whistle-blowers' the employees at the va who really care about meeting our nation's obligations to men and women who have served this country, without you all we would not have any idea really what the magnitude of the problems within the veterans affairs. one question. let me say first that i think there is an emotional component to your stories and the way that you are treated once you are identified as a whistle blower within the organization. i think you have all expressed that. ms. kristen ruell, you gave some very specific examples about how tough it is to go into work every day when things like that happen to you. we talked about your car being damaged and the other things that occurred. one question that i have, the

manner in which all of you were retaliated against, what -- are you members of the union? will was the role of the union in terms of protecting the employees, your specific case, let me start with mr. javier soto. what recourse did you have? i assume your remember. >> yes. >> okay. essentially we are still trying to figure out what happened. what i believe is that retaliation for the whistleblowing we have problems with claim processing. there is no other way to address them. we found ourselves in that strange this situation where we have to rely on the union to help.

that brought conflict. >> server. >> well, i am actually the president of local 520. and we have been -- as a matter of fact, in june of 2012 we had a rally to bring attention to what was going on. the va police department had cameras and video trying to intimidate us so -- >> sure. in your testimony you talked about as a lawyer that in your free time you were defending fellow employees that were for one reason or another having difficulties with va leaders. can you speak to that end what representation or access to representation there would have had from the union as well?

>> the main problem with the union is that it takes forever to get anything resolved. like i mentioned before, i have an admonishment on my record because i did not have anyone to watch my child. i got written up the following month. i was told i was fraudulent and suspended. i went to the union for help. two and half years later my record was reversed by the director. had he not been there i believe my record would still have an admonishment and suspension on it. you go through the union. a decision maker that works in the agency. i have taken matters into my own hands. i represent myself now. i help anyone else that wants me to represent them because unfortunately people did not have to one-half years to wait.

the union decides whether or not to take the case to arbitration. >> one question i have. i am running of time. it's my understanding that the claims process called one who does that is kind of a generalist. you do all kinds of claims. it would not expedite the process of people became specialized in a given area such as agent orange and ptsd. would that help move the process along? >> definitely. >> would you want to go to an ear nose and throat doctor for her surgery? >> we tried that before. i mean, we kicked around all kinds of things. the most important thing is that

when a claim comes and we need to do an analysis of the claim. it has happened in the past. >> we tried that with a number of claims. specialization. >> i yield back. >> you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you to the panelists for taking the time group participation. we must focus on disability claims. provide the full range of services on which our veterans depend. at top priority i am committed to addressing an appeals backlog . i introduced the veterans access act which would include video conferencing during the appeals

process as a substitute for the veteran being there in person if he or she chooses not to. this bill aims to reduce the appeals backlog. more must be done. they cannot afford further delays. so my question is more on the practical pragmatic steps to the streamline the claims process without averting other essential resources. you said in your opening statement that employees are craving tools. and what tools to help them do a good job. what tools do you suggest? >> well, we have no choice.

we have to improve it. if you put something out and it does not work the way it should to try to alleviate the problem, but that problem brings about another problem. did it right the first time. don't take away my chain saw and give me a new chain saw and tell me that the chain saw is faster but when i go to cut the tree down the chain saw its stock. i have to pull it out, try it again. now you're going to get on me for not cutting the tree down faster. we have tools out there. we need tools that work in the beginning. that means they have to be tested. they have to be tried.

>> if you were to plan and training session for a system of training for employees, what would you include that you are not receiving now? >> we have a training website with all of the things that we need. it is not that we don't have lesson plans and all of this stuff. when selig is that having quality trainers to train. >> and human gene that technology is very outdated. do you have any suggestions? have you heard of other software technologies that you would

recommend the committee look at? >> i know that when i found my tax return every year it is done in a couple of weeks. the questions that they ask me are not different than that va pension program. >> who do you use? >> turbo tax. i know that there are other agencies. that with as many employees that va has we should have this problem. we don't have enough printers. i have to walk in hopes that i find one that works. it is hard to find a photocopier in my office. sunday is all the printers are down. there are employees that come to me. they spend an hour trying to

print something out. >> one last question. i have 15 seconds. how would you apply this to the veteran center process? >> i think if a veteran had a place to go and it was zero one-stop shop, we look at their claim, they have to come back when it is complete. if that is complete the move to another area kind of like when you get your oil changed. if they need more things they could come back another day. we don't have any communication with veterans. it will take time. there's no communication with the people we are supposed to help. it could be done right in there

would not be so much rework. >> a comprehensive one-stop shop . we don't have to run all over the place. the frequent feedback. thank you very much. >> thank you, mr. chairman. and thank all of you for being here tonight. when i think about the letters and e-mail, it is beyond me how anyone could look at that and say this is a good idea. it's a great idea. receive this e-mails? how to process claims is that something you received? >> de mean the same?

>> to that affect. >> we receive e-mails the tell us when need to do certain things if they don't it could give an adverse consequences. >> what strikes me is through this time there is no talk of promoting the veterans, their human beings. it is all about numbers. did you ever give anything that emphasize that point? it's about taking care of our veterans or is that something that is just way up the? >> e-mail with these numbers. we are taking care of veterans. it's not about an e-mail.

it's about the communication between your superiors and the employees. when you care you have veterans in your office. the employees. not treating our veteran employees. how can we say we treat other employees well? >> linda halliday -- let me go into that concept. the rank of first sgt. that me just and you that. developing trust amongst soldiers, commanders, people who look up to you, i admire you. commanders that i assure you trusted. and mutual respect to you had

there. and you know they you have to lead by example. this is something you would do every day. you were also willing to let those under you come to you with problems and present solutions and have a conversation. i know the role you are in, and i know that i think the pin your heart that is what you are saying is missing right now then , that ability testier the ship and then right is right and wrong is wrong. >> exactly. i am trying to be that conscience. employees are the ones that really have to serve our veterans. if we don't take care of our employees and give them the tools, encouragement, the workplace, the process these and the honest, that is all we're asking

