to mrs. ruell. talk a little bit about duplicate payments, and i know they say they don't happen all the time, but can you give an example on how duplicate payments happen and what a problem this is because we always say it's fixed, it's fixed, and obviously it's not. personally, your testimony. >> there's many ways at the va you can receive a duplicate payment. prior to a certain year, veterans stopped receiving service numbers. a lot of the veterans from certain war time periods are in our system with a service number. when that same veteran or one of their survivors submits a claim, they usually put the veterans social security number on the

correspondence. when we put a claim under control and create an end product, we then create a duplicate record for that veteran. so that person will have the same name but they will have different numbers, one service number and one claim number. that can cause that veteran to be paid twice. there are other ways that the double payments happen. the vets net operating system that pays out the benefits, everybody is looked at by something called a personal identification number. it's just a series of numbers, and that's how the benefits are paid based on this number. if you apply for benefits and we put your claim under control with just your name and you didn't provide your social security number because you submitted an informal claim and you weren't aware you had to, we'll put a claim under control with mary smith and no social security number. when mary smith then comes in and provides us her social security number, we then put a claim under control with her social security number.

our computer system has two different pid numbers for that mary smith. then she can get two checks. i had worked on claims where one claimant got five dic checks per month. the va will tell you that the problem is corrected and that they have data mining programs to find these duplicate payments. i would disagree. usually every week i find some. i stopped reporting them because for two years i collected them, i reported them, and nothing has changed. i really cared about it because if we have the wrong social security number for a claimant, that affects other benefits for that person through government matching programs. we had a case where someone tried to apply for food stamps. because we had the wrong social security number for that person, it looked like they were getting money from the va, and they weren't. so the systems have

misinformation. it's causing them to pay people more than once, and the va will say we have a lot of duplicate records but they're not all duplicate payments, but, unfortunately, every time someone submits a claim, if they have a duplicate record, they can be paid twice. >> thank you. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you all for being here with us this evening. mr. soto, i have to say i'm just shocked to hear your story about being laid off on june 30th, and we've had a lot of committee hearings over the course of the last month and a half, two months. we've talked a lot about the need for -- for the va to improve and to become a good, positive organization, there's going to have to be real cultural change. we've talked a lot about the

vha. i wanted to ask you and the other panelists, have you felt any sense of change coming down from the top around the work environment, how we want to improve, how we want to encourage our employees, how we must serve our veterans, we must be a veteran-centered operation? have you felt any of that change in culture in your department? >> no. >> mr. robinson? >> i have a new director now, so i'm not going to lump all the directors in one pool because i don't like to paint with that kind of brush. she's new. we have been able to get along and work together, but it's -- >> up until that point then? can you answer up until the point of -- >> up until that point, no, it

was -- it was awful, okay. employees suffered, and the reason it disturbs me that the va chain of command knew it and allowed it to be. >> thank you, mr. robinson. and, miss ruell, have you felt of recent any change? >> no. actually i believe things are getting worse. i took it upon myself to help employees that are targeted by management because i had gone to law school. a lot of employees are petrified to stand up for themselves because they see what happens to me and everybody else, and they say i don't want to be treated like that at work. i have a family to feed. i can't afford to be fired. so i promised them that i would spend every free moment i have and represent them against the agency if they need to file a claim for discrimination. i feel like the agency has let me down because they promised that you can come into work and have a discrimination-free workplace, and that is not the

case, and i have spent two years helping employees get their jobs back because the va is not doing it, and it's only getting worse. i get probably four to five calls a week begging for my help, and honestly, there's not a lawyer out there that will help you at that early stage. you would have to pay them $15,000 to $20,000. most of the employees don't have that money. so if something doesn't change soon, i don't know if there's going to be any good workers left in the va. >> thank you. i wanted to ask all three of you as well, what is your reaction when the higher ups talk about notable progress in reducing the claims backlog. the ranking member mentioned the numbers in his opening comments, 630,000-plus now down to 270,000. what is your reaction to that? do you believe that that progress has been made? do you believe those are

accurate numbers? miss ruell? >> no. >> mr. robinson? >> no, because i think we count numbers and we're -- we don't analyze the numbers we're counting. the va says -- we say -- i like to say because this is my organization as well. we say that the backlog is down 50%, but if you look at the number, it's not down 50%, okay? so numbers manipulation, we can manipulate numbers. when i see non -- when he see dependency claims over 200,000, okay, when i see appeals increase to over 279,000, these are veterans. i mean, somebody would have to be asleep at the wheel not to realize that these things were

going up. so you could look at numbers any way you want to, but i'll just give you for an example, what i have seen during this time, i have seen failed initiatives such as contracting out of claim development and the created fast track for process and agent orange claims. i saw ad hoc procedures, all hands on deck to include suspending quality reviews, provisional ratings, unlimited overtime and 20 hours mandatory. i have seen that we have refresher training. you know, we've shut down regional offices. we had 30% of the workforce that came back to the workforce. that should have been a plus for us. we've had changes in performance standards twice.

