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

quickly. so is the very ability, just as we -- when you have seen one, the ig told us when you've been to one visit, you've seen one visit. is that the same thing toward the vba? or is there some across the country, can you expect the same metric? if you go to a surgeon in my hometown you should be able to get the same gallbladder operation you can in another hometown from a board certified surgeon. can i expect the same level of scrutiny at one regional office as another one i guess is what i'm asking? >> i don't think no one can answer that question because we ship files all over the place. there is no accountability. i mean, if i did a claim in south carolina, if someone developed a claim in south carolina, i send it to florida for it to be rated. if the rater can't rate it because i made a mistake in south carolina, who is responsible for fixing it?

so, you know, it sounds good on paper to move things around and all this kind of stuff. but you have to fix responsibility. you have to know who is responsible. who can i pick up the phone and call and say is -- this is your problem. why is this? so the veteran, when he makes a phone call, he can be talking to somebody in california. he can be talking to somebody in south carolina. he might be getting two different answers from the same question. so, no, we need to fix responsibility. >> i yield back. >> mr. huelskamp, you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to hear from very courageous employees. i do pause to wonder why you would want to show up here and -- but i do understand, it must be a commitment. but ms. ruell, i want to follow up on reference to the 96 white boxes that -- and i was stuck in

an airport and i was a little late to your testimony, but i was reading that. what happened and do you know whatever happened to those 96 white boxes full of claims from veterans? >> no, i'm not really sure. i tried to check up on the boxes and they got moved somewhere else. they were supposed to go through the boxes and make sure the stuff was not identifiable before it was shredded. i'm hoping that's what happened. i go down to triage once in a while when i have a reason to be down there and those boxes aren't there anymore. no one in triage has told me they went through all of them. so i am not sure whatever happened to the boxes. >> any guesstimates on how many veterans were part of those 96 boxes, one box a veteran or no idea? >> oh, my. there was -- there was thousands of claims in those boxes. now some of them probably truly

were not identifiable. but a lot of the things i saw in the boxes were not easily identifiable. and they took a little bit of work to figure out. and there's no time at the va for investigations or to figure things ot. you have to move quickly. so unfortunately, probably some of them, when if you get a call and your office as a congress person and they say the va says they didn't get my claim, i believe that. because i saw some of them in the box. >> so you provided the committee your e-mails. you received notice from someone, another employee contacted you and then you contacted your superiors and notified them of these boxes and then there was fear they ended up being shredded. was that the series of events? >> actually, that employee is sitting in the audience tonight and he -- we actually contacted washington immediately when that happened because we knew from using the chain of command they'd make it probably to the

shredder before anybody did anything with that. and they actually did act on that quickly. and i was told that they didn't go to the shredder, but i don't know where they went from that day until now. it's been a couple of years. >> i don't see that in your notes of the notification. was that an, i mail, phone call, anything in writing from washington about what happened or that that was taken care of? >> yeah, actually, i called a friend who had been illegally fired by the va and asked him to send an e-mail to allison hickey, and he did. and apparently shortly after, they took action and prevented those documents from going to the shredder. but i think had we not done that -- >> mr. robinson, i appreciate you being here. i want to follow up. i understand your claims it was data manipulation or misreporting data. can you describe a little bit again why you were fired and

what your superiors were upset about when they fired you from your job? was that you mr. robinson or mr. soto? >> the reports that i authored concerned accuracy and how the accuracy data in my view wasn't being presented, well, accurately. there seems to be a problem in terms of trying to find common ground when we're deciding claims. and the common ground seems to be -- the problems and finding common ground seems to be over some very basic and then over complex evidentiary issues. in other words, we weren't reading claims accurately. i want to bring that to the attention, and i wanted to get consistent instruction n guidance in terms of which way do they want us to go. and i think that led to -- >> and i appreciate that. all three of you as a member of

congress. like all my colleagues, we receive probably dozens and dozens of veterans claims to follow up on. and i continue to tell my constituents that you shouldn't have to call your member of congress to get your claim processed. 500 times in my 3 1/2 years, that's happened. and so when you say that someone gets special treatment if they get through to their congressman, that really upsets me and that upsets many veterans as well. we have to fix this system. i appreciate you being here and sharing your testimony. and later i'd follow up in follow-up testimony as well after -- or notice after we hear from v.a. officials because they'll come and talk about how good the data is. they're going to say, things are improving so much. we can't believe anything on the data because so much of it looks manipulated, falsified and is only half reporting. i yield back, mr. chairman. >> mr. titus, you're recognized for five minutes.

>> yes, these regional offices vary greatly because the one that serves las vegas is in reno. it was the fifth worst in the country and the way they reduced their backlog was to send half the cases out to other regional offices all around. we don't know where all they went. so i'd also like to kind of follow up on the points you were making. as i've listened to all of this, it seems very clear to me that we have two levels of problems. both are very important but we've got to separate these and look at them differently if we're going to ever come with any practical solutions that move this forward rather than just have hearing after hearing with no suggestions. it seems like one problem is the policy at the national level, like the fully developed claims or the found claims or the budgeting. and what i'm hearing from you is that as 1st sergeant said, that leadership level is not luc

listening to the people in the trenches an the front lines dealing with this every day. if they listened more then some of these policies may be developed a little differently. second kind of problem seems to me is the personnel problem at the regional offices. now we just passed a bill out of the house making it easier to fire people at that ses level. and so a lot of the regional offices have folks at that level in charge but some of them don't. the reno office, for example, has a g-15. there's no ses person there, but this person's obviously not a very good manager. we wouldn't be fifth worse and yet they can't get rid of him. they can't fire him. he's still there, which i can't understand. maybe you all can address just kind of that specific. how do we get rid of the people who are in charge at these regional offices as opposed to

talking about the leadership in washington. can you all help me with what might be a way to make that work better? >> well, if the director at the divisional office understood that they were held accountable for the actions and someone up there did that, then they would get the message. however, we don't know who is doing what at the regional office level. we don't know if the directors are commanding or not. when they get in trouble, they shift their work to some place else. so was it a resource problem? was it a leadership problem? we don't know. because now we're shipping cases, we're hiding cases by shipping them one place to the other. there is a need for review of each regional office. it's unfair to a direct who are

is doing a good job to be lumped in with a director who is not doing a good job. >> or for him to have to take on the burden of somebody doing poorly. now he's got do double the work because reno wasn't delivering. >> exactly. does he have the resource? so now he's back. him and his employees who are doing a good job are now suffering. is that right? no, it's not right. so somebody has to take the lead in this and go to each regional office because i believe that it's a problem all over. we've got it in baltimore. we find out the mail and sustain the claim process. it's the piece of document, it's that thing that we need to start the claim, and we need to process the claim. so if you look at regional offices and how they handle that mail is a key, okay? and i just want to go on record

for saying that this centralized mail that they are coming up with, somebody needs to get a handle an that thing and make sure it's ready because we will -- we saw a claim disappear in cyberspace. that system is not ready. it's not ready. and if we don't do something about it, we'll be talking about that next. >> ms. ruell? >> it's just strange to me how easy it is to fire an employee but it's so hard to fire a manager. so i don't understand why we're not all under the same rules because if a manager is found to have illegally fired somebody, more than one time, i don't understand why they aren't on this pip they put the employees an if the vault or production standards across the country, if