. this is an awesome undertaking. it is massive. command the undersecretary for putting us into getting into paper. i see the advantages of paper. i am saying that the leaders have to listen. if they don't they will take us over a cliff. we are that close to the edge. >> is there anyone in your careers recent years to more your immediate va leaders that you felt you admired and trusted and could go to with anything? >> he is deceased now david chapman was out there with the employees. you could talk to him about anything. i mean, you know, he would bring

you the paper. we would talk about it. we just need for our leaders to listen and act. if we have a situation where something is wrong, listen to us we are the ones in the foxholes on the front line of battle. we know what is going on. to not disregarded would we tell you, this is not working. that is all we want, someone to listen in to the serve our nation's veterans together. >> thank you very much. my time has expired. i would have loved to have heard from all of you on that. >> you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being with us tonight. we appreciate it and understand the sacrifice you have made. i want to follow up on this notion of comprehensive one-stop

shop and the whole aspect of your job that is troubleshooting and the challenges they you have, the difficulties that you face. we have heard a lot about the va adding 2 million veterans during the time of secretary eric shinseki lead. so we understand the volume problem that you have. i am not sure and tell tonight i completely understood the disarray of the process of trying to put these plans together. we had been hearing from this fiasco about their progress of fully developed claims that they would try to get the claims to a place where you could make your decisions in a timely way.

i am trying to understand, has that not been effective? is there something else that could be done in a preliminary way before these claims even get to use of that you could do your analysis and your task in a more timely way? >> the fully developed claim is a good idea. overall it is a good idea. the problem that i see from my viewpoint is that we have sort of the shifted the burden to the veterans. we are kind of skirting the edge of the duty to assist in terms of providing assistance. he is waiving certain duty to assist. it is not a bad program, but for

veterans that don't understand the process they may not get the best service. the perfect example is, i think, you may be familiar with the 5,000 attorney initiative. attorneys gathered. that is what i have been told. since we started attorneys began appealing more and calling almost every day asking wire you done. that is the information we have got. they felt like it was a great idea. when we get to it we can probably decide a disaster. we are kind of shifting the burden to the veteran so that we don't have that much work to do in terms of doing what we are supposed to do. that is my view. >> okay. anything to add?

>> been around since 2008. if it was effective it would have been by now. that is my answer. >> shore. i agree. i think that the ftc just gives us even less communication with the veteran. it says but we gave you what you need, the evidence you need, told you ahead of time. it is on of a piece of paper written in small print. most of our claman's have trouble understanding what that means, and if they don't submit everything they did tonight. i think it is a great idea, but if you are trying to grant more benefits i think it's a horrible idea. i call him on the phone. stay friends with veterans that i made years ago. d'agata e-mails once in awhile from their families.

i don't have a problem getting my work done when i do it the right way. i spend a little more time doing it right the first time, but in the end people are not coming back complaining about what awful service they got. >> you mentioned that there is no communication with the veteran. is there any way for a veteran to track their claim or keep track or stay in touch? it has been brought up that going through your congressional office is the best way to get a claim done. we have done a lot of that. it has been effective. now i understand why that is necessary. is there no communication? >> there is communication. they can use e benefit if it is working right. and then most of the time. to you have anything else to at?

communication. give that statement as saying at have come one. >> my time is up. a thank-you for my service. >> you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chair. you know, a couple of comments. congressmen and women handling complaints, it just seems like years ago i was not in congress but i was on the other side, congressional interest. and now overwhelmingly it is all about the va. quite frankly, you know, congress does not kid credit for a lot of things, but the one thing i think most of the people here certainly on this committee did was actually cut through the red tape on this issue.

it is something that we pride ourselves. i don't have to pull everybody. a couple of things. i want to ask your personal opinion and an anthem of the senior executive service in general. >> in my experience they think that they are god. >> thank you. by the way, i was going to a -- first sergeant is much more powerful and important. i had to throw that in. i appreciate what you have done for our country. >> i think whatever it takes, it does not mean you will be a good leader. and recently had a director who had never worked at the

department of veterans affairs before. i don't know how you can make a decision was signed off on all large amount of money if you have never worked in our agency before. >> thank you. >> i truly believed that the ses service these revamping in terms of training, in terms of how they interact with middle management. i just don't see it as effective >> thank you. in regards to manipulating claims, falsifying claims, destroying stuff, how many people do you think have been brought up on charges were sent to jail for violating those things? any? >> we have the shredding incident. >> but do you have a rough idea? the point i am making -- we are

talking about veterans. it is a court martial offense. the court martial, a trial. many of them would get dishonorable discharges. or at least bad conduct discharge is. am i wrong? so that kind of bothers me quite a bit. the dd214, everyone, at least when i was in the military, that was like a piece of paper, that was it did you have to have. some of them are in the file, not in the file, i should not admit this, but a number of years ago when i had leukemia, submitted a claim about agent orange -- it was denied, and i understand that they did not have medical evidence. and number of years later it came out.

so we said, we are going to test the system. i went back in but the claim back in again. it came back tonight. i understand that, but it was denied because they had no record that i was ever in an area that had agent orange used. my question which i went back to the va was, where is the dd214, two purple hearts, tours of duty the u.n. to come back as an infantry person. do i have to give every location? no one read. until tonight maybe it did not occur to me that maybe that is not even part of the record in more. so i am -- i don't know. i get very emotional. >> can i make a comment? >> yes. >> in major's suggestion that i would think that the va needs to

accept, there are a lot of civilians a worker at the va i was expected to know how to tell them you were in vietnam. i have no idea. i took it upon myself to learn those things on my own time. >> if you get up purple heart in combat it is not from -- i will say something. i will withdraw that. you are absolutely right. i think it is a basic part of the claim. i feel there is tremendous disconnect with washington and the bureaucracy. as the first sergeant said, you know, we've lost that. >> you should see what we have

to go through to prove that you served on that ship or that the ship was in that water. some people because of production standards to not take the extra mile to look through everything to figure out if your ship you might have served on is on the list. >> somebody commented. it was so long ago. i yield back. thank you. it. >> thank you for your service. you're recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i first want to join my colleagues in thanking you for your service. most importantly for what we are trying to tackle tonight. what you have encountered and what it might take to turn it around and improve it. your comments, ensuring that the veteran is the focus of the

decisions, all of those points are well taken. they seem to resonate with feedback we have received. a sharper picture is starting to come into focus about the problems. so much of it revolves around culture and the environment within which to work. so i want to thank you for that. but i also have a chance to hear from you on the front lines of processing all of these claims and appeals that these new claims a generating. following on the other good questions about ideas or suggestions to improve the process, i really like the one stop shop, the idea that you would limit the medical information specific to the claim that you are filing so that there is less paperwork to wade through. someone i have been falling on these issues lately, a professor

at harvard who has been writing a lot. she brings up an interesting statistic. there have been almost a million iraq in afghanistan war claims so far and only one-half percent had been denied. her point is instead of this protracted months or years long process to successfully filed a claim, is there some better way, some better handoff between the department of defense, some comprehensive medical exam that identifies these issues perhaps ahead of time, approve mental health claims given the propensity for veterans to climb them. and with that, try to shorten the backlog and speed up the process. fees two wars beyond all the cultural issues you described, there is an incredible case load

and stress. we would love to hear other ideas or something i have asked, is this a resource issue? de you need more people processing these claims? if we have the resources in place and it is just a matter of culture and some ideas. with a couple of minutes i have remaining maybe we could start and work down the line. >> i think that if someone applies with a medical condition they don't understand what they need to prove. that does not mean much to the person. when you call the person you explain what exactly the medical condition has to show and they understand. i feel like we have a call center it you can call. most people have never processed to climb before.