we've changed the report three times. we have excluded the 930s from the rating bundle. we have used 400 -- ep 400s which is identified as for correspondence. we've changed it and we've used that to request evidence. >> mr. robinson, i think my time is up. >> i have seen all these things, so no. >> thank you, thank you. and my time is up. and i yield back. >> thank you, miss brownly. >> dr. benishek, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to thank you all for being here today and for your compelling testimony, and although i can't thank you for all america's veterans but i'm sure america's veterans thank you for being here today, too. i sort of agree with miss brown

brownley. we've been told by the va that the backlog has been worked on and we're really making progress and from what you've told me that's baloney. they're all concerned about numbers and not veterans. changing the date of a claim is common practice to reduce the backlog. it's absolutely unbelievable to me that this is going on and nobody seems to be responsible for it. so i'm hoping that we will make progress through these hearings to make that actually happen. i have a question for you, and maybe each of you. name the top two things that you would change if you were in charge, miss ruell, to make things better. how do we change the culture here to make it better? and i understand these rules for bonuses is a big problem. but just tell me what you think if you were in charge of the whole thing, what would you do? two things and i'll ask everyone

else. >> i think that if management does something wrong, that they need to be held accountable. they have no problem holding an employee accountable for doing something minor and firing them. many managers at my office have illegally fired people over and over again. they should have to pay their legal fees should they be found to be guilty of an illegal firing. they use regional counsel as their own private attorneys, and i'm spending my own time representing employees because they can't afford an attorney. so i feel like the biggest problem in the department of veterans affairs is accountability for the people in middle and upper management. >> it's been my experience, too, you can never find out the name of someone who implemented a policy. so i completely agree with you there. mr. robinson, what would your top two things be that -- if you were in charge to make the culture better? >> make the veteran the object

of our business. the veteran comes first, okay? >> not the metric, right? >> right. the veterans come first, and the employees need to be given effective tools, training, and leadership, and we can't do that without leadership. >> thank you, mr. robinson. mr. soto. >> yeah, i agree. we have to establish policies that place the veteran first before numbers, and, secondly, we have to completely think about restructuring the training programs for raters. it's time for them to change. >> let me ask another question, for our men and women returning home from the service, what would you recommend to them in order to get their claim processed? what should they do? is there something that everyone should do as they get out of the service to make any kind of a claim go better? do you have any ideas on that?

>> i think one of the main problems is what the va expects as a complete application is different than what a normal everyday person thinks is a completed application. the va has rules if they ask you how much interest you received. we can't take zero. we have to ask you do you really mean zero? i know. so there's some really strange rules that we have to follow at the va that an average person who fills out an application would never know, and the only real way to get your claim expedited anymore is to go through a congress person or to claim that you're about to call the media. other than that, you will have to wait in line like everybody else and hope that we get to your claim in time. >> mr. robinson, any ideas there? >> we have to educate veterans on the process, and that means we have to get out and go

outreach, real outreach, talking to the veterans and explaining the veterans. we get a lot of documents we don't even need. the veteran will go to his doctor. he's claiming a knee condition, he will send in all these documents pertaining to everything and the knee. if we can simplify to get veterans to file medical evidence that only pertains to the things they are claiming, i think that would be a great help in just educating the veteran in the process. i think that's what we will make a lot of money doing that, educating veterans. >> thank you. i'm out of time but i truly appreciate your being here today. thanks. >> miss kirkpatrick, you're recognized for five minutes. >> this culture of intimidation and retaliation has got to stop, and i recently introduced hr 5054 which is the va

whistle-blower and patient protection act because i want to make sure there aren't reprisals against the whistle-blowers. thank you for being here, and we wouldn't have this information without your courage and commitment to our veterans and that is really what it's about, taking care of our veterans. i'd like to know from each one of you, when you started at the va were you given a policy for airing grievances or filing complaints for anything you thought was not going on right? is there a policy that directs you how to do that. start with you, mr. soto. >> we're all told to review, put it that way, this thing called the no fear act, and we're told essentially not to have fear, and it does not work. >> mr. robinson? >> i came to the va 18 years ago, and it was a whole lot different then. but we -- i didn't get anything at that time, but like he said,

we have to read this policy or whatever, but that's about it. >> miss ruell? >> similarly in our office, once a year we get the annual whistle-blower no retaliation tolerated type e-mail. that's exactly why i started reporting the duplicate payments because i read that and i thought that that's what you were supposed to do. i learned -- >> but there's no defined mechanism for filing a grievance or a complaint within the va? >> well, we do have a union, and you can file a union grievance. however, in my first years that's what i tried to do, and it took 2 1/2 years to get an admonishment and a suspension off my record when you go through the grievance process. the decision maker, in my case, were the people that punished me. i quickly realized i'm not going to go through the grievance process because why would i want a biased decisionmaker, and i then tried the eeo avenue. unfortunately, that takes a year

and a half to even possibly get a court date, sometimes now it's up to three years. so when you're being for ammed at work every day, that is not a solution. you can report to the office of special counsel, but as we know they accept about 5% of the cases. so i feel like there's laws out there to protect us. i was fooled by those laws and tried to use them, and they have all let me down. none of them have protected me. it's kind of like if you say that your husband or wife is abusing you and the police give you a piece of paper that says you need to stay away. that piece of paper does not protect you from getting beat up by your spouse. >> you make a good point. i have to say, i'm from arizona, and i'm a former prosecutor, and we had a real difficult time getting people to report cases of child abuse and neglect until we had an anonymous hotline, and the same with elder abuse and one of my thoughts is and i'd like to hear from you, would it be beneficial to have an anonymous hotline that you could

call, not just for employees but also for patients because i have heard from patients who have been treated really poorly, not by the medical professionals but by the administrative staff, a hotline outside the system that goes to somebody outside that system to address it and look into it. i'd like to know your thoughts about that. maybe start with you, miss ruell and we'll go the other direction. >> i think that would be a good start. however, the people that you need to report to have to be far removed from the people involved. i noticed that people who work in the same building gain relationships with others and they become friends with people and the eeo people, they know who i am from helping all these employees. so i realize that if there was someone outside the agency that has nothing to do with the va at all and that listened and cared, that would be a good start, but i feel like the answer is holding the managers accountable when they do this to people.