56% of passing and that's your office has a rate of only 56 people passing, how are you getting a bonus at the end of the year? so i feel like they are immune unless you can prove they are acting outside the scope of their employment. and i think that legal standard needs to change. >> that's a pretty vague standard. >> uh-huh. >> i was just going to add that maybe someone needs to determine that manager, his services are no longer required. >> thaunk you, mr. chair. >> mr. fitzpatrick, you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank the chairman for calling the hearing and thank the witnesses and the panel for your incredible and compelling testimony tonight. ms. ruell, you testified in your opening statement that you came to the va around 2007. and within a short period of time, of your tenure at the va,

you began to notice things were not working as they should. that claims were not being processed timely. claims were being lost. fellow employees were reporting that mail was being set aside and some cases mail was being shredded. that we have constituents. perhaps a widow of a world war ii veteran who sits down and writes a traditional letter, handwrites a letter, puts a stamp on it and sent it to the philadelphia va office believing that claim would be processed, that that simple request might be heard. that letter might have been shredded. i went on to find in a report to your managers that duplicate payments were being made. and as a dedicated employee of the va, you tried to fix it. you asked that those duplicate claims be recaptured, be brought back in. around the same time, i was sent by the people of the philadelphia region to come back

to congress to serve them, and i had served a previous term back in the 109th congress, 2005 and 2006. so i had the chance to go back and rehire dedicated case workers who served veterans, who worked with me in the past. they are veterans themselves. and within a short period of time, 2011, they were reporting to me that something was wrong at the veterans administration. not as they remembered it. claims were being delayed. they couldn't get answers. they were sending letters. the letters were never received. and we're hearing the same from our constituents. i did not know you at the time, kristen, but you were saying the same things to your leadership at the philadelphia regional office. and for that, you were criticized. you were castigated. you were abused. you were disciplined. i think you ought to be applauded for trying to change the system from within. i think you are owed an apology from the veteran administration. i think your fellow comrades here who are with you and work with you and other offices, they

should be applauded. there are thousands of dedicated veterans administration employees who try to do the right thing from within. our nation's veterans deserve an apology. some of them pass away while waiting for their claims to be processed. ms. ruell, you provided information when the administration at the philadelphia office was not listening to my office. flawed data, duplicate payments which we wrote to general shinseki when you brought that information to us in september of 2012. and a response was received in february of 2013 from the under secretary essentially that if there are any problems, they are so minor that we don't need to change any systems in order to address them. knowing what you know, ms. ruell, how can the administration of the va provide that kind of an answer? >> i think it's the easiest

answer to just ignore the problem. from working with the oig the last four weeks, they are baffled as to data mine this information and find the problem. but i don't think an answer of it's inconclusive or we're not sure how to figure this problem out is a fair answer to a veteran who has been waiting for their benefits and they are sitting in a box because they have two claim numbers and we're not sure what we're going to do with that claim. >> just last week the philadelphia va acknowledged an entitlement and pension backlog of 49.6%. 42,141 veterans served by the philadelphia office. they are waiting more than 125 days for an answer to their claims. based on your experience is this an accurate statistic for philadelphia? >> no. if we didn't have that memo, i think the number would be much higher. >> the obama administration has promised to end the va benefits backlog by 2015.

with 274,000 claims still stuck in the backlog, do you think this promise is feasible? >> absolutely not. it breeds corruption in the regional offices and we might say the claim has been processed but it's probably not processed correctly. we probably didn't help the veteran the way we're supposed to. >> are veterans of our nation pass away while waiting for their claim to be processed? >> many. >> can you estimate how many? >> no, but i know that that's the easiest kind of claim to do. if a veteran passes away, you hit one button and you get the same amount of credit as if you worked the claim and granted the benefit. >> that number was 19,500 back in december when the -- when it was investigated by cir. investigated the report. >> yield back.

>> mr. meehan for five minutes. >> mr. chairman, thank you for the courtesy of being able to be with you here today. and ms. ruell, i see by your testimony that you were warned by a supervisor that you were at the philadelphia management center. that you were not permitted to report issues to your director. i greatly regret that and appreciate the courage of you being here today. in addition, your testimony and those of your colleagues has opened the door to the appreciation that we're seeing exactly the same type of cooking the books on the benefits side of the va as has been exposed on the health care side. and this is a whole new exploration of the management problems at the va. your testimony is very compelling. we've talked about improper shredding of documents, beneficiaries getting improper payments. and in many cases duplicate payments. you've talked about the failure

to rectify once those payments have been improperly paid and the failure to notify the irs of what could be the ability to recapture some of those. all very, very significant. let me just drill down on a couple of things because i want to follow up with some of these issues when we are concluded. you talked about the number of people who may have been receiving duplicate benefits. do you have -- you talked about the process of people receiving duplicate benefits. do you have any estimate of how many people you believe are receiving duplicate benefits? what was the number of 41,000 duplicate records? >> that was told to me by an employee in the central office. that would meaner cla our claim are listed in the system with more than one number. at that point, anybody could get paid twice. it's up to the case processor to identify it's a duplicate record

and fix it. after i reported things in 2010, there was a list given out for people that were getting paid twice. i provided, i believe as an exhibit. i checked that same list last week. i checked every claim number on that list. unfortunately, after we stopped the second payment, you have to fix the record so that that person that's looked at -- >> the essence is it may be as many as 41,000 records that are duplicate? >> oh, they are probably duplicates but they are probably not all paid. >> do you have any idea about the scope of the claims that have been paid in excess? >> i only know the ones that i've seen, but i've seen over $2 million when i researched it. the office of special council considered a gross waste of funds at $2 million or more so it was my goal to at least prove that. and that wasn't very hard. >> you spoke as well about boxes of mail. what's the difference between military mail and returned mail?

>> i'm not actually sure what the difference is. that's just what they call this mail. and it's mail that we mail to a claimant and it comes -- return mail comes back because we don't have the right addresses. we pay by direct deposit now, which is not the best thing for a claimant because we don't know -- >> while that mail is sitting there and no one is going through it and clarifying it, there is no response to the veteran who has sent that piece. is that accurate? >> yep. >> so we're waiting for up to two or three years now. one of my colleagues already questioned you on this but there are 96 boxes. you have testified and i have in my hand the exhibit which clarifies and quantifies, not just 96 boxes but eight separate, in addition, what were eight other filing cabinets of this kind of mail. to your knowledge, has any of that been shredded?

>> i know that when i went down a week later, it wasn't there anymore. so i'm not -- >> you say a week later. when was a week later? this will be important for our follow-up. >> when i reported that. i've made so many different reportings. >> we have a good record here with your exhibit. you have a colleague that brought it to your attention and then from your attention you brought it to the attention of your supervisors the fact that these boxes were sitting there and they were not -- they were not handled. >> uh-huh. and then i went down subsequently probably a week later and all those filing cabinets were empty. >> so a week later you went down and they were empty? >> yes. >> okay. we'll follow up on that. sergeant rob beson, did you testify there were some 9500 similar kinds of documents in baltimore as well? >> no there was a report that in baltimore they had boxes of documents that was not processed. >> not processed. but you don't know whether these were those that were the triage documents? >> it had to be documents coming in because there were not

established in the -- >> i thank you for that. and i will work with my colleagues, but we're particularly concerned about the circumstance in philadelphia. we will work to try to get some answers for you, particularly with regard to those boxes of documents that appear to have disappeared. thau thank you, mr. chairman. >> mr. lamalfa. >> i appreciate the opportunity to be able to sit in on this committee here tonight. i represent far northern california, very large district with very significant veterans population who have been very frustrated, as has our office with just trying to get answers for vets. greatly appreciate this whistleblower panel being here tonight and having the guts to do that. and you should not ever feel like you can't speak. so i'll try and keep it quick here. to all three of you, have you ever been told, and this is redndant. my apologies. have you ever been told not to take your concerns to members of

congress or to hear from members of congress on how to handle issues, whether it's an individual claim or just the overall system? have you ever been told not to deal with us? don't talk to those members of congress? >> we're told that if we don't bring our issues internally, we were sent an e-mail it was an improper avenue of redress. when we got our yearly whistleblower e-mail, we got another e-mail that said recently a lot of employees have been contacting the under secretary with issues at work, and they told us in that e-mail it was an inappropriate avenue of redress. and i immediately reported it and said are you telling us we can't whistleblow and they resent the whistleblower memo out with new language. >> and the other two members of the panel. how have you been dealt with? >> i took up my issues with the va chain of command for x amount of years and now i started

sending letters to congress and no one has told me that i couldn't send it. >> mr. soto? >> we have not been told, but when similar experience, as ms. ruell, when individuals contacted the under secretary directly via e-mail, then we -- they got back letters from management saying you violated the chain of command. >> we feel we're different than the chain of command. we take the phone calls from veterans when they can't get satisfaction with the va. our offices get those calls. so we intervene. we ran into a brick wall because of management. again, we deal with the oakland regional office which is now under new management. we feel pretty positive about that at this point. but under the old regime, we were stonewalled pretty badly. even so much as i had a staff member who decided to hand deliver, not try and go through the mail system, a claim for a

veteran who waited 36 years to be handled. and was denied entry into the building. the security was waiting for her. so to follow upon that, do you feel you'd have the freedom to -- or do you feel like you should be able to talk to a member of congress or staff because of firsthand dealing with a veterans claim and so they called us when they can't get through to va? >> definitely. i mean, we have a congressional team in our office. so if a congress person calls in they speak to the congressional team. the problem is so many people now have figured out that's the way to apply for benefits that we have so many congressionals to work on that those are taking priority over the people that have been waiting many years. so it's -- >> it shouldn't be that way. you shouldn't have to contact your congressional office to get results. we should only be there to help. but nonetheless, we're not going to tell them no as much as we can keep up and probably one of

my offices, 70% of their work is handling veterans phone calls. so there's something broken in the system here. follow up. have you -- we've had in our oakland office again previous management ordered them to deny or underrate claims or give 0% ratings in order to process claims. have you ever been ordered to just get them off the books, to deny them or find 0%? have any of you been ordered to do that? all three of you, please. >> i don't rate cases so i've never been -- >> do you know of that in your office by those that do? >> i can't answer that question. >> okay. ms. ruell. >> i don't rate cases either. >> do you hear of such things? >> indirectly, we hear that the rules aren't totally being followed when processing claims. so i believe that it's not about