they do a great job and do everything that they can. they don't know the third -- burden. if we educated the service organization, i suggest they have seminars, congressional liaison to explain what they look for when a claim is submitted. that way they could help more people do it the right way the first time. >> thank you. >> we have had these systems, programs out there to speed the process of. you can't hide that. these things when around. if we can't keep those done timely, you know, there is no easy answer. we need to get people who know the business together, sit down and discuss what is really

needed and stop doing these quick fixes, these ideas. we work the claims. we know what is going on. no one is listening to us. >> is it a resource issue? is it simply the culture they you describe? what would you change beyond that culture? >> one thing i saw while back, and i have only seen it less than a handful of times, when the veteran got out of service somehow he was given a va examination and essentially we did not have to reexamine and when he applied for benefits. and that kind of work can speed up the claim. i have only seen a handful of times. that may be an idea. give it a more comprehensive military exam.

>> appreciate that and yelled back. >> thank you. you are recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome. a question for you. you mentioned the june 24 study the use circulated that seemingly that to your dismissal you mentioned in earlier testimony, previous reports or studies you had circulated. can you speak to those? >> i circulated a study, that accuracy process of. the gentleman spoke about the dd 214. one of the problems we see is that there seems to be this agreement -- disagreement as to how we read agreements.

you get an in-depth teaching. and then they have these rules. there are a lot of people that have problems matching that up, not because they can't but because the training is just not that clear. so the study went into accuracy issues. we were either not paying, not service connecting or just overpaying. the decision that we found, essentially there was no central focus in terms of revenue. in essence, it somehow exemplified that we have a big problem that we cannot easily fix and have to look at the

consistency. it is not a mistake. and we are going to say that somebody has an issue. >> you mentioned two studies earlier. you said you had raised several. was there a pattern? was it just of the two major studies? have they ever responded? >> when we did the study everyone expected a response from quality review team. we got none. >> how did you distribute them? did you distribute them to all employees, send them to management? >> e-mail. i believe our union also distributed. >> did you receive any response? are the morning you not to do it ? >> no response. >> no response. you issued -- circulated their

response. the only response you had was on june 30th. >> yes, sir. >> no acknowledgment throughout your time at the regional office regarding any of these circulated reports or notifications or concerns? >> the only comment i received through other employees, and i believe they gave me information that apparently the quality review team, there was a comment made, is management going to respond. that is the last i heard. >> okay. you are saying, your june 30th letter termination was a complete surprise. >> yes, sir. >> i mean, i am asking, and i am trying to be helpful. as an employee if you are circulating reports about

management i would have respected some response. frankly, i think the lack of response is more damning. the fact that these concerns went completely and responded to. that's accurate. >> yes, sir. we expect a dialogue. >> let me ask you a question. if he had the opportunity to remain employed with the va, would that be your preference? >> yes, sir. i like the job. i find it incredibly interesting . go beyond what is required to try to serve as connect everyone. it is difficult to connect some of the people aboard aircraft carriers. the record is just not there. i would do everything possible to research issues. >> very good. thank you. thank you for contributing to the performance and success of

their regional office. i appreciate that. i yield back. >> thank you. you are recognized for five minutes. >> i think the chairman put it thank you all for being here. you hear the members talk. they are channeling what is coming from their constituents. it is incredibly disappointing to hear how you have been handled. it is beyond the pale the some of this would go on, but i guess the flip side is there are dedicated people that keep coming back to the veterans. i have been saying we need to figure out a national policy. whitney to have a national focus getting at it -- and i keep hearing you are exactly right on this. i have been in units where they told us change was coming that

meant enlisted troops are going to get hammered. this comes back to leaders. we all went through. they can have the a are 670-1. the issue on this is that -- i think you're bringing up good points. we can talk until we're blue in the face. we know there should be one record. the two biggest agencies of government compete for funds. that is why the last six months they don't do dental exams the taxpayers still get it. and it all comes down. my question to you is -- this is an interesting point you brought up my colleague from texas brought up a good point about the claim. it is so interesting, the irs takes every tax return and on it afterwards.

the va audits on the front and. so the taxpayers are given more credibility we should not be overpaying. no veteran should read see they claim that does not deserve it. if they're is a group that has the benefit of the doubt on their side it would be this group so here is my dilemma, and i ask this of you. we have resources to the va to an obscene amount to. we have done nothing for it. that definition of insanity -- and this is from congress, from the administration, the va, how do i go back to my taxpayers and tell them we don't have enough? county you respond? is it so bonn will -- when i hear you cannot find a copier, it is just atrocious, the amount

we have put. can we comment? >> that general tools you need to do your job or not there. we start out by having enough printers and copiers. every time i walk to pick up the print, that is wasting time. you're not allowed to have a printer at your desk. i have no idea why. if you leave your paper in the printer you can get in trouble. you run the risk of chatting with somebody. so simple fixes in our office would help a lot. i don't understand -- >> i keep hearing from all of you that this fear of retribution is real. yet we have a pending act of congress to go after the managers.