i can't tell you how many people have gotten their firings reversed in my office and the people are still doing the same acts. so i can help 20 people a month, but if the same person is still in power, i'm just going to get more people to help. >> i see your point. mr. robinson? >> i agree 100%. i mean if employees in our own organization can't expect its leaders to protect them, that's the problem. we have to protect our employees, and like i said, the secretary, the acting secretary, said that he's going to do that. so now we're going to see whether he does it or not. because i'm going to be watching to make sure that we are doing what we say. >> mr. soto, i have five seconds. >> i'd like to see similar to thee eo process with the right to sue letter, some sort of individual action against the managers so we can take them to court and get legal fees for it. >> thank you.

my time is expired. thank you, mr. chairman. thank you. mr. coffman, you're recognized for five minutes. >> i want to thank you all for your courage for coming forward. i think without the whistle-blowers, the employees at the va who really care about meeting our obligation to the men and women who serve this country, without you all we wouldn't have any idea really what the magnitude of the problems within the veterans administration. one question, and so -- but let me say first that, you know, i think there's a real emotional component to your stories in the way that you're treated once you're identified as a whistle-blower within the organization, and i think you've all kind of expressed that. mrs. ruell, i think you gave some very specific examples about how tough it is, i think, to go into work every day when things like that happen to you.

we talked about your car being damaged and the other things that occurred to you. but one question that i have in the manner in which all of you were retaliated against, what was -- are you members of the union and what was the role of the union in terms of protecting the employees in your specific case. let me start with mr. soto. could you talk to that for a second? what resource did you have using the organization that i assume you're a member of. >> yes. >> or were a member. >> essentially we're still trying to figure out what happened but what i believe was that it was retaliation for the whistle blowing done through various processes. we have problems with claims processing, and there's no other way to address them, cluck the quality issues other than through whatever mechanism there

is and we found ourselves in the strangest situation where we had to rely on the union to help veterans, and that brought conflict. >> okay. sir? >> well, i'm actually the president of local 520. >> okay. >> and we've been -- as a matter of fact, in june of 2012 we had a rally to bring to attention to what was going on, and the va police department had cameras, video trying to intimidate us. so can i say anymore? >> sure. miss ruell, in your testimony you talked about as a lawyer that in your free time that you were defending fellow employees that were for one reason or

another were having difficulties with va leadership. can you speak to that and can you speak to what representation or access to representation they would have had from the union as well? >> the main problem with the union is that it takes forever to get anything resolved in my office. like i mentioned before, i had an admonishment on my record because i didn't have anyone to watch my child and was ordered to do mandatory overtime and i wasn't able to do it all for the month, so i got written up. the following month i was told i was fraudulent for not putting in unmeasured time and i was suspended. i went to the union for help and 2 1/2 years later my record was reversed by the director that just left our office and had he not been there, robert mckendrick, i believe my record would still have an admonishment and a suspension on it. the problem is when you go through the union and file a grievance, the decisionmaker are people that work in the agency.

so i have taken matters into my own hands. i represent myself and i help anyone else that wants me to represent them because, unfortunately, people don't have 2 1/2 years to wait, and the union decides whether or not to take your case to arbitration, so you could lose your grievance and if they don't vote to take you to arbitration, you're stuck with whatever the agency has done to you. >> one question i have on the claims process for all of you, if you can answer quickly because i'm running out of time. it's my understanding that the claims processes -- that one who does that within the va is kind of a generalist, that you do all kinds of claims. would it expedite the process if people became specialized in a given area such as somebody does agent orange and somebody did p ptsd. would that help move the process along? >> definitely. would you want to go to an ear, nose, and throat doctor for a heart surgery?

>> yes. we've tried that before. i mean, we've kicked around all kinds of things. the most important thing is that when a claim comes in, we need to make -- do an analysis of the claim. what it needs and get it done. it happened in the past. it can happen again. mr. soto. >> we tried that and we got most of the claims through. >> faster? >> yes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> dr. ruiz, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for holding this hearing and thank you to the panelists for taking the time and for your participation. we must focus on disability claims and we must also provide the full range of services on which our veterans depend. improving the vba's efficiency and accuracy in growing the appeals backlog must be a top priority. i'm committed to addressing the

appeals backlog as well and helping veterans resolve their claims timely and accurately. i have introduced the veterans access to speedy review act which would increase the use of video conferencing as a substitute for the veteran being there in person if he or she chooses them not to or if it's cost prohibitive. this bill aims to reduce the appeals backlog by making the appeals process as efficient as possible but more must be done. our veterans and their families cannot afford further delays in the handling of their claims or appeals. so my question is more on the practical, pragmatic steps to streamline the claims process without diverting other essential resources. mr. robinson, you said in your opening statement that employees are craving tools, that they want tools to help them do a good job. what tools do you suggest?