0% or ratings. i believe that people are getting denied because it's faster to do it that way than granting the benefits. >> and then they may get kicked to the board of appeals. >> yes. >> mr. soto, real quickly. >> yes, in talking to other raters, we passed this thing called changing the game rules. and in essence, to me, in my view, what it meant was that, for increased claims, we would try to rate the evidence of record that usually resulted in zeros or denials, rather than ordering an exam, for example. >> thank you so much, mr. chairman. >> thank you very much. members, thank you for your questions. we want to thank again the folks for testifying. we appreciate your courage in something forwar coming forward. thank you for being here tonight.

[inaudible conversations] again, noticing that the witnesses are at the table. i'd like to ask the audience to go ahead and take a seat and the witnesses to please rise, raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear under penalty of perjury that the testimony you are about to provide is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? please be seated. each of your complete written statements will be made a part of the hearing record. members, prior to recognizing the witnesses for testimony, i am going to address a recent issue and i'm going to provide a

timeline to each of the members for your own information because it's going to be a little hard to follow the timeline as i recount it for you. but i instructed the committee staff to make a visit to the philadelphia regional office on the 2nd of july of 2014. as of the 20th of june, specific concerns that we've heard some tonight have been raised on the management or more accurately mismanagement of that regional office. and i did want our staff to spend a day on the ground to perform a technical review of some of the various files, view the office and meet with individuals who work there. this is a customary thing for our staff to do. so let me run through what occurred on this unannounced visit. my staff alerted the office of congressional legislative affairs of their inent in arrival, approximately 9:00 in the morning and about 20 minuted later, they arrived. greeted by an employee of the regional office and they were accompanied to a conference room

on the fourth floor. within moments of arrival, one of my staff went to the rest room. on the fourth floor and there was another individual that was in the rest room who had set a yellow notepad not far from the sink. when my staff member went by the sink, they noticed that there was writing at the top of the page that was circled. in fact, we've got a copy of it. i'd like to go ahead and post it if we can, so everybody can see it. members, you have a copy of this. it's the yellow legal pad. and two names were circled at the top of the page. these two employees were from the regional office and they both had acted as whistleblowers to improper activities in the past. my staff then looked at the remainder of the page and on it was written my staff members names for information of their status as committee veterans affairs and then if you will

notice about midway down you'll see where the word ignore was followed by one of my staff member's name. so you see the word ignore just -- looks like to the left of the pen. before i finish the timeline for the member's benefit, the person who exited the rest room with the yellow notepad in hand was the acting director, lucy philipov of the philadelphia regional office. now the acting director had met with my staff moments later in the conference room and when requested, who had provided notice of the visit, she stated she had not spoken with ocla but instead had only spoken with diana rubens moments earlier regarding the congressional staff's arrival. she then began the meeting with two comments. first said that the philadelphia regional office endeavors to do all things with integrity and give proper benefits to veterans. second she made a curious statement when taken in the

context of ms. philipov's possession of the notepad with the names of two of our whistleblowers at the very top that was circled. she said it's difficult to have employees or ex-employees who say that we're not doing a good job. and when we hear from ms. holiday in a moment, i believe that this professed commitment to integrity and service to veterans will be seriously challenged on the basis of verified data manipulation, the leadership's failure to follow reporting protocols and oig's ongoing investigation into a myriad of inappropriate practices. now while in the conference room on the fourth floor, the vso or veterans service manage told ms. philipov the team was on their way up with files and computers to facilitate my staff's access. then in an exchange that transpired three separate times, ms. philipov directed at the congressional staff be accommodated in a room on the third floor despite repeated protest acheses the veterans service manager.

both ms. philipov and the veterans service center manager then exited the conference room and they came back. and ms. philipov dictated that our staff would in fact, be directed to be accommodated an a room in the third floor. this room was found to be wired with activated microphones and an activated camera. so it could be no surprise to anyone that the staff requested relocation to a different room. a room that oig/aig vacated which was presumably free of recording devices. now back to my message. the acting director was in possession of a note upon which was written ignore my staff. am i surprised? no. actually, i'm shocked. as my colleague and ranking member observed at our hearing on whistleblowers last week, va is widely known to have a culture of denying problems and not listening to feedback, be it

from congress, be it from veterans or from its own employees. now va ignores its whistleblowers who report practices that go against the principles of the department and acting secretary gibson has already been noted tonight that he's deeply disappointed in the failures at va to take whist dlelt blower complaints seriously. va ignores vso. when they are found to be inconvenient such as when vba instructed -- obstructed the american legions regional office reviews. limited the legions ability to fruitfully conduct visits, converse with claims processing staff and review disability benefits claims in accordance with its longstanding practice of seeking quality. va now ignores committee staff as well. frequently my staff visits regional offices to prevent technical legal claims review. by way of example on a recent visit, 14 appeals files were reviewed from two regional offices. 12 of those 14 were found to

have remandible errors. yet when my staff convened with regional office staff to demonstrate the errors and seek correction for the veterans that had been negatively affected, the regional staff refuses to acknowledge and often even the most rudimentary of the mistakes. quite simply this oversight complicated vba's messages that we're doing great work. so while va may ignore employees, ignore whistleblowers and vsos and members of congressional staff and ignore let's not forget the veterans, they are supposed to serve, let me stress you will not ignore this committee anymore. and be on notice you will not ignore our staff that is acting as this committee's agents as well. the committee has a constitutional oversight and i intend it shall be carried out unhindered an behalf of the american public and on behalf of

our nation's veterans. if you look very carefully, put this note back up, there's some pretty derogatory comments on this. would anybody at the table like to comment about the comments that are written on this piece of paper? ms. hickey, you are welcome to comment. >> chairman, without question, without question we respect the oversight of this committee and your staffs. what occurred on that day was not acceptable and not indicative of the normal ways in which ms. ruben might behave. i know she's been on visits with your staff and even with members of this committee before, and i think if we reflect an those visits in the last year, you would say she did not repeat similar behaviors. but i will not excuse it. i have not excused it with her.

and i will just tell you without question, it is unacceptable. and i offer on behalf of the department my sincere apologies to your staff who experienced that that day and my commitment that it will not happen again and that you will receive absolutely, with open arms and full support anything you need on any visit you go on. >> under secretary hickey, can you explain why ms. rubens came to our offices to try to cover up what had taken place and gave a totally implausible reason? in fact, i believe the excuse she gave was that she did not say these things. she said that other people were saying these things and that in fact, staff should ignore them. so you're now saying ms. ruben did lie when she came into our office? >> chairman miller, i was not present when ms. ruben came to talk to you. i do note her entire purpose for

coming to talk to her, and to your staff was to express her sincere regret for her comments made on that piece of paper. >> well, let me -- i apologize but i'm going to take about two more minutes. all right. on this note, it talks about arrogance, it directs a person to ignore a committee staff person and then it makes another derogatory statement about a committee staff person. ms. rubens came to our committee offices and when she did, she did not apologize for that. what she said was, she had told the acting director to ignore what other people may be saying about my staff. and you are telling me this person is still employed even though she gave a directive to not tell an agent of this committee what was happening at

the regional office? >> chairman miller, i will say again without question, without question, we respect the oversight of every single one of you on this committee and in these hallowed halls. and any one of you who would like to come at any point in time and many of you have into our regional offices, we will effect every possible way to support you, your staff and any oversight you need to exercise. i commit that to you, and i will please ask you to please call me directly if you ever see anything different. >> so i'll take that as a no that ms. rubens did not lie. even though she did. again, your commitment is appreciated, but it is not believed. and i appreciate you being here tonight ms. halliday. you are recognized for five minutes. >> chairman miller and members