i am intrigued to. it is sacred this idea of using regional council and taxpayer dollars to defend themselves and personnel management, someone has to have middle ground. we want folks to be making decisions, but not to the point where if i make this mistake and fire someone incorrectly you have to pay for it. my last question, how familiar are you with other offices? many of us, we are not provincial by choice. it might to offices that i deal exclusively with cars sioux falls in minneapolis. i don't know if i could just that or not. do you think what you are seeing , at different across the country, any inclination as you talk amongst yourselves, systemically it is pretty similar? if. >> i think systemically a lot of

the issues are probably similar, but i think the bullying and nepotism and cronyism and things like that are more prevalent in my office. we have a health team, and from two different regional offices and i got to know some of the offices. do you do the discover claman of ? i feel like not all offices are the same, but i feel like their is a culture of corruption in general. >> there is one simple answer. do a complete review. >> i agree. the problems are systemic. very? ventures handle it differently. >> thank you, and i yield back. >> thank you. you are recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i think as a first sergeant, the

veterans that are watching this, people around the country, it gets a little confusing, what is going on. i'm looking at it, what is the veterans saying? what can i expect? what we heard here -- and i have been on this committee five and a half years. a huge backlog of claims. that was the problem. many of these claims are not adjudicated. what do we do? he will put a lot of money into hiring more people and training people to evaluate claims. number two, we decided we would go to pay claims. we put the money into infrastructure. we have put an obscene amount of money into infrastructure. we did that. if you have a fully processed

claim all of this is going to get better. tonight after all that has happened, it has not gotten better. have we hire enough people? is it a problem of resources? every single year i asked the secretary. to you have enough money to carry out your mission? every year the answer was yes. on both sides of the aisle we think it provides the resources. what i am hearing tonight is they are not used properly or we don't have enough resources. which is it? am i correct? we still have a problem out there. let me just go through to win three questions quickly. how is an old claim made to look new? i know that another thing you brought of was how you prevent

duplicate of claims. if we are paying a veteran twice that means their is a veteran out they're not kidding paid. our resources are not infinite. they are finite. the veterans to deserve that, how we deal that and stop it as quickly as we can so that veterans did to deserve to be paid can get a in a timely fashion. those are a few things. am i correct? >> if someone is getting paid twice it does not mean someone is not kidding paid. it means that we incorrectly processed the plane and allowed for the system to pay them twice. i think we have plenty of resources. i think employees, if you ask them if they like their job, very few in my office would say that they cannot wait to come to work today. we are not treated very nicely. if you tell your child there bad

every day they will probably think they are bad. there is no positive reinforcement. it is just a really corrosive type atmosphere. >> back up to my question, how do we stop duplicative payments? >> when that plane comes in they should not be on production. they need to have time to do it the right way. >> if i am a veteran and put in a plan tomorrow and we get all these things. i could expect it to get processed and 125 days. that is what we are told. that is not happening. >> the backlog is only a few types of claims. it is not all the claims at the va. that is only made to someone who is filing an original plan.

if you have a different kind it might not be included. so it depends what you pile and what end product is on it to determine if you are included. >> what i have heard also is that the problem that we have -- and i have not heard anybody say we did not have enough money. unrealistic goals and basically accountability. no one is accountable. and i think those are the things. basically just leaders at the local level. i assume that in the various regions around the country the outcomes would be different it may get adjudicated fairly rapidly just like we were told. when you have been to one, you have seen one. is that the same thing?

is there some -- across the country can you expect the same metric? you should be able to get the same gall bladder operation in another home town. can i expect the same level of scrutiny? >> i don't think anyone can answer that question there is no accountability. this idea the claim in south carolina, if someone developed a plan in south carolina, i send it to florida. if the raider can not write it because i made a mistake in south carolina, who is responsible for fixing it? it sounds good on paper. move things around and all this kind of stuff, but you have to fix responsibility. you have to know who is responsible, you can't pick up

the phone. this is your problem. the veteran can be talking with someone in california, someone in south carolina. he might be getting two different answers to the same question. we need to fix responsibility. >> i yield back. >> you are recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to hear from the courageous employees. i do pause to wonder why you would want to show up here. i do understand it must be a commitment. i want to follow up on part of your testimony referenced in the 96 white boxes. i was reading that. the 96 white boxes, claims from veterans.

>> no. i am not really sure. i tried to check up. they were supposed to go through the boxes and make sure the stuff was not identifiable before it was shredded. i am hoping that is what happened. they go down to triage once in awhile. those boxes are not there anymore. no one has told me they went through all of them. i am not sure what happened. >> in the guesstimates how many veterans were part of those 96 boxes? >> thousands of claims. some of them probably true leave are not identifiable. a lot of the things were not easily identifiable. it took a little bit of work to figure out. there is no time for

investigations. you have to move quickly. so fortunately if you get a call and they say the va says the did not give my claim to my belief that. i saw some of them in the box. >> for you to receive notice from someone, another employee contacted you and you contacted your superiors and notified them of these boxes. they end up being shredded. >> that employee is sitting here in the audience tonight we actually contacted washington immediately. they actually did act on it quickly. i was told that they did not go to the shredder, but i don't know where they went.

>> i do not see that in your notes. it was that an e-mail or phone call? anything in writing about what happened? >> actually, i called. i attempted to send an e-mail. apparently shortly after they took action and prevented those documents from going to the shredder. >> we hope they were not traded. >> okay. i appreciate you being here as well manipulation when columbus reporting data. can you describe why you were fired. >> the reports that i offered on

concerned accuracy and how the accuracy data in my view was being presented there seems to be a problem in terms of trying to find common ground. the common ground seems to be -- the problem seems to be over some very basic and over complex evidentiary issues. in other words, we were not rating claims accurately. i want to get construction and guidance. i think that led to -- >> and i appreciate that. as a member of congress, dozens and dozens of claims to follow upon. i continued to tell my constituents should not have to call your member of congress to

get your claim processed. 500 times in my three and a half years that has happened. you say that someone gets special treatment, that upsets me. upsets many veterans. we have to fix this system. i appreciate you being here and sharing your testimony. i appreciate follow-up testimony as well after we hear from va officials. they will come and talk about how good the date is. things are improving so much. we can't believe anything. so much of it is falsified. i yield back. >> thank you. you are recognized for five minutes. >> if i could go back, yes, these regional offices vary greatly because the one that service was vegas is in reno. the fifth worst in the country. the way they reduced their

backlog was to send half the cases out to other regional offices. we don't know where. i would like to follow up on the points you were making. as i listened to all of this, it seems clear to me that we have two levels of problems. we have to separate these and look at them differently if we're going to ever come to any practical solutions that move this forward rather than just have hearing after hearing was no suggestions. one problem is the privacy at the national level, the fully developed claims were found claims or budgeting. what i am hearing from you is that as the first sergeant said, that level is not listening to the people who are in the trenches on the front lines dealing with this every day. they have listened more than some of those policies might have been developed differently. a second kind of problem seems

to me is the personal problem at their regional offices. we just passed a bill out of the house making it easier to fire people. and so a lot of their regional offices have folks at that level in charge. some of them to not. the reno office, for example, as edgy 15. ..