>> well, vbms is on us now. we have no choice. it's there. it's not going to go away. we just have to improve it as we go along. i mean, if you put something out and it doesn't work the way it should and then you come up with something to try to alleviate the problem but that brings about another problem, okay? so get it right the first time. you know, don't give me a -- don't take away my chain saw and give me a new chain saw and tell me that the chain saw is faster but then when i go to cut the tree down, the chain saw gets stuck, so i have to pull it out, try it again, and then now you're going to get on me for not cutting the tree down faster.

okay? so we have tools out there, but we need to get tools that work in the beginning. that means it has to be tested. it has to be tried. >> if you were to plan a training session or a system of training for the employees, what would you include there that you're not receiving now? >> we have a training i guess website with all the things that we need. it's not we don't have lesson plans and all of this stuff. it's having trainers that can train. there's a big difference, and i think that's the problem. training people -- we talked about specialization. well, when you specialize people, you take away their ability to learn the whole process. so it's having quality trainers to train. that's the problem. >> and miss ruell, you mentioned

that technology is very outdated. do you have any suggestions? have you seen or heard of other software technologies that you would recommend the committee to look at? >> i just know that when i file my tax return every year, it gets donea couple weeks and the questions they asked me aren't that different than the va -- >> who do you use? >> turbotax. >> all right. >> my mom applied for social security and she got her benefits quickly. so i don't believe with as many the employees have that we should have these problems. in my office we don't have enough printers. if i have to make a photo copy i have to walk and hope i find one that works. if a veterans needs their application mail to them because it's incomplete, it's hard to find a photo copy to copy the

application to finish that claim. some days all the printers are down. so it's -- there's employees that come to me and say i have been put on a pip because i didn't get my points but they spent an hour trying to print something out. we could use simple tools in my office. >> i have 15 seconds. how would you apply this to a veterans centered process? >> i think if a veteran had a place to go and it was a one-stop shop and they looked -- we looked at their claim and if something was missing on the application they had to come back when it was complete. if they had that step completed, they move to another area in this one-stop shop, kind of like when you get your oil changed. you have choices. and they could get rated on the spot. if they needed more things, then they could come back another day but that would hold their spot. we don't have any communication with veterans. we're discouraged from calling them on the phone and explaining

what they need because that takes time and there's no communication anymore with the people we're supposed to help. so i think if we did that, it would take a little longer to do it the first time but it would be done right and there wouldn't be so much rework. >> i think that's an excellent suggestion to have a comprehensive one-stop shop so they don't have to run all over the place and also the frequent feedback. thank you very much for your time and thank you for your service. i yield back. >> dr. win strenstrup, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you. i thank all of you for being here tonight. when i hear about the fast letters and see the e-mail that we saw tonight, it's just beyond me how anybody could look at that and say, yes, this is a good idea. this is what we're going to do, this is a great idea. did you all get those e-mails that we saw tonight? did you receive those e-mails? with those types of instructions

on how to process claims and keep them moving along? was that something that you received? any of you? >> do you mean the same exact e-mail -- >> or to that effect? >> we receive e-mails that tell us that we need to do certain things and when you read the law you can see that it's not correct, but people just follow along with the plan in fear that if they don't, it could give them an adverse consequence. >> what strikes me is through this time there's no talk of promoting the veteran, the human being. it's all about numbers, moving things along. did you ever get anything from leadership that emphasized that point, that it's about taking care of our veterans? is that -- or is that something that's just way out there and doesn't come up? any of you can comment, please. >> we get a lot of -- you know,

we get an e-mail with all these numbers and what we're accomplishing and in that e-mail we may say that we are taking care of veterans. but it's not about an e-mail. it's about a communication between your superiors and the employee. when you care about veterans, first of all, you have veterans in your office that are employees. how do you treat them? i think that's the key. i have seen where we've not treated our veteran employees well, so how can we say we treat other employees well? >> let me go on that concept for a minute here and, mr. robinson, you know, 20 years in the military, achieved the rank of first sergeant. no one just hands you that. you spent years developing trust

amongst soldiers, commanders, people that look up to you, admire you. you had commanders that i'm sure over time you trusted, you admired. there was a mutual respect that you had there. and you know in that role that you have to lead by example, and this is something that you would do every day, and you were also willing to let those under you come to you with problems and present solutions and have a conversation. i know the role you were in, and i know that -- i think deep in your heart that's what you're saying is totally missing right now is that ability to steer the ship, to make things right, and that right is right and wrong is wrong. >> exactly. we need a conscience, and i'm trying to be that conscience for my organization, for my fellow comrades, and for the employees. the employees are the ones that really have to serve our

vetera veterans. if we don't take care of our employees and give them the tools, give them the encouragement, give them the workplace, give them the processes and be honest, that's all we're asking. this is an awesome undertaking that we undertook. it was awesome. and it was massive, right? and i commend under secretary hickey for putting us into getting into paper, okay? i see the advantages of paper, but i'm saying that leadership has to listen because if they don't, they'll take us off a cliff and i'm telling you we're that close to the edge. >> is there anyone in your careers, recent years, and more your immediate va leadership, that you felt you admired and trusted and could go to with anything? >> he's deceased now.