of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the oig's recent oversight work within vba. i am accompanied by mr. brent arronte, the director of the san diego inspections division. oig provides cyclic oversight of operations performs national audits, special reviews and reviews allegations to help identify and address problems in varos. we see vbo is making some incremental process through its initiatives and in response to implementing oig recommendations. but more work needs to be done. we have concerns that vba's performance goals are not realistic and compromised by data integrity issues. vba has appeared more concerned with reaching its goals than providing a balanced approach to its workload management. we continue to find significant claims processing error rates,

resulting in improper payments that in some cases create hardships for veterans. today we issued the results of a review of vba's special two-year initiative to clear old claims. this initiative was put in place so that the veterans who waited the longest would begin collecting benefits. vba implemented a provisional rating process, but we found it was less effective than vba's existing intermediate rating process and quickly providing benefits to veterans. instead, we determined vba's policy change, removed provisional rates from the pending inventory while additional work was still required. once removed, varos did not place a priority on finalizing these claims which were no longer considered part of the backlog. the policy change led to inaccurate reporting of vba's workload statistics, on pending

and completed claims. we also projected that vba did not accurately process about 32% of the rating decisions completed under the initiative. we estimated these accurate -- inaccuracies resulted in about 40 million in improper payments. vba set priorities to meet performance goals aimed at clearing the backlog of pending compensation claims. this approach has created additional backlogs in delays in other critical workload areas such as appeals and nonrating claims, including changes to veterans' dependents. another claims processing activities such as the management of temporary 100% disability evaluations, military drill pay composition offsets and benefit reductions need improved financial stewardship to reduce the risks as improper

payments. we've been told by vba staff that higher priorities such as processing the compensation backlog took precedence over processing this other work load. we see that vba needs to ensure adequate resources are in place to reduce the financial risks and the improper method monthlyt payments and provide better services to veterans. in the wake of receiving a large number of allegations of patient wait time manipulation in va bay, we are receiving a number of serious allegations regarding mail mismanagement, manipulation of date of claims and other data integrity issues in the baltimore, philadelphia, los angeles, oakland and houston varos. and today we received an additional allegation regarding the little rock varo.

vba reported to us the mail mismanagement problem at the baltimore varo that led to confirming over 9,500 pieces of unprocessed mail needed immediate attention. in response, vba has moved quickly to take action to process this mail. we have teams on site at three varos and our work is not complete at the philadelphia varo. and we are sending staff to two other varos to review the merits of allegations but more importantly, i am asking my staff to ensure we understand why these problems are occurring and how they are impacting veterans needing benefits so that appropriate corrective action can be taken. vba continues to face challenges to improve claims processing accuracy and timeliness. further, we are concerned at how

quickly the number of varos with allegations is growing. and we are working to ensure appropriate oversight. moving forward, should the number of allegations continue at this pace, we will need to implement additional oversight and expand our benefits inspections to review more high-risk activities in the varos. mr. chairman, this concludes my statement. we'd be pleased to answer any question you or the committee members have. >> thank you. under secretary hickey, you are recognized. >> chairman miller, ranking member michaud, members of the committee, thaunk you for the opportunity to discuss the progress of the veterans benefit administration as we work hard to provide the best possible service to veterans, their families and survivors. but before i provide a progress report on our transformation efforts, i want to make it clear

to this committee, to every veteran, every family member, survivor or supporter of veterans that vba takes seriously our commitment to provide timely, accurate benefits and maintain the integrity of our systems and processes. i have been saddened and offended by recent events within the larger va system where some of my fellow veterans have not been served with honor, respect and priority they deserve. i know that the number one question on your minds is whether the accuracy of data within vba systems can be trusted. by members of this committee or by the american people. we have many checks and balances on our systems and data and we are working to make them even more trustworthy. every claim has 11 layers of human intelligence through which it is processed where any of those 11 individuals can catch an error. we also have valuable third party validateors like our vso partners who review every claim we work where they hold the power of attorney.

we don't close the claim unless they do. our data is held at the national level, not on local data systems. it is updated and protected every night with controlled access. 90% of our work is now completed in an automated system have provides a significant audit trail and is a valuable deterrent to data manipulation and misuse. we also have a dedicated analytics team that constantly reviews our workload data looking for anomalies within the system so management can respond quickly. even with all these controls and more, and i've learned this through a 27-year military career retiring as a general officer, that there will always be someone you thought you could trust but instead used extremely poor judgment and a total lack of integrity as they figured out ways around the system. in our vba business, that mean they hurt businesses and that is grossly unacceptable to acting secretary gibson, to me and va's dedicated employees. 52% of which in vba are veterans

themselves. when we find these individuals, you can rest assured, i will respond quickly to the situation and begin necessary actions. one of those actions is to immediately notify the do the necessary. one is immediately notify the office of the inspector general. intimidatation or retalks talgs not just answer whistle blowers. report something in law or policy or core values is unacceptable to me. i invite people to talk to me and i have heard tonight that some have maybe prevented them from doing that when i invite them to. and that is unacceptable to me. to ensure our organization is upholding our values we are doubling down our efforts to insure the spegt of our systems and the processes. secretary gibbss direct an

expert team be around to brainstorm scenarios where an individual can go around the system and determine where further controls are needed. i've accepted desk audit at all the offices. vba will also continue to provide performance data. let me please update you on the transformation progress. we have reduced had backlog of claims. to 271,000 today. last year our employees completed an all thyme record breaking 1.71 million claims. this year we are on track to break that record again by completing 1.3 million claims. we'll disperse $67 billion into veterans hands. that's 18 billion more than when i arrived in 2011.

we've already completed a million claims this year. more importantly it's not come as the expense of the quality. we increased that to 93.4% today. no matter which way you look at it, how you cut it, three, twelve month claim issue all are over 90% because our employees are working hard at that. but i get it. i know you still have questions. as a result i have recently directed vba to apply for the iso 901 certification, the ultimate global benchmark for priority management. we have not lost focus on other areas. we completed 2.5 rating non rated products. highest in fifteen years. we also need to do a better job at them though. we need to be more timely. that's why we initiated a different initiative effort to focus on them and i'm happy to talk to you about it. we've not lost focus on appeals

either. the appeals rate is steady. it's stayed such for 20 years at 11 to 12%. as we complete record breaking numbers of claims as a 11 to 12% rate we are going to get more appeals. because the rate hasn't changed, but the volume has. it is unacceptable. and i and this committee for its continued support especially in the area for legislative solutions. while we have good progress, the employees have made good progress. we recognize still more work to be done. i appreciate the support of this committee and am prepared to answer your questions. >> mr. bertoni. >> i'm pleased to discuss the quality of activities and related goals. last year va paid nearly $54

billion in benefits to 3.6 million veterans. a ensure all veterans achieve accurate and consistent decisions innen claims. in prior work we documented short come, in quality assurance activities and more recently concerns have been raised on of lack of transparence for disability claims which is bags odd an the systematic accuracy or technical review or star. my remarks are based on ongoing work this committee. and the extent to which other quality assurance activities are complementary and coordinated. in summary, the agency now measures and reports accuracy in two ways, by claim and by issue. but its approach has some limitations. when calculating star accuracy rates for either measure, vba

falls sort of generally accepted practices in that it doesn't weight the results to reflect the samples the same number of cases from all offices regardless of size and thus produces imprecise estimates. absent this calculation, region office accuracy rankings may be skewed and va may focus correctionive action or positive recognition on the wrong offices. preliminarily by taking waiting into account we calculated had reno office ranking would improve from current 34th place among all offices to 22nd place. conversely the los angeles office would drop from 46th to 56th place. further vba's approach to measuring accuracy is inefficient due to sampling methods which causes it to review more claims than necessary, thereby reverting rours from other activities. and finally vba's public

reporting lacks details that could help better understand the distinction between accuracy measures and limitations and perhaps alleviate any confusion associated with them. beyond star the framework includes other complementary activities such as local quality review teams in each office that conduct reviews before claims are finalized and provide feedback to avoid future errors. however in three or four offices we visited, claims processed during overtime hours which can be substantial were excluded and may undermine the agency's efforts. vba now uses electronic questionnaires to test for consistency that can be administered to thousands of staff at once. however we found the agency never pretested had documents to ensure the clarity of questions or validity of the expected

results. pretesting is a generally accepted practice and sound survey in questionnaire development. and lastly coordinate efforts by disseminating national accuracy in consistent results and related guidance to staff. they use the star to focus straining and guide reviews. however we interviewed noted there are too many sources of dpiens and searching for them is often time consuming and confusing and difficult. the manual and national train wrg not sufficiently updated to help avoid future errors. in conclusion, vba has made enhancements to quality assurance program but missed opportunities to fully demonstrate its commitment. in particular they are producing imprecise accuracy. -- of its meaning and