we don't know who is doing what at the regional office level. we don't know. they are not because if they get in trouble they are shifted to someplace else to someplace else or was it a resource problem? was at a leadership problem? we don't know because now we have shifted cases and we are hiding cases by shifting them from one place to the other. there is a need for review of each regional office. it's unfair to a regional director who's 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 someone who has

been doing poorly and now he is to redouble the work. >> exactly and does he have the resources? though now he is back. his employees who are doing a good job are now suffering. is that right collects no it's not right. so somebody has to take the lead in this and go to each individual office because i believe that it's a problem all over. we have it in baltimore and we found out the mail sustained the claim process. it's the piece of document, it's that thing that we need to start the claim in me to process the claim. so if you look at the regional offices and how they handle that mail it's a key and i just want to go on record saying that the centralized mail but they are coming up with somebody needs to

get a handle on 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 will be talking about them next. >> ms. ruell? >> it's 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 are 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 are not on the spit that they put the employees on if the quality or the production standards across the country if 56% are 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 in the end unless you can prove that they are acting outside the scope of their employment. and i think that legal standard needs to change. >> it's a pretty vague standard. >> i was just going to add and i will be quick that maybe someone needs to determine that manager his services are no longer required. >> thank you mr. chair. >> thank thank you. thank you. mrs. patrick you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you chairman for calling the panel and thank the witnesses for their incredible and compelling testimony tonight. ms. ruell you testified in her opening statement that it came to the d.a. around 2007 and within a short period of time at your tenure at the va he began to notice things were not working as they showed, that claims were not being processed timely and claims were being lost.

fellow employees were reported that mail was being set aside and in some cases mail was being shredded. we have constituents, perhaps a widow of a world war ii veteran who sits down and write to traditional bladder, puts his stamp on it and sent it to the philadelphia va office believing that claim would be processed and that simple request might be heard. that letter might have been shredded and went on to find and report to your managers that duplicate payments were being made and as a dedicated employee of the va you try to fi fix it. you asked that those duplicate claims be recaptured and brought back in to be ignored. around the same time i was sent by the people of the philadelphia region to come back to congress to serve them and i have served a previous term back in the 109th congress from

2005 to 2006 i had the chance to rehire dedicated caseworkers who served veterans who have worked with me in the past. they are veterans themselves in within a short period of time in 2011 they were reporting to me that something was wrong at veterans administration. the claims are being delayed and they couldn't get answers and they were sending letters. we are the hearing the same from our constituents. i did not know you at the time kristin but you were saying the same things to your leadership the philadelphia regional office and before that you were criticized and castigated and you were abused and disciplined. i think you ought to be applauded or trying to change the system and i think he wrote an apology from the veterans administration. think your fellow comrades here who were with you worked 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 passed away while waiting for that claims to be processed. ms. ruell you provided information with the administration at the philadelphia office who is now listening to my office duplicate payments which we wrote to general shinseki when we brought that information to us in september of 2012 and their response was received in february of 2013 from the undersecretary 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 answered to just ignore the problem. from working with the oig for the last four weeks, they are baffled as to datamining this

information and fighting the problem but i don't think an answer is inconclusive or we are not sure how to figure this problem out is a fair answer to a veteran who has been waiting for their benefits and they have to claim numbers and we are not sure what we are going to do with that claim. >> ms. ruell last week the philadelphia va acknowledge the backlog of 49.6% with 42,140 veterans serving in the philadelphia office waiting more than 125 days for an answer to their claims. based on your experiences this inaccurate statistic for philadelphia? >> know, if we do now if we didn't have that them i think the number would be much higher. >> the obama administration has promised to end the backlog by 2015. with 274,000 claims still stuck on the backlog do you think this promise is feasible?

>> absolutely not. it breeds corruption in the regional offices and we might say the claim is then claim is in process but it's probably not processed correctly and we probably didn't help the veteran the way we are supposed to. >> are veterans of our nation passingly while waiting for their claims to be processed? >> mini. >> can you estimate how many? >> know 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 work the claimant grant the benefit. >> that number was 19,500 back in december. when it was investigated by cir, investigated the report. >> i yield back. >> mr. meehan for five minutes. >> mr. chairman i want to thank you for the courtesy of being

able to be with you today and ms. ruell i see by your testimony you are warned by his supervisor that you were at the philadelphia management center that you are not permitted to report issues to your director and 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 of we are 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. this is a whole new expiration of the management problems at the va. your testimony is very compelling. you've talked about improper shredding of documents documents and he you talk about 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 you've talked about the failure to notify the irs of what could be the ability to recapture some of those all very significant.

let me just drilled down on a couple of things because i do want to follow for some of these issues when we are concluded. they talk about the number of people who may have been receiving duplicate benefits. you talk 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? 41,000 duplicate records. >> that was told to me by an employee of the central office. that would mean that our claimants are listed in the system with more than one pid number. at that point anybody could get paid twice. it's up to the case processor to identify that as a duplicate record and fi fix it and unfortunately after a reported things in 2010 there was a list given out that people were being paid twice. i provided i believe in exhibit.

i checked that same list last week. i checked everything -- every number on the list. unfortunately after we stopped the second payment you have to fix the record so that person that is looked at. >> and the essence of that there may be as many 41,000 duplicate records? >> they are probably duplicate records, yes. >> let me ask this my time is limited as well do you have any idea of the scope of the claims that have been paid in excess? >> i only know the ones that i have seen but i have seen over $2 million when i researched it. the office of special counsel considers the $2000 or more souls might call -- cool to get at least that amount wasn't hard. >> he spoke of meant mail. what's the difference between military mail and returned mail? >> i'm not actually sure what the differences. it's just what we call the mail

and is the mail that we send to the claimant and the returned mail comes back because we don't have the right addresses. we pay by direct deposit mail which is not the best thing for climate. >> what about mail that is sitting there no one is clarifying it and there's no response to the veteran that has some bad peace. is that accurate? so we are waiting for up to two or three years. one of my colleagues questioned you on this but there are 96 offices you have testified and i have in my hand the exhibit which clarifies and quantifies not just 96 boxes but a separate in addition to what were eight other filing cabinets of this kind of mail. to your knowledge, has any of that than shredded? >> i know that when i went down a week later it wasn't there anymore so i'm not sure. >> you said a week later. when is a week later because

this is going to be important for a follow-up? >> when i reported that and i've made so many different reporting some sorry. >> with your exhibit you up a colleague that brought it to your attention and from your attention the gave it to the attention of your supervisors the fact that these boxes were sitting there and they were not handled. >> and then i went down subsequently a week later and all those file cabinets were empty. >> so week later he went down and they were empty. >> yes. >> we will follow-up on that the sergeant robinson to testify there were 95 similar documents in baltimore as well? >> no, in baltimore they had boxes of documents that were not processed. >> you don't know whether these were the tree arched documents? >> it has to be documents coming in because they were not a status. >> i thank you for that and i will work with my colleague that we are particularly concerned