i had a -- david chapman. he was out there with the employees, you could talk to him about anything. i mean, you know, he would bring you the paper say this one is getting to be over a year old. what's going on with it? okay? and we would talk about it. we'd get it done. i mean, we just need for our leaders to listen and act. if we have a situation that something is wrong, listen to us. we are the ones down in the foxhole. we are on the front line of battle. we know what's going on. don't disregard it when we tell you this is not working. that's all we want, someone to listen and to let's serve our nations veterans together. >> thank you very much. my time is expired but i would have loved to have heard from all of you on that. >> miss kuster, you're

recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you all for being with us tonight. we truly appreciate and understand the sacrifice you have made. i want to follow up on this notion of comprehensive one-stop shop and the whole aspect of your job that is troubleshooting and the challenges that you have, the difficulties that you face in that. we've heard a lot about the va adding 2 million veterans, this was during the time of secretary shinseki's leadership, including vietnam veterans exposed to agent orange and newly separated veterans from the wars in iraq and afghanistan. so we understand the volume problems that you have, but i'm not sure until tonight i completely understood the sort of disarray of this process of trying to put these claims together. we had been hearing from the

vsos about their process of fully developed claims, that they would try to get the claim to the place where you could make your decision in a timely way, and i'm just trying to understand, has that not been effective and is there something else that could be done in a preliminary way before these claims even get to you so that you could do your analysis and your task in a more timely way? and let's just start, mr. soto, and we will go right down the line. >> the fully developed claims, fdc as we call them, it's a good idea. overall it's a good idea. the problem that i see from my viewpoint is that we sort of shifted the burden to the veteran to prove his claim and we're supposed to be nonadversarial, and we're kind of skirting the edge of the duty to assist in terms of providing a source of assistance and

gathering records. the veteran will sign a statement that says he's waiving certain duty to assist help that we can provide. so it's not a bad program, but for veterans that don't understand the process, they may not get the best service if they don't have the proper help. the perfect example is i think everyone here may be familiar with the 5,000 attorney initiative that the va has announced or something to that sort where they will have attorneys help gather putting together fdcs. that's what i have been told. since it started, it has helped but attorneys began appealing more and calling almost every day asking why aren't you done, why aren't you done, that sort of stuff. and that's the information we've gotten. it's a great idea. when we get to it, we could probably decide it faster, but we're kind of, again, shifting the burden to the veteran to have his claim all finished for

us so we don't have that much work to do in terms of doing what we're supposed to do, duty to assist, help gathering records and that sort of thing. that's my view. >> anything to add? >> fdc has been around since 2008 so if it was effective, it would have been effective by now. >> okay. >> so that's my answer. >> sure. i agree as well. i think that the fdc just gives us even less communication with the veteran because it says we gave you what you need -- the etched you need. we told you ahead of time this is what you need to prove and it's on a form piece of paper written in small print, most of our claimants have trouble understanding what any of that means. if they don't submit anything round one, they get denied. so i think it's a great idea if you want to process more claims, but if you're trying to grant more benefits, i think it's a horrible idea. and i call -- if i have a

claimant and they're missing something, i call them on the phone and i stay friends with veterans i have met years ago from helping them and i get e-mails once in a while from their families, and i don't have a problem getting my work done when i do it the right way. i spend a little more time doing it right the first time, but in the end the people aren't coming back complaining about what awful service they got. >> so my time is almost up. the other question i had is you're mentioning that there's no communication with the veteran. is there any way for a veteran to track their claim or keep track or stay in touch? i mean, you know, it's been brought up that going through your congressional office is the best way to get a claim done, and we have done a lot of that in our office and it's been very fishing ti effective but now i understand why that's necessary. is there no communication with veterans? >> there are communications with

veterans. they can use ebenefits if it's working right, and we call veterans but we call them most of the time to say, do you have anything else to add, okay? to get the claim out the door. that's our communication with veterans but we call a lot of veterans but it's to get that statement saying i have no more evidence. >> so my time is up. i thank you for your service. i'm sure my colleagues will get to the rest of the questions. >> colonel cook, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chair. a couple complaints have been made boo congressmen handling complaints. it seems like years ago i wasn't in congress but i was on the other side of the military. it was all about congressional interest and things that happened in the military. and now overwhelmingly it's all about the va, and quite frankly, you know, congress doesn't get

credit for a lot of things, but the one thing i think most of the people here certainly on this committee, they actually cut through the red tape on this issue, and it's something that we pride ourselves -- and i don't have to poll everybody, but a couple things i want to ask you. your personal opinion of the senior executive service in general. just short, good, bad, indifferent, one word? >> in my experience they think that they're god. >> thank you. thank you, first sergeant. is it okay if i call you first sergeant, by the way? >> yes. >> by the way, i was going to go down -- first sergeant is much more powerful, important than a mr. you're a first sergeant, you're like god. sorry. i had to throw that in there. and i appreciate what you've done for our country. yes, ma'am.

>> i think that whatever it takes to become an ses, it doesn't mean you'd be a good leader. we recently had a director at our facility who had never worked at the department of veterans affairs before. to me i don't know how you can make a decision to see if something is correct or sign off on a large amount of money if you have never worked at our agency before. >> thank you. >> yes, sir. >> yes. i truly believe that the ses service needs some revamping in terms of training, in terms of how they interact with middle management and the lower employees. i just don't see it as effective. >> thank you. in regards to manipulating claims, falsifying claims, destroying stuff. how many people do you think have been brought up on charges or sent to jail for violating those things or fined? any?