limitations. in other areas it's failure to follow generally accepted practices has led to design and implementation shortcomings of other initiatives. however all of these issues can be addressed with more focus and sustained management attention. in going forward we will continue to work with va in this committee to ensure veterans claims are done accurately and consistently. this concludes my statement. >> thank you very much. first question, mr. murphy, if you would sir. last time you are here before this committee i asked about discover claims in fast letter 13110 and i think you gave me half an answer. you are the signatory to the fast letter which directed all employees to apply the date of discovery for the date of claim for tracking and recording purposes. however in your testimony you said that if there is a date stamp on, we receive it four

years ago and it is sitting in a desk drawer somewhere. it goes into the system as four years old. then less than 48 hours after i asked the question you rescinded the letter and deleted it from repository and because of that canceled the scheme called "discovered claims." you were sworn at the time to give the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. do you think that you told this committee the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> yes, sir i do. >> chairman miller, may i add? >> it was under my guidance in my direction to suspend the letter. and that happened from me to mr. murphy and mr. murphy took the action. >> i believe it was a recommendation of the office of inspector general. so you took their recommendation. it was not your idea, was it? >> in fact, chairman, we -- i

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

follow it. >> i'll take that and get you a answer. >> i want to ask a few questions about the back log answers you report in your monday morning workload reports. it is important to know in your report you don't include the end product 930, the number which in fact has grown substantially as of late and the end product of 400, which includes provisional ratings. if you were to include the end product 930 which essentially is a place to hold rushed and incomplete claims your backlog percentage was jump by ten to 60%. and in addition over a 14 month period, march 2013 to may 2014 the inventory of end product 400, which again includes provisional ratings, surged from just over 29,000 to over 107,000

by 367% increase. so explain to me what you are doing with the end products 930 and 400. it simply made them a secret category whereby you are able to hide incomplete or prematurely decided claims to improve the appearance of your backlog numbers. undersecretary hickey. >> chairman miller, i'm going to -- i told you i would tell the truth when i put my hand up. so i will tell you the truth. i don't know every number that is called an end product. so i apologize for not being able to cite you what an end -- >> can you give me who does at the table? mr. murphy or ms. rubens. either one of those will happily no the answer. >> no ma'am. i have 38 seconds left. i'd like to know the answer to my question.

>> i'll and ms. rubens to pleat comment. >> i would point to the monday morning workload report where in fact your numbers on the end product 400 are control correspondents and have been used for some development. and the 930 end product which are reviews including quality assurance are in fact reflected in the work that we demonstrate for completion. >> chairman, now that i know what the titles are, i can add to that discussion. >> no ma'am. i don't believe that anybody at the table is telling me the truth from va. i think you are using the numbers to hide backlog questions. imthink you have selectively chosen not to include the end products in your backlog numbers to make appearance. quite simply data manipulation and prevents veterans access to the benefits they have earned. >> thank you mr. chairman. ms. halliday, has you have done

your investigation you have continued to iterate that a singular focus on rating claims is starting to come at the cost of other workload falling through the cracks. what would you -- what would be your suggestions to address this situation? >> we consistently looked at the quick start program, the special initiative to clear the backlog claims. we've looked at appeals. there's been a constant reallocation of staffing away from some of these initiatives to work the pending backlog of compensation. at some point if you want these initiatives to be successful, you have to dedicate the workload to accomplish the job. >> thank you. >> ms. hickey has i mentioned

dependency claims have risen by nearly 2,000% in four years with a majority being backlogged. when does the va anticipate ending the non rating backlog? do you have a specific date? or proposal? >> congressman, in 2005 was the first time under a completely different administration that the 125 day initiative was set. in 2009, the former secretary of the va set the aspirational goal of no claim older than 125 days. prior to that it has been an average and at 98% accuracy. in all of these cases, even dating back as far from the history that i can take because i've been here since 2011. the focus has been on the rating

work and priority. and there is a really good reason for that. in order to even access, in order to even be able to get a different benefit that is in the non rating bucket, you first must have a rating. so by example in order to get a dependency claim you have to be rated at least 30% in a rating claim you gave us. hence the reason why the backlog is focused on the rating claims. i can tell you that we have a really good plan around especially dependency claims. we have built a system called a rule's placed processing system, whereby when a veteran goes in and files, 60% of the time they are paid in a single day. that is what we're moving towards. but the ones waiting, congressman, i will tell you have also done a contract. the contract is lifting them up in paper and putting them into

the rule's based processing system so we can get those done as well. >> do you have a date? >> i do not have a date. there's never been a goal set around non rating work that has a specific date associated with it. >> okay. mr. bertoni, did you find any instances in which va is intentionally manipulating data to present better outcomes than what is really happening? >> i wouldn't say it is intentionally manipulating. i think -- as i noted in my statement just in several basic areas. they are not following general statistical practices. that looseness in their methodology translates to numbers that aren't accurate and aren't very helpful in looking at trends over time, trends of performance, accuracy rates and or comparing offices in terms of relative performance. as i said when we applied simple

waiting we had several swings in offices that suddenly improved in standing relatively speaking. that is just not good metrics. in an organization with a mission as important as this, the dollars 1r06d involved, the numbers involved, you need precise estimates and there is more work to be done. >> thank you. there are some pretty serious allegations and compelling allegations made with regard to the shredding of at least 96 boxes and eight cabinets of military and returned mail document documents. can you provide us with any additional information how va handled this when it was highlighted? >> i can. in fact i reacted very quickly. when i first heard the conversation, she reflected that it came down to me via e-mail. i immediately dispatched my director for pension service.

he took a complete team up there. they went through every one of those boxes to make sure that there was not anything that was amiss in those boxes. and i believe that i can attest to the fact that it is not. let me just explain what is in the boxes. the pension service works a little different than the compensation service. they are not in vbms yet though i would like to see them there in the future. what they do do is they work the claim in paper first. and then they scan in the document s afterwards. and once they have it scanned in afterwards, then there is a normal procedure for the proper disposition of that paper. we will address the same issue on the compensation side. we are working closely be dod on what we do with paper we don't use anymore because it is all electronically scanned in the system. we'll have to address the same thing. but i understand. i'm very concerned about any

ideas we might be inappropriately shredding documents. and i will -- that is why we're taking our time figuring out what we do in the compensation business around that paper. >> mr. lamborn, you are recognized. >> thank you mr. chairman. how many work under you ms. hickey at the va? >> there are over 20,000 people. >> and in an average given year how many of them get fired? and please consult with mr. murphy or ms. rubens if you need. >> i will probably ask ms. ruben to further elaborate. what i can tell you is we go through a fairly extensive process before people are fired. >> i didn't what your process was. how many in a an average year? >> i don't know if i have that information but i'll ask ms. ruben if she does. >> sir, i don't have the current number that were fired for

instance within the last year. i do know across the work force today we have 66 employees on performance improvement plans. >> and they would be eligible for firing if they didn't improve. >> our goal first is to help them improve their performance and look for other things they have been successful in other positions within the va. >> so you can't tell me how many people get fired in an average year. >> we could do that, congressman lamborn. i don't have that immediately available. i'm happy to provide it. >> given all the procedure you have to go, it is probably a fairly small number i would guess. >> i believe it is probably appropriately a small number if we can certainly -- i remind this great committee that i have 52% of those employees who are veterans. >> excellent. >> and about 46% direct family member of the veterans. >> how many of those are for cause versus how many are just let go without being given a

reason. >> generally we don't let people go go without giving them a reason. >> okay. you heard javier soto's comments earlier in response to my and other people's questioning, that he was let go on june 30th without being given a reason from the st. petersburg regional office. are you aware of that. >> congressman lamb born i was made aware of it in the hearing tonight. >> okay. . and he was not given any reason. he got the letter on june 30th. on the 24th of june he had given a report. and i believe this was on behalf of local afge 1594, somewhat critical of the leadership on how they processed claims. and then let's see, six days later he's fired without being given a cause. is this a normal activity or something out of the ordinary.