about big circumstance in philadelphia and people were to get answers to you particularly with those boxes of documents that appear to have disappeared. thank you mr. chairman and i yield back. >> mr. lamar for five minutes. >> mr. chairman break in member i appreciate the opportunity to sit in on this committee here tonight. i represent far northern california a large district with significant veterans population and am frustrated as his or her office was trying to get answers for that. i greatly appreciate this was the blower panel being here tonight and having the guts to do that. you should not ever feel like you can't speak. i will try to keep it quick here. all three of you have you ever been told and this is redundant and my apologies. have you been told not to take your concerns to members of congress were to hear from members of congress on how to handle whether it's an individual claim or overall

system? have you ever been told not to deal with this and just don't talk to those members about it? >> we were told that if we don't bring their issues internally we were sent an e-mail that it was an improper avenue of redress. when mccotter yearly whistleblower e-mail we got another e-mail that came with it that said recently a lot of employees have been contacting the undersecretary with issues at work and they told us that e-mail wasn't an appropriate avenue of redress and i immediately reported it and said are you telling us we can't whistle blow and they resent the whistleblower memo out with new language. >> and the other two members of the panel's? >> i took my issues with it be a chain of command for x amount of years and now i started sending them to congress and no one has told me i could not send them. >> mr. soto? >> we have not been told by the

similar experience as ms. ruell when individuals contacted the undersecretary directly via e-mail than they got back letters from management saying he violated the chain of command etc. etc. and received threats. >> we feel we are different from the chain of command because we take the phonecalls from veterans when they can't get satisfaction with the va. our offices get those calls so we intervene on those cases. we ran into a brick wall because of management and again we'll deal with the open regional office which is under new management and we feel 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 hand-deliver and not go through the mail system acclaim for a veteran that waited 36 years to be handled and was denied entry into the building read the security was waiting for her so to follow up on that

do you feel you have had the freedom or do you feel like you should be able to talk to a member of congress or staff first-hand dealing with the veterans claim as with us they can't get through to be a? >> definitely. we have a congressional team in our office of the congress person calls in. they speak to the congressional team. the problem is so many people now have figured out that the way to apply for benefits that we have so many congressional and those are taking priority over people who have been waiting many years. >> it shouldn't be that way because you shouldn't have have to contact a congressional office to get results. we should be able to get the big picture things but nonetheless we are not going to tell them them know as much as we can keep up and one of my office is 70% of their work is handling veterans phonecalls of their something broken the system there.

finally we have ad in our openoffice again previous management to deny or render rate claims or give 0% ratings torocess claims. have you ever been ordered to just get them off the books? to deny them or find 0% or low rates and have you been able to do that all three of you again please. >> i don't rate cases. >> do you know that in your office by those that do? >> i can't answer that question. >> i don't rate cases either. >> do you hear such a thing? >> indirectly we hear that the rules are totally being followed when processing claims so i believe it's not about 0% or ratings. i believe people are being denied because it's faster that way than granting the benefits.

>> than they get kicked to the board of appeals. mr. soto i only have a few seconds. >> and talking to other raiders we pass this thing called changing the game rules and in that sense to me in my view what it meant was that for increased claims we would try to rates the evidence of record that resulted in zeros or denials rather than ordering for example. >> thank you. >> thank you very much and members thank you for your questions. we want to thank again the folks for testifying. [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] again noticing that the witnesses are at the table and i would like to ask the audience to go in and take their seats and the witnesses would please rise, raise your right hand. do you solemnly swear to the penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to provide us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? please be seated. each of your complete written statements will be part of the hearing record. prior to recognizing witnesses for testimony on 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 hard to follow. a timeline as i recount it for

you but i instructed the committee staff to make a visit to the philadelphia regional office on the second of july of 2014. as of the 20th of june specific concerns and we have heard some tonight have been raised on the management or more accurately mismanagement of the regional office and i did wander staff to spend a day on the ground to perform a technical review of some of the various files from you the office and meet with individuals who work there. this is a customary thing for our staff to do. let me run through what occurred on this unannounced visit. my staff alerted the office congressional affairs of their imminent arrival at approximately 9:00 in the morning and 20 minutes later they arrived. they were greeted by an employee of the regional office and they were company to conference room on the fourth floor. within moments of arrival while waiting for the judge of the regional office will do my staff went to the restroom. there was another individual

that was in the restroom to head set a yellow notepad not far from the sink and a staff member went by at this think. they notice that there was writing at the top of the page that was circled. in fact we have a copy of it and i would like to post it if we can't so everybody can see it. members you have a copy of this. it's the yellow legal pad. the two names for circled at the top of the page. now 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 among what was written by staff members names for information and their status as committee veterans affairs and then if you will notice about midway down you will see where the word ignore was followed by one of my staff members names.

so you see the word ignore it just looks like to the left of the patent. before i finished the timeline for the members benefit the person who exited to the restroom at the yellow note pad in hand was acting director of lucy of the philadelphia regional office in the acting director 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 a cla but instead had spoken with diana rubens regarding congressional staff's arrival. she then began the meeting with two comments. for she said the philadelphia regional office endeavors to do all things with integrity and get proper benefits to veterans and second she made a curious statement than taking an ms. ms. villa path's possession of the notepad with the two names that were circled.

she said it's difficult to have employees or ex-employees who say we are not doing a good job. when we heard from ms. halliday at the office of expected -- inspector general i believe this commitment to integrity and service to veterans is seriously challenged. on the basis of verified data manipulations leadership's failure to follow reporting protocols and investigation into a myriad of inappropriate practices. while in the conference room that vso veteran service management told told her the appeals team is on their way up with files and computers to facilitate staff access. in exchange the transpired three separate times ms. subtwelve accommodate a room on the third floor despite repeated participations of the room. the veteran service senator manager exited the conference or when they came back and she

dictated that our staff would in fact be directed to be accommodated in a room on the third floor. the room was found to be wired with activated microphones and inactivated camera so it could be no surprise to anyone the staff requested a relocation to a different room, a room that va oig had vacated which was was presumably free of recording devices. now back to my message. the acting director wasn't in possession of a node upon which was written ignore my staff. am i surprised? no. actually i am shocked. to my colleague and ranking member mr. mcjob -- mr. michaud not listening to feedback be it from congress veterans or from its own employees. now, and va knows it's whistleblowers to report