a small number -- >> we had the shredding -- >> do you have a rough idea. you know, we're talking about veterans, the military. that's a court-martial offense. there would be a court-martial, there would be a trial, and many of them would get dishonorable discharges or at least bad conduct discharges. am i wrong? so that kind of bothers me quite a bit. the dd 214s. everyone at least when i was in the military, that was like the piece of paper or that was it, that you had to have that. and to say that dd 214s, some of them are in the file, they're not in the file, you know, i shouldn't admit this but a number of years ago when i had leukemia, submitted a claim

about agent orange, and it was denied. and i understand that, that they didn't have -- you know, the medical evidence. a number of years later it came out, and so we said we're going to test the system. so i went back and put the claim back in again. it came back -- it was denied. i can understand that, but it was denied because they had no record that i was ever in an area that had agent orange used, and my question, which i went back to the va was where is the dd 214, two purple hearts, the tours of duties, the operations that you went to combat as an infantry person. do i have to give every location in vietnam that i was at? no one read the dd 14. and until tonight, maybe it didn't occur to me that maybe that's not even part of the record anymore.

so i'm -- i don't know. i get very emotional with these things. >> can i make a comment on that? >> yes. >> a major suggestion that i would think that the va needs to accept is there are a lot of civilians that work at the va. i have never been in the military and when i started working there, i was expected to know when i looked at your dd 214 how to tell with those codes that you were in vietnam. i had no idea how to tell that you were ever in vietnam, so i took it upon myself to learn those things on my own time. the average employee does not do that. >> but if you get a purple heart in combat, it's not from -- i'm going to get facetious because i'll say something about people in this town here. i'll withdraw that, but you're absolutely right. i just think it's a basic part of the claim, and i feel there's this tremendous disconnect with

washington and the bureaucracies and as the first sergeant said the veterans. you know, we've lost that, and that's what we've been talking about. >> you should see if you served on a ship, what we have to go through to prove that you served on that ship or that the ship was in that water. so some people because of production standards don't take the extra mile to look through everything to figure out if your ship that you might have served on is on the list that were in the waters of vietnam. >> well, somebody commented, they said it was so long ago i was in the military it was on papyrus and it's disintegrated since that time. i yield back. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you, colonel, and thank you for your service, sir. mr. o'rourke, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i first want to join all my colleagues in thanking you all for your service, most importantly for what we're trying to tackle tonight, your testimony about what you've encountered within the vba and

what it might take to turn it around and improve it, and i think your xhends about leadership, the culture, accountability, ensuring that the veteran is the focus of all the decisions that we make, the vba, all those points are well taken and they seem to resonate with feedback that we've received from other whistle-blowers from within vha and a sharper picture is starting to come into focus about what the problems are and what it might take and so much of it revolves around culture, and the environment within which you work. so i want to thank you for that, but i also have a chance to hear from you who are on the front lines of processing all these claims and the appeals that all these new claims are generating, and following on some other really good yes, sir about ideas or suggestions you have to improve the process, i really like the one-stop shop. i like the idea that you would limit the medical information

specific to the claim that you're filing so that there's less paperwork to wade through. someone that i have been following on these issues lately is a professor at harvard, linda billness, who has been writing a lot about the va, and she brings up an interesting statistic. there have been almost 1 million iraq and afghanistan war claims so far and only 1.5% have been denied. and so her point is instead of this protracted months or years-long process to successfully file a claim, is there some better way, some better hand-off between dod and va, some comprehensive medical exam that you go through that identifies these issues, perhaps ahead of time approve mental health claims given the propensity for iraq and afghanistan vets to claim them,

and with that try to shorten the backlog and speed up the process. i think of these two wars, the presumptive condition of agent orange, beyond all the cultural issues you all describe, there's an incredible caseload and stress on the system right now. i would love to hear either other ideas or something that i have asked the vha and i will ask the vba, is this also a resource issue. do you need more people processing these claims, reviewing the claims that are being run or do we have the resources in place and it's just a matter of cultural and perhaps some ideas like the one-stop shop? so with a couple minutes i have remaining, maybe we could start with miss ruell and work down the line. >> i think that if someone applied with a medical condition, they don't really understand what they need to prove. we tell them you need to show us that medical condition contributed or was caused by service. that doesn't mean much to the person who sending us tons of medical evidence in. when you call the person and you explain what exactly their

medical condition has to show, then they understand what they need to send in. so i feel like we have a call center that you can call. most people in the call center have never processed a claim before, so when you call the call center, they do a great job and they do everything they can, but if they haven't processed a claim, they don't know the burden the veteran has to prove. if we educated the service organizations, i have suggested having seminars for nursing home administrators, congressional liaisons, and vsos to explain what the va looks for when you submit a claim, that way they could help many more people do it the right way the first time. >> thank you. mr. robinson? >> we've had bbd quick start. we've had these systems, these programs out there to speed the process up while the person is still in the military. these things have been around -- bbd has been around forever. so if we can't get those done timely, well, you know --

there's no silver bullet. there's no easy answer. we need to get people who know the business together, sit down, and discuss what is really needed and stop doing these quick fixes, these ideas -- you know, we work the claims, we know what's going on with the claims. we know how to fix the problem but no one is listening to us. >> mr. soto, is it a resource issue, is it simply the culture that you've described? what would you change beyond that culture if, in fact, there's an improvement to be seen there? >> one thing i saw a while back and i have only seen it less than a handful of times is that when a veteran got out of service, somehow he was given a va examination as a discharge exam and essentially we didn't have to re-examine him when he applied for benefits within a year of discharge. that kind of work in speeding up the claim. i have only seen it a handful of

times. i'm not sure why it occurred but that may be an idea that can help speed up stuff. as they're leaving service, to give a more comprehensive military exam. >> thanks. appreciate that. i yield back. >> thank you, very much. mr. jolly, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. soto, welcome to the hearing, witnesses, welcome. mr. soto, i have a question for you. you mentioned the june 24th s d study that you circulated that seemingly led to your dismissal on june 30th. you mentioned in earlier testimony previous reports or studies you had circulated as well. can you speak to those? >> i had circulated a study concerning rv sars, the raters, and how the accuracy process was impacting rating decisions. the gentleman spoke about the dd