>> congressman, this is not a normal activity. i will look into the very specifics of it. i will not discuss out of privacy and protection for mr. soto any specific issues associated with his employment. that would not be respectful. >> please look at that. it sounds to me we could have a whistle blower here whose being retaliative. and that is a serious member because we want whistle blowers to come forward when there is something going on wrong that the public needs to know about or the committee, or even you need to know about. >> i absolutely agree with you, congressman. i want to know about it. i have employees who reach out directly to me via e-mail. i was disappointed to hear that they were told they could not. that will be rectified immediately. i need to be an avenue by which employees can talk about their concerns as well. and i'm open to that. i do that on a routine basis. in fact i have a pulse check call that i do where i will only

speak to bargaining unit employees. and it starts by saying management cannot tell you not to talk to me. management can't look at you funny if they slip you a note anything else that says do not tell me something. i immediately want you to send me an e-mail. >> you are saying things that sound good but the actions unfortunately haven't always matched had rhetoric. ms. halliday, let me ask you you talked about how vba's process misrepresented the actual workload and its progress towards eliminating the backlog. could you elaborate more on that please. >> today we issued a report on the review of the special initiative to process the rating claims pending over two years. as i had said in my oral statement that vba used a process, a new process they put in to issue provisional claims.

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

>> thank you. first before i begin my questions i just want to say on this note that was found in the bathroom, i hope no one ever loses their job for a note in the bathroom on a pad. and i don't think anyone has any business reading somebody's pad in the bathroom. that is the first thing. now, to ms. hickey. i am impressed with the amount of how we've been able to expedite the veterans process. not only for the veterans, but for the families. and can you explain the process. because it seems like part of the problem is that you go into a new system to help expedite it, and it seems as if it is a problem with you trying to improve the system.

>> congresswoman, i know from having done work and changed environments that everybody adjusts differently. i'm sensitive to that. but i don't know any ore federal agency -- and i did work in commercial industry for a while -- nor a commercial company that has fundly taken a paper bound process in less than 18 systems, built a system, done a billion images nearly and now does 91% of its work in a paperless environment. 1.4 million claims have been done on this system. and it means veterans get answers faster and better. and the system isn't just a system. they are tools. there are helpful things in that system to help make that employee better at making that decision more consistently. that is the whole reason we put tools in it. i know. i heard the conversations, you know, from our employees up here at the table. and i know that our employees need help with the workload that is out there.

i do. that is why we are building additional functionality all the time into that system to help it be better. what can i tell you is this. you don't do 1.17 million record breaking one year. 1.3 million blaek breaks the previous record this year and have all measure osoff quality. i'll concede there may be ways to improve on that even yet in that amount of time and not be doing stuff that's better for veterans. >> don't ju have an independent verifier also. >> we do. i hear you loud and clear. i know you don't trust what we are saying. so i went for a second time to another third party to ask for an independent assessment of the way we deal with quality. it is a person that doesn't look at federal agencies as well and. in addition to that i have directed. we're going to after iso 9001

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

television, it was problems with the system. but it was problems with the stakeholders. the schools had to verify that the student was in school and they was enrolled and hadn't dropped the class before they could get the additional funding from us. so it is not just the va. it is the va, i keep saying, working with our stakeholders. >> and congresswoman brown we now put $42 billion into the hands of veterans in 4.7 days using that model and which is the same thing we're trying to repeat and doing so with success on the claims side. which is what is driving more and more of our dependency claims getting done. and frankly we've just released last week the ability for half of our survivors, during the most difficult time of their life, to be automatically paid their burial claim. they don't even have to tell us. they don't even have to claim it. it is now at first notice of

death we pay either the 300 or the $2,000 claim and it just goes straight to them. >> thank you so much for your service. all of you. and i yield back the balance of my time. >> thank you. you are recognized for five minutes. >> i appreciate it. ms. halliday you remarked in opening statement the vba has self reported decrease in the backlog by more than 50% since march 2013. in your opinion do you see any issue with trusting these self-reported achievements by the department? of course the department has been plagued with inaccuracies and inconsistencies recording producing the backlog but i want you opinion. do you trust those numbers? >> at this point i would say no, i can't trust those numbers. i think we have a lot of work ahead of us to address the

allegations we have just received. they all seem to focus on delta integrity and need to be looked at carefully. so i don't want to say i trust them. >> thank you. next question, again for ms. halliday. during your numerous inspections of the va regional offices you have consistently reported the same errors in accuracy and procedures. even after vba has con curd with the previous reports and recommendations. why do you think this happens over and over? why are we seeing these errors? see seems. >> we select medical disability wes consider high risk for processing errors. that's where we want to target our resources. what we find in something like

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

before finalized. because they are very complex. when we went back this year, we found an error rate that was not acceptable and what we found was local management discontinued the practice of our recommendation and the reason we were given is to process claims for the backlog. so if we make a recommendation and you follow it and it's working, why do you stop it? >> i want to know why. general hickey, why? >> congressman. i absolutely agree they should have been following that process and o should not have diverted and done a second signature requirement that is just wrong. i won't give an excuse for it. >> what are you going to do do about it. >> i'm going to make sure they are doing second level reviews. and we can send out teams to make sure. i'll also double down on the

resources to make sure i'm there doing to signatures. these are critical. he's right. they are the singularly most complex kind of condition we can do. so therefore there is not a clear cut way to always determine secondary conditions associated with tbi and the like. i don't negate. that was a amanda frmandate to signature. if they are not doing it, they are not doing the right thing. >> one more question. you mentioned in your testimony employees will not receive a performance award unless they meet quality standards as well as production standards. however we are all aware in previous fiscal years every employee eligible to receive a performance bonus award received them. do you still stand by what you state in your testimony? and do you believe that every single employee eligible to receive performance awards did in fact deserve them?

>> so congressman, since the day i arrived and i have mentioned to this committee before that i came to this job with a deep background in quality management which is why i'm directing the iso 9001. i know something about that. and how it makes you better and validates what you are doing. but here is what i say. i have said from the beginning we are a production and quality based organization. not or. there is no or between the two words. i have made serious investments, thank you for the committee for the budgets you have given us in all kinds of capabilities to improve our quality. >> i'd like you do to answer the question please. did they deserve the performance. >> if they successfully navigated their production and quality, they did. but i will say in fy 2012, no senior leader in vba got a performance bonus. >> okay. thank you. i yield back. >> ms. halliday, do you know

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

and they should be performance based and results based. but certainly when you combine the allure of performance bonuses with metrics that drive you in a certain way and drive certain behaviors, that is when it gets perverse. and that is where executive angss aangs agencies and otherwise have to be careful about the metrics they put in place and the performance bonus associated with that. >> ms. halliday in that new area of looking at the vba as aside from the scheduling issues we've had in phoenix, exposed by phoenix, there is any indication to you that there is -- that the performance bonuses and the metrics have combined into -- have combined in a similar way that there were some motivation to gain the system for the financial gain? >> i can't speak to that. sorry >> okay. so there is nothing --

nothing -- nothing was revealed so far. all right. you say you are targeting in your investigation high risk disability claims. can you say more about the high risk disability claims that you are looking at? tbi you said? >> during this round of our fy 2014 benefits inspections we had selected to look at the management of temporary 100% disability evaluations, tbi claims and the smc and ancillary type benefits that veterans get for the more seriously disabled issues that they face. >> okay. something arose in the previous panel's discussion about congressional advocacy. congressional offices call in it

seems to divert attention of the staff. and then the other parts of the backlog get maybe less attention. do you find that to be corroborated by anything you have looked at? or mr. bertoni, you can also comment as well. >> i can't speak to that issue. we haven't done any work in that area. that was outside the scope of what we did. >> okay. >> i'm not a hundred percent sure what you are asking but we get a lot of complaints through the oig hotline. and we are looking at those complaints as to whether they are systemic problems or isolated problems within vba. is that what you are asking? because i think the congressional offices get many of the same calls. >> i was just listening to the testimony of the previous panel. and one of the complaints was that congressional offices often

get attended. and they have to neglect what they were doing on other claims. >> i can speak to that a little bit. i just think it is one of many competing workloads. and there is a lot of lines of work and activity that has to be done. congressionals get attention. i know i get the calls from the public. i push it forward to the various committees. so it certainly gets attention from us and i'm sure it gets attention from vba when they get the calls. so i'm sure it is a workload that gets attention. and amongst competing work lodes, you have to make choices. >> ms. hickey. >> congressman, here is what i will say. we have a prioritization for claims. and we have some categories of those claims where when you call us about those, they will absolutely get attention because they are in the priority bucket. you have a medal of honor recipient a former prisoner of war, a homeless veteran, someone