practices that go against the principles of the department and acting secretary gibson has been noted tonight that he is deeply disappointed in the failures of va to take whistleblower complaint seriously. va ignores vso's when they are found to be in communities such as when vpns obstructed the american legion's regional office action reviews and limited the region's ability to fruitfully conduct its business and commercial claims processing staff and review disability benefits claims in accordance with its long-standing practice of seeking quality. the va now ignores committee staff as well. my staff and its regional offices perform 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 her mandible errors yet when my staff convened with regional office staff to demonstrate the errors and see

corrections for the veterans that have been negatively affected regional staff which refuses to acknowledge and often even the most rudimentary of the mistakes. quite simply this oversight complicates vb a's message is that we are doing great work. while va make nor employees and ignore whistleblowers vso's and ignore congressional staff and ignore let's not forget the veterans that they are supposed to serve you will not ignore this committee anymore. and be on notice he will not adore our staff that is acting as this committee's agent says well be the committee has a constitutional oversight and i intend it shall be carried out on an hindered on behalf of the american public and a half of our nation's veterans. if you look very carefully and put the snow back up, it's a pretty derogatory comments that are on this.

but anybody at the table like to comment about the comments that are written on this piece of paper? mnstc-i you are welcome to comment. >> chairman, without question, without question we respect the oversight of this committee and your staff. what occurred on that day was not acceptable and not indicative of the normal ways in which ms. rubens might behave. now she has been on visits with your staff and members of this committee before and i think if we reflect on those visits in the last year we would say she did not repeat similar behaviors but i will not excuse it. i have not excuse did with her and i will just tell you without question it is unacceptable.

i offer on behalf of the department by sincere apologies to your staff who experienced out that day and my commitment that it will not happen again and that you will receive absolutely with open arms and fully in support anything you need on any visit you gone. >> undersecretaries hickey can you explain why ms. rubens came to our offices to try to cover up what had taken place and gave a totally implausible reason. in fact i believe the excuse he gave was she did not say these things. she said that other people were saying these things and in fact staff should ignore those you are now saying that ms. rubens did lie when she came to her office? >> chairman miller i was not present when ms. rubens came to talk to you. i know her entire purpose for coming to talk to you into your staff was to express persons here regret for her comments made on that piece of paper.

>> i apologize but i'm going to take two more minutes. on this note, it talks about arrogance. it directs a person to ignore a committee staff person and then it makes another derogatory statement about a staff person. ms. rubens came to our committee offices and when she did she did not apologize for that. what she said was she had told the acting director to ignore what other people may be saying about my staff. and you're telling me this person is still employed even though she gave a directive, do not tell an agent of this committee what was happening at the regional office. >> chairman miller i will say again without question, without question we respect the

oversight of every single one of you on this committee and in these hollywood halls and anyone of you who would like to come at any point in time and many of you have, into our regional offices, we will affect every possible way to support you, your staffs and in the oversight you need to exercise. i commit that to you and i would please ask you to please call me directly if you ever see anything different. >> so i will take that as a no, that ms. rubens did not lie even though she did. again your commitment is appreciated but it is not believed and i appreciate you being here tonight ms. halliday you are recognized for five minutes. >> chairman miller members of the committee thank you for the opportunity to discuss the oig oversight work within vba. i am accompanied by mr. brent

arronte project of the san diego benefits san diego benefits inspections division. oig provides cyclical oversight of operations performs national audit special reviews and reviews allegations to help identify antitrust problems. we see that vba is making some incremental process through its initiatives and in response to implementing oig recommendatio recommendations. but more work needs to be done. we have concerns that vba's performance goals are not realistic and compromised by data integrity issues. vba has appeared more concerned with reaching its goals and providing a balanced approach to its workload management. we continue to find significant claims processing error rates resulting in improper payments that in some cases create hardships for veterans are you today we issued the results of the review with vba's special

two-year initiative to clear all claims. this initiative was put in place so that the veterans who waited the longest to begin collecting benefits. vba implemented eight provisional rating process where we found it was less effective than vba's existing processing quickly providing benefits to veterans. instead we determined the va policies change remove provisional rates from the pending inventory while additional work was still required. once removed, the pharaohs did not place a party on finalizing these claims which were no longer considered part of the backlog. the policy change led to inaccurate reporting of vba's workload statistics on pending and completing claims. we also projected that vba did not accurately process about 32%

of the rating decisions completed under the initiative. we estimated these inaccuracies resulted in about 40 million in improper payments. vba is set parties to meet performance goals and a clearing the backlog of compensation claims. this approach has created additional backlogs and delays another critical workload areas such as appeals and nonraiding claims including changes to veterans -- other claims processes and activities such as the management of temporary disability evaluations, military drill compensation offsets and benefit reductions made improved financial stewardship to reduce the risks to improper payments. we have been told by vba staff that higher priorities such as processing the compensation backlogged to the president over

processing this up with her work with. we needs to ensure adequate resources are in place to reduce the financial risks and the improper monthly benefit payments and most of all provide better services to veterans. in the wake of receiving a large number of allegations of patient wait time manipulation and dha, we are receiving a number of serious allegations regarding male mismanagement, manipulation of date of claims and other data integrity issues in the baltimore, philadelphia, los angeles, oakland and houston arrows and today we received an additional allegation regarding the little rock pharaoh. vba reported to us the male mismanagement problem at the baltimore there are a that led to confirming over 9500 pieces

of unprocessed mail needed immediate attention. in response bba has moved quickly to take action to process this mail. we have teams on site and our work is not complete at the philadelphia there'll. i am asking my staff to understand why these problems are occurring and how they are impacting veterans needing benefits so that appropriate corrective action can be taken. vba continues to face challenges to improve claims processing accuracy and timeliness. further we are concerned at how quickly the number of there'll's with allegations is growing and we are working to ensure appropriate oversight. moving forward should the number

of allegations continue at this pace we will need to implement additional oversight and expand our benefits inspections to review more high-risk. >> undersecretary hickey you are recognized. >> thank you for the opportunity to discuss the progress in the veterans administration. as we work hard to find the best possible service to veterans and their families and survivors. before i provide a progress report on our transformation efforts i want to make it clear to this committee to every veteran come every family member, survivor or supporter of veterans that vba take seriously

our commitment to provide timely accurate benefits and maintain the integrity of our systems and processes. i have been saddened and offended by recent events within the larger va system for some of my fellow veterans have not been served with honor respect that they deserve. i know that the number one question on your minds is whether the accuracy of data within vba systems can be trusted by members of this committee or by the american people. we have many checks and balances on her systems and data and we are working to make that even more trustworthy. every plane has 11 letters of human intelligence there which is processed where any of those 11 individuals can catch an error. we also have valuable third-party validators liker vso partners to review every claim we work where they hold the power of attorney. we don't close the claim unless they do. our data is held at the national level not on local data systems. it's updated and protected every

night and controlled access. 90% of our work is now completed an automated system vbms which provides an odd trail and as such is a valuable to turn to data manipulation and misuse. we also have a dedicated analytics team that constantly refuse our work with data looking for anomalies of the system so management can respond quickly. even with all these controls and more and i have learned this through 27 year military career retiring as a general officer that there will always be someone you thought you could trust but instead used extremely poor judgment and total lack of integrity as they figured out ways around the system. in our vba business that means they have heard veterans and that is grossly unacceptable to acting secretary gibson to me me and two pas dedicated employees 52% of which in vbr veterans themselves. we'll may find these individuals we can rest assure i will respond quickly to the situation and begin necessary actions.