214. one of the prawoblems we see is sometimes there's agreements a to accuracy as to how we read evidence. if you go to law school, you kind of get a real in depth teaching on what it lay evidence, what is material, what is relevant and that sort of stuff, and then the va has these rules were you at the certain time, place, or circumstance. there are a lot of people that have problems matching it up, not because they can't, but because the training is just not that clear. the training and rules continue to change. so the study went into accuracy issues that were impacting rating decisions. we were either not paying, not service connecting, owe are we were just overpaying. the decisions that we found, and which didn't make a lot of people happy, essentially that there was no central focus -- in

terms of where the mistakes were coming from, in essence somehow exemplifying we have a big problem and we can't easily fix it. we have to really look at the consistency as to what is and what is not a mistake in terms of a quality error and when are we going to say that somebody's analysis of an issue is wrong or not. it impacted ratings due process. >> you mentioned two studies earlier. you said you had raised several -- >> oh. >> was there a pattern or was it just the two major studies and here is where i'm going? were they ever responded to? >> when we did the study, everybody expected a response from both qrt and management. we got none. when we did the vsr study, we got none. >> how did you distribute them? did you distribute them to all employees via e-mail, did you send them to management? >> via e-mail. i believe our union also distributed to management as a

courtesy. >> and did you receive any response from management either warning you not to do it or a substantive response? >> no response whatsoever. >> no response whatsoever. so you circulated the response on june 24th and then the only response you had was on june 30th your separation letter, is that right? >> yes, sir. >> so no acknowledgment throughout your time at the regional office regarding any of these circulated reports or notifications or concerns? >> the only comment i received, and it was through other employees, and i believe they -- how do i say -- gave me information that apparently at the quality review team there was a comment made to the leadership there is management going to respond, and that's the last i heard. i got no response from management. >> okay. so you would say you're june 30th letter -- or the termination was a complete

surprise? >> yes, sir. >> i mean, i'm asking and i'm trying to be helpful here. i'm not being critical but as an employee if you're circulating reports about management, i would have expected some response, and frankly i think the lack of response is more damning at times than a substantive response. the fact that these concerns went completely unresponded to. that's accurate, right? >> yes, sir. we expected dialogue to try to address the quality review process. >> let me ask you a question. if you had the opportunity to remain employed with the va, would that be a preference? >> yes, sir. i actually like the job. i found it incredibly interesting helping these veterans. i was one who was willing to go beyond the -- what's required to try to service connect everyone, especially it's very difficult to service connect some of the people who served aboard aircraft carriers and that sort of stuff in terms of the vietnam era because the records are just

not there and i would do everything possible to research issues, make legal arguments to try to get these individuals what they deserve. >> very good. thank you. and thank you to contributing to the performance and success con to the success of the regional office. i appreciate that. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. walz. >> thank you all for being here. it's incredibly helpful. you hear the members talk. when the democracy is talking you hear what's coming from their constituents and obviously the nation is focusing on this and it's incredibly disappointing to hear how you have been handled. it's beyond the pale that some of this would go on. the flip side is there are dedicated people that keep coming out for the veteran. it's about the veteran. we need to figure out a national veterans policy. we need to have a national focus on this and then getting at it

and i keep hearing and first sergeant, you are exactly right on this that we hear it. i've been in some units where they told us change was coming. that meant the enlisted troops were going to get hammered because that's the way the leadership thought. then they said change was going to come and we knew we were the best and going to move forward. this issue comes back to leadership. how they are enforced. they can have the ar-670-1 but not every unit looked the same. some were more rag tag. and the issue on this is that i would like to get from you and i think you are bringing up these good points on how we get there. we talked until we're blue in the face. we all know there should be one record. we get siloed up in the two biggest agencies of government, compete for funds against one another and that's why the last six months in the army they don't do dental exams because the va will do it and they push you out the door. the taxpayers still get it. the va still gets it and it all comes downhill. my question is on some of this. this is a very interesting point on the veterans and my colleague

from texas brought up the good point about the claims. it's so interesting the irs takes every tax return as it's -- you sign it that it's honest and they audit afterwards. the va audits on the front end and then spits them out the back side. so the taxpayer is given -- the average taxpayer is given more credibility an this. i'm not saying we should not be overpaying. we should be stewards of every taxpayer dollar. no veteran should deserve a claim that doesn't deserve it. if they have a benefit of the doubt on their side it would be this group. the folks in the va working there try to get that right also. here's my dilemma for you. and i asked this to you mr. roe. we have resourced the va on i.t. to an obscene amount. and we've got nothing for it. and that definition of insanity again. this is an accountability from congress and the administration and to va. how do i go back to my taxpayers