seriously injured amount i'm going to miss a few. but there is a group of listing of people who need our prioritization. and you often call us with people who are in that bucket. or if the claim right now today is nine months or older. now though we have done 99.9% of all the one and two year claims we are still working nine month old and then we're going to the next one. but when you call us with an old claim, can which typically is when you will hear from a veteran and we understand that, then we will do it because it is in the priority bucket. if you were to call me for a claim that was just sent in last week that didn't have any of these other priorities on it, you would probably get a letter from us that says we'll work it when it gets into the right prioritization. >> thank you. mr. chairman my time is expired. >> dr. row, you are recognized five minutes. >> thank you. i want to go back to where the

chairman began with this legal pad here. i really find this offensive. and the reason i find it so offensive is because we've heard over the last six weeks or so -- and our job as the chairman said is over sight. we have a constitutional obligation do this. when you see someone really just rub into the staff's face, this is their job to go and get this information, i find it astonishing on here. it do. i don't see how anybody could explain and secondarily anybody who was still working. and i think mr. lamborn asked how many at been fired. who had thumbed their nose at the veterans affairs committee. this is our job. you are doing your job and you are explaining it tonight. and when we have lost -- and that is one of the things general hickey that i am really very concerned about is a loss of trust that we've had in our

va. i think if you look at any organization in this country a year ago would have a held the va as a shining star up on the hill. i believe that. and we've truly lost that now. when veterans file a claim that they know -- has theirs been moved over to a stack it's not going to be looked at? and you have been in my office. and appreciate your effort. but somewhere downstream it is failing. it isn't working. and you heard me say and if you were here before about what resources you need and i certainly have heard the inspector general's testimony. have read it. what resources do you need, if any, from this committee to make sure that this backlog is done that those metrics are made? what do you need? >> so, congressman, i sat here a few months back in a budget hearing and i believe i said at

the time i need an absolute unequivocable 100% it budget. 100%, not a dollar less. and now in a world we're building a new scheduling system that is even more critical. because there is a heavily kpooeting interest. we need a full and complete it. >> we have as sergeant major wahl said we've spend no pun intended a widow's pension on getting all the it money. it's mind boggling to me when i hear someone say money and i've seen the va and dod take a thousand million dollars, that is a billion and flush it and i have no earthly idea where that money went to build a system that's integrated. i asked the secretary, where did the billion dollars go? no answer. so i don't know that adding more money. >> you say an it program. if we give you that money, if we provide you that money, this

very generous congress does that because we have the provided the resources for the va. is that going to be enough? or am i going to be sitting here a year enough and hear the same sning? thing? >> you are talking about the iehr which is not a va program. >> i understand. >> let me tell you what you have given us. let me tell you what you have given us. all of you have given us over the last three years in vba, for the first time in our history we had dollars funding it systems we should have had 20 years ago. we should have had it like the rest of the world went to. and we didn't. we were still two years ago touching 5,000 tons of paper. that is ten empire state buildings. that's mount everests. 200 empire state buildings where little rubber fingertips on our fingers. and today we are doing it in a

paperless environment. you have given us the resources to scan a billion of our veterans most precious documents into an electronic system so they are not laying around in boxes. >> i understand. let me go. my time is limited. it's about up. and i want to go back to the inspector general and say how does a claim -- i want to make sure we get this for the record -- that looks like that gets moved from way back here that is supposed to be current? how does that happen? how does a record go from the time it is back long-term claim and gets nufd s moved to a stac is current, how does that happen? >> he works with this all the time. >> just walk us through that quickly. >> there are several ways. we could talk how the change the date of claim. but let's talk about the provisional ratings with the two year initiative that. report was just issued.

when they did the provisional rate, that provisional rating had an end product. and you heard the first sergeant describe what that was. so let's say the end product to make it easy was a 110. the number 110 controlled this provisional rating. under their special initiative, when they issued that provisional rating to the veteran, that 110 was gone. so that claim came out of the inventory. so they moved it to put it under an end product 400 to control. but end product 400s are not reported in the inventory that you hear from these monday morning workload reports. so now that claim technically doesn't exist in the inventory. when the veteran submits new evidence to support the contentions in that claim, now vba will create a new end product and process the claim in one day. so it was an old claim pending over two years.

they moved it to a end product that is not reported in the inventory. so that claim technically doesn't exist. when new evidence comes in now it is a new claim that is one day old or two days old. and they work it in two or three days. >> why would you do that? why in the world would you do that? >> good question. and that is one of the issues in this report that we found. if the vba would have used their intermediate rating process, one of the aspects of that process is to keep that end product going, and it stays in your inventory so you have a true reflection of your inventory and you can't lose it. >> i thank you for your indulgence mr. chair. >> thank you. >> general hickey, i appreciate you being here and appreciate your testimony. i'm just having a terrible time trying to reconcile between what the ig says and what you say.

and the ig says there's been incremental process and there is data integrity issues. you say that we are right on the mark, that our data is good, that the checks and balances and the audits are sound. and so, you know, when two entities are, you know, at polar opposites, then yeah you are right, i lack the trust in what is being put forward. so i guess my question is do you work with the ig's department to reconcile some of these issues, to try to get to a place where there is a stronger agreement between the two of you on these issues? >> we absolutely do, congresswoman. all the time. we have a process which we go in a back and forth way from early drafts and their thoughts and sometimes we reverse our position and sometimes they reverse theirs. there have been a few times

where i've non concurred on some of their comments. but in general we learn a lot from our ig. and we value their input. what i can -- i understand that you are -- that we are putting you in a bind. that is why i'm going to go get an independent review by a standard which the world recognizes. >> i understand. thank you. so ms. halliday do you agree with what general hickey just said? >> general hickey is giving you a big picture perspective from their view in all the initiatives they have worked. what i have given you is a very close inspection of certain initiatives, that i do not feel have achieved what they were expected to achieve. quick start -- >> but have you had conversations back and forth on these specific initiatives that you have -- >> yes. >> -- made public. >> yes we do. we have monthly meetings with vba leadership. i bring my teams in.

we talk about the issues in our national audits. we talk about issues that we can talk about. there are some things as far as criminal investigations we may not touch on. but normally in the audit area we have very good discussions. recently i feel that general hickey has tried to say i want the information early so that she can take corrective action. and i think if you look, the management advisory that i issued on the philadelphia varo was done after two days. my team, even though they only found 30 instance of manipulation of the date of the adjudicated claim, at that point we knew we had a problem. and instead of waiting till we completed all the work, did all the samples of all the mail bins and everything else, i engaged general hickey immediately so

corrective action could be taken. so i do think there is a responsiveness that is better today than it was couple years ago. easily. >> thank you. and general hickey, have you with the new acting secretary and the new leadership, really, in the va, but specifically the acting secretary. and we've talked a lot about this. he believes that we've got to build back the trust and build it back one veteran at a time. so what directives has he given you with the vba and what have you done in terms of, you know, very short-term directives to your department and/or changes that you have made in the short-term? we talked a lot about short-term issues and longer term issues. but i'm you aren't in what you have done differently in the short-term. >> thank you congresswoman. i'll tell you three things.

first the acting secretary directed we put some best and brightest minds together to figure if there are any other vulnerabilities in the ways in which people can do work-arounds. you all have used a different language around that. but that is -- we are doing that and we are putting that together so that we can look at it. we have already asked a small group of people to do some brainstorming in that respect to see if we have some place ws we need better and stronger controls. i have directed a 100% facilitate and desk and we threw in the cars to making sure we have the full nine yards for every piece of mail, document, anything that might be out there. so we're doing it and it's a rapid response requirement they must do. >> my time is up. i yield back. >> thank you. mr. reunion, you au reunion.