one of these actions to this to immediately notify the office of inspector general to home we -- intimidation or retaliation not just against whistleblowers but against any employee he raises a hand to identify a problem, make a suggestion or report something in law or policy of core values is absolutely unacceptable to me. i invite people to talk to me me and i've heard tonight that some heard tonight that some have made to prevent them from doing that when i invite him to. that is unacceptable to me. to ensure our organization is upholding our values we are doubling down our efforts to assure the integrity of our systems and processes. acting secretary an expert team he assembled to brainstorm possible scenarios for where an individual might find a way around the system is further controls in further controls any. additionally i've directed a 100% facility in desk audit of

the male documentation in all 56 regional offices. vba will also continue to provide publicly available performance data on the monday morning workload report. now let me please update your quickly on our transformation progress. as a direct result of the transformation efforts yes we have reduced the backlog of veterans claims by more than 56% from its peak of 611,000 to 271,000 today. last year our employees completed an all-time record-breaking 1.17 million claims. this year we are tracked to break that record again by completing 1.3 million claims. we will disperse $67 billion into veterans hans, that's 18 billion more than when i arrived in death by lebanon and as of last thursday we have completed a million claims this year. more importantly its not come at the expense of quality. we have increased their claim based accuracy from 83% when i arrived to 90.3% today.

no matter which way you look at it how it is viewed how you cut it in three, 12 month claim issue all of them are 90% say because employees are working hard at that but i get it. i know you still have questions. as a result i have recently attracted to vba to a fly for the 9001 certification. the ultimate global benchmark for quality management. as reprioritized disability rating claims we have not lost focus on our other areas. we have completed 2.5 million nonfading products the highest we have done in 15 years. we have also need to do a better job. we need to be more timely. that is why we initiated a seven different efforts to focus on i'm happy to talk about today. we have not lost focus on appeals. the appeals rate is steady. it has stayed steady for 20 years at 11 to 12% however is a

complete record-breaking numbers of claims at a 10 to 12% rate or 11 to 12% rate comics these map politics we are going to get more appeals because the rate has not changed but the volume house. it's unacceptable and i asked this committee for its continued support especially in the area for legislative solutions. while we have made good progress the employees have good progress, we recognize still more work needs to be done. i appreciate the support of this committee and i'm prepared to answer your questions. >> mr. bertoni you are recognized for five minutes. >> mr. chairman ranking member and members of the committee good evening. i'm pleased to discuss the department of up veterans affairs goals. last year they paid $51 million in 3.6 mayanne veterans. given the sums the number of veterans served as important a department have a robust credible quality assurance framework to ensure all that was received accurate and consistent

claims three and prior work we documented shortcomings and quality assurance activities. more recently cancer seminars about the lack of transparency related to changes in agency's national accuracy rate for disability claims which is based on a systematic technical accuracy review or star. my remarks are based on the ongoing work before this committee and to the extent to which bp measures and reports accuracy of disability claims and the extent to which other quality assurance activities are complementary and coordinated. in summary the agency now measures and reports accuracy in two ways. by claman by issue. but its approach has limitatio limitations. when calculating star accuracy rates for for either measure the day of statistical practices and that it doesn't wait the results to reflect examples in the same number of cases for all offices

regardless of size and thus it produces imprecise estimates. absent this data this did develop accuracy rankings may be skewed nba may focus positive recognition on the wrong offices are preliminarily by taking waiting into account we calculated that pas read office ranking would improve from its current 34th place among all offices to 22nd place. conversely the los angeles office would drop from 46 to 56th place. further epa's approach to measuring akers is inefficient due to sampling methods which caused it to radio for 5000 more claims than necessary thereby diverting limited resources from other quality assurance activities such as conduct a more targeted reviews in vero cases.

beyond star vba's work includes local quality review teams that conduct reviews before claims are finalized and provide feedback to staff to avoid future errors. however in three of four offices we visited claims processes during overtime hours which can be substantial works looted from such reviews. it may undermine agencies that undermine agencies that pretend to help claims processors make consistent decisions when presenting the evidence ppa uses electronic questionnaires to test for consistency and administer to thousands of staff at once. however we found the agency has never pretested these documents to ensure the query of questions or the validity of expected results. pretesting is a generally accepted practice and sound survey. wesley vba coordinates its efforts by disseminating national accuracy and related

guidance to regional staff. they reuse the results of starter focused training and guide local quality reviews. however regional staff later be done at there are two many sources of guidance and searching for the most time consuming confusing and difficult. staff were concerned that vba's policy manual national training was not sufficiently opaque to help them avoid future errors. a conclusion of vba has made enhancements to its quality assurance programs at missed opportunities to fully demonstrate its commitment to quality amp in particular the agencies producing imprecise actress estimates used to guide programs management and improvements and also missed an opportunity to win the public's trust when introducing a measure as a full explanation of this limitations. in other areas its failure to follow generally accepted practices has led to implementation shortcomings which otherwise are representative of sound quality

assurance practices. however all these issues can be addressed with more focus and sustained management attention. going forward we'll continue to work with a b.a. in this committee to ensure veterans claims are adjudicated accurately and consistently. this concludes my statement about the apple ii and answered questions you may have. >> thank you very much mr. bertoni at first question mr. mr. murphy if you would sir. less than than you were here before this committee i asked you a question about discovery claims and i think you gave me half an answer. you are the signatory to the fast letter which directed all employees to apply the date of discovery for the date of claim for tracking and reporting purposes. however in your testimony you said if there is a date stamp on it we receive it four years ago and it's sitting in a desk drawer somewhere that goes into the system as four years old. less than 48 hours after i asked you the question you resented

the fast letter and deleted it