and tell them we don't have enough there. we need to give them more computers? how would you respond about that? has it been so bungled? when i hear you can't find a copier, it is just atrocious. the amount that we have put there and should have gotten results. so can you comment? do they just bungle it that badly? >> yeah. just the general tools you need to do your job are not there. so if we started out by having enough printers and copiers so -- every time i walk to pick up a print that is from here to chairman miller's area, that's wasting time. you aren't allowed to have a printer an your desk. i have no idea why but the amount of time you take picking up paper and then if you leave your paper on the printer, you can get in trouble. so every time you print something you have to go pick it up. and then you run the risk of chatting with somebody on your way back from the printer. so simple fixes in our office would help a lot. i don't understand who is -- >> isn't it ironic i keep

hearing this fear of retribution. this real retribution that's happening and yet we have a pending act of congress to go after the managers you have. i'm intrigued. nobody will fight for due process. it's sacred. due process is sacred. but this idea of them using regional counsel and taxpayers dollars to defend themselves in personnel mismanagement of someone, somebody has to have a middle ground there. we certainly want folks to be making decisions and be in power to do so but not to the point where if i make this mistake and fire somebodyincorrectly, i'll have counsel pay for it. how familiar are you with other offices? because many of us, the concern is this -- we're not provincial boy choice. my two offices are sioux falls and minneapolis which i often hear are really good. i don't know if i can trust that or not. do you think what you are seeing in your offices is it different across the country?

if you have any inclination as you talk amongst yourself. do you think there are offices performing better? do you think systemically it's pretty similar? >> i think systemically, a lot of the issues are probably similar, but i think the bullying and the nepotism and cronyism and things like that are more prevalent in my office. we had a help team come in from two different regional offices to process claims and i got to know some of the people. i asked them that question. are you treated okay at your regional office? do you do these discovered claim memos? and the one guy didn't know what one was. so i feel like not all offices are the same. but i feel like there is a culture of corruption in general. >> my time is about up. you want to comment quickly. >> one simple answer -- do a complete review of every one of them, then we will know. >> yeah, i agree. the problems are systemic. there are very few managers that

handle it differently. >> great. thank you. i yield back. >> thank you. dr. roe, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. sergeant robinson, i think as a 1st sergeant, i sort of doubt you were very intimidated by a camera and walkie talkie from the 1st sergeants i've known. i know for the veterans watching this tonight and people around the country, it gets a little confusing with all this about what's going on in the office. i'm looking at it asrobinson, a the veteran see. i'm filling my form out. what can i expect? what we heard here, and i've been on this committee 5 1/2 years, is that we had a huge backlog of claims. that was the problem we had. and many of these claims are not adjudicated in a way that benefits the veteran. what do we do? we put a lot -- we put a lot of money in hiring more people and training people to evaluate these claims. that's number one. number two, we decide if we go to paperless claims, ms. brown

brought up. put the money into infrastructure. we've put an obscene amount into infrastructure. we go to the paperless. third if you have a fully processed claim, all of this was going to get better. and what i hear tonight after all that has happened is it isn't gotten better. i think mr. orourk said, have we hired people? every single year i ask the secretary and they brought a budget up here. do you have enough money to carry out your mission? and every year, the answer was yes. so we've -- we on both sides of the aisle think have provided the resources. what i'm hearing tonight, they aren't used properly or we don't have enough resources. so which is it? and am i correct on those things? that's exactly, i think, what all of us who have been here for a while have heard. and we've done those things. yet we still have a problem out there. and let me just go through two or three questions really quickly.

i want to get the answer to is how is an old claim made to look new, and is it systemic? that's something i want to know. and i know that another thing, ms. ruell you brought up, how do you prevent duplicative claims. if we're paying a veteran twice that means there's a everywhere not getting paid. i want to make sure our resources are not infinite. they're finite. i want to make sure the veterans who deserve that. i want to know how we stop that as quickly as we can so our veterans who deserve to be paid can get paid in a timely fashion. so those are just a few things i'll throw out there. if you could answer them for me, am i correct in what i've said? >> if someone is getting paid twice, it doesn't mean that someone is not getting paid. it just means that we incorrectly processed a claim, and allowed for the system to pay them twice. i think we have plenty of resources at the va. i think that employees are beat down. if you came and visited the office and you went to the desks of the employees and asked them

if they like their jobs, very few in my office would say that they can't wait to come to work today. we're not treated very nicely. if you tell your child they are bad every single day, they'll probably think they're bad. so there's no positive reinforcement. it's just a really corrosive-type atmosphere, and -- >> so back up to my question. how do we stop duplicative payments? how does that stop? that seems simple. >> we need to slow down when the claim comes in. they shouldn't be on production to see how many they can get into the system that day. they need to have time to do it the right way. >> so my -- if i'm a veteran and i put in a claim tomorrow, and we did all these things and then the solution was, i mentioned paperless, hiring more, backlog, we're going to get rid of that. i could expect it to get processed in 125 days at 98% accuracy. that's what we're told. that's not happening, am i right? or wrong? is it happening? >> no.

i mean, the backlog is only a few types of claims. it's not all the claims at the va. so that promise is only made to someone who is filing an original claim or a claim that needs to go to the rating board. if you have a different kind of claim it may not be included in the definition of the backlog. so it depends what you file and what end product is on it to determine if you are included in the backlog or not. >> and what i have heard also is that the problem that we have, and i haven't heard anybody say we don't have enough money going at the problem. unrealistic goals and then basically accountability. no one is acountable. and i think those are the things -- and basically just leadership at the local level. and so i would assume that in the various regions around the country, the outcomes could be very different. if my claims are sent to one region, i may get adjudicated fairly rapidly. in another reason, maybe not so