>> ms. halliday's conclusion of her oral statement says a lot to that. it's literally maybe ten sentences long and a lot of conflict in there. when we look at the 125 no claims pending initiative, what claims in vba are exempt from that? the focus is on the entire rating bundle. and the rating bundle are the ones that were described and prescribed in the year fiscal year 2000, well below when i was here or many of the folks sitting in this room were part of this process. it was done under an entirely different process. when -- as a result of we were measuring and reporting 350 different metrics and it was driving you all nuts and driving veterans nuts as well. so there was a big effort in fy

2000 where they bundled them together, which is why you hear rating bundling and not rating bundle. they put like things together. so the 125 effort and goal even back in 2005 before this former secretary was here was put on the table focused on rating bundle. that's why i tell you generally these are things that require a rating adjudicated decision. >> do you have any idea -- i get asked this all the time at home. how many claims that vba deals with -- don't categorize it -- do you hold? no category. how many claims to you hold? >> i'll ask you the question. are you talking about the education claims where we do for outside of this or just exception and pension. >> everything you hold. >>ky get you that number but when we do 5 million education claims in 4.7 days, dispersing $42 billion to 1.2 million we

doesn't -- that is work we are doing. when we're doing loan guarantees we're doing record high rates for those as well. >> i raise the question because we sit here and talk about how none of these metrics add up and i think the ig agrees with some of it. but we will look at the fully developed claim statistic and it is posted on the vba administration's report's website as of 7/12/14 that a fully developed claim took 146 days to complete. now if we sit here and we start imagining the massive workload that we have, are we ever going to get there when it's taken beyond 125 to spit out a fully developed claim? >> i have under my watch done some deeper dive analysis on our ability to do this.

and i will tell you as a simple -- a simple description how we will. we have done more than 300,000 claims in backlog in the last year. we don't have that many left in backlog this year. we are at 272,000, i think, today. that is less than 300,000. if we did 300,000 last year by the dedicated men and women of vba who are working hard every day i think we the get there next year. and we're not just bringing the backlog down but we're bringing the inventory down as well. and when you think about flow mechanics when you bring inventory down you cycle faster on the ones you have in inventory. so i believe we have. i think we have the data that says wi s witwe can. >> and we'll go to her who was testifying under oath in leadership was manipulating what was a backlog and what wasn't

and this is the dilemma. >> i hear you and and i heard her as well. i spobded very quickly to it when she brought it up. and i will tell you. but shame us us for not telling her better but we have changed processes because of what she originally told us in that e-mail. fundamentally. we are moving pension into an advanced scanning operation away from a back end scanning operation. two of the pension management centers have already done that and the last was philly and it was scheduled for early fall. so she has made a huge impact by raising that issue of that concern and we have -- i have adjusted the processes in vba as a result. >> i think the one big process -- and i think we all agree was spent a lot of late nights sitting up here together. and we talk about this in the va committee. i sit in that chair all the time. and we stake about stakeholders input.

your stakeholders are the people that were on that panel before you. and that really, really needs to be addressed. >> so congressman, runyon i would tell you that i have a high degree of respect for mr. ron robinson who was sitting in my position right heart a little while ago. to the point where i was one of the people when i first showed up he started emailing. and i started asking questions about what was going on in the regional office where people were not feeling cared for. not feeling compassion and not being treated very well. to the point, i got on an airplane, i flew down there and sat with him for a complete day from 7:00 in the morning until way late in the afternoon. and i had the director at that time, regional office director sitting there where him and i was going with them back and forth in conversation as a result of that. that director was put on a management plan that required that director to take certain

actions to improve the -- what was going on in the ro and we tracked it hard. and when it did not improve, and i still heard from mr. robinson, i changed the leadership of that ro. it now is led by a bronze star winner who led a team up and down the roads of baghdad, avoiding ied's and brought all of her troops home and i will tell you that i've been back to that ro since. and the employees in the town hall stood up and said to me, multiple of them did, thank you for bringing this new leader to us. i think i've reacted right and i appreciate what mr. robinson did in raising that issue to my attention. >> okay. thank you, chairman, yield back. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank you, japan hi generald fog being here. i know you take a personal interest in the reno office and

i appreciate that. it seems like every time an example is offered for the way things are not working it's the reno office. i want to get some good management in there but i'll make this -- take this opportunity to make the pitch to move the office it will be a lot easier to recruit the job for something in las vegas than in vegas. keep that in mind but having said that. i would ask ms. halladay. the va believes that the whole problem of the discovered claims is limited to a particular office and we've seen through numerous hearings that sometimes when a problem crops up in one

regional office pretty soon we find it's happening in other places, too. do you have any indication that that's the case? are you looking into it? are you checking into places like reno where they've been under a lot of scrutiny to move things along so there might be incentive for them to take some of these short cuts? >> we have allegations that the same conditions that have been identified up at the philadelphia are occurring at some of the other veer veros. the issue is that general hickey has revoked the fast letter. as that information gets out, the corrective action from a national perspective is in place. we're still going to look at the allegations we have just received in the past month or so. and really, run them down to the ground so we're sure that we understand exactly why it happened and to what extent it's

affecting veterans. because we want to make sure that that integrity is put back into the system for the state of claims that's been changed. one of the problems -- i would like to say one other thing. the philadelphia vero did not report the transactions that fell under this fast letter to dba headquarters. so it made it even more challenging. it will be there a couple more weeks before we start to draw sound conclusions here? >> the minute we knew we had a situation in philadelphia we did

a deep-dive analysis and pulled up the day to see if there were any other data anomalies in the system and we found and immediately sent the list to the ig that said in the data analysis, we think there are some -- i won't say they're doing something wrong because we don't they that, yet. but we found that the data in some of them were worth looking at and we for warred that to the ig and they asked us for the complete run of the complete data and we provided that. i would like to ask mr. murphy if he has a quick second to respond to on this topic, too? >> we did analysis against the percentage of found claims that were in the inventory versus the total inventory in the station so we compensated for a little office like reno as opposed to st. petersberg and florida. we didn't want to do a stack based on total volume and we came out that anything that came too far off of the average was the top five regional offices and that's the day we forwarded it to the ig. in order that we not be looked

at as you're going back changing data, all the details on those claims first, then went out to the regional offices and said -- now let's look at the claims and see if they were handled appropriately. i the recreate what was there when the flag went up for what happened in philadelphia. >> can you keep us posted with what you discover at the reno office? >> yes, ma'am. >> i want to say one thing about why we did the found claim. it was a pro veteran position to take. let me explain what a found claim is real quickly. 15 years ago, you may have come to us and said your leg hurt and you filed claim and we granted you for you knee. somewhere in the handwriting documents you gave us you mentioned your ankle hurt but 15 years ago whoever rated that claim didn't notice or didn't do anything about your ankle. now you come back because your knee is worse and you came in two months ago or a month ago and were starting to work your claim and that vsr who's sitting

there goes through that claim suddenly see this is comment from 15 years ago about your ankle. and there's now in this position of, oh, my gosh. now i got to go through this sticky 15 year then and i'm going to have this 15-year-old claim. i wanted to remove the disincentive from our system to grab that ankle, give the veteran the effective date all the way back to when they first mentioned it. rather than have any disincentive in the system to do it and ignore it. that's why we did the found claim process. so even though the data, the claim was the new date when the benefits were issued they go back to the original date? >> all the way back to when they first mentioned in their handwritten note to us that their ankle hurt, too. >> dr. benechek you're recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary hickey, you mentioned that you did an independent

reviewer study your process. >> i had one years ago with ida and i'm repeating it right now. >> who is that that's doing it? >> i cannot tell you the name of the individuals. we acquired them because they had some experience in doing this with health environments. workers comp health environments? >> you don't know the name of the firm? >> i'm sorry but i can provide that to you. >> do they give you a report. >> they have not yet. they've given me some interim discussions. >> it seems that you said you had an independent review and they rated you better. >> we -- actually, we had an independent review by ida years ago. this one they've given me some independent comments but i haven't gotten it. >> you don't really have an independent evaluation yet? i'm curious about this mail issue. earlier you said that -- oh you implied that the mail was

destroyed after it had been scanned and that wasn't the impression i got from ms. rules' testimony. she seemed to say that the mail was placed in a box that was too complicated to understand. so that seemed like a different story to me. i have a question i'd like to further go into but, in 2009, inspector general audit uncovered improper shredding of mail several regional offices. and the va concurred with several of the ig recommendations back then. be here we are again, five years later with the same sort of issues. so i guess i have a question and this relates to many of the ig reports that i've followed up in my committee and my subcommittee on health as well. nobody seems to be responsible for following through with the ig reports. i never can get the name of the individual who's responsible for

complying with the ig report. even when the va concurs. they seem like there's somebody who is responsible for making that happen. and yet, i can never get that happen or find that person's naum. so that occur in 2009? and why did you stop doing the -- why did you stop dealing with this? why are we dealing with this mail issue five years later. >> in 2008, well below -- before there was even a record's management officer there's now, actually salt of that 2008 effort, there's now in every single regional office a record's management officer who has that responsibility. >> he must not be doing a very good job if they had to testify about the boxes and you had to react all the as you depth and do something about it like it was an emergency. >> congressman, i can't answer the question. >> that's the problem because of the fact that like with mr. robinson you mentioned, too. that he talked to you and you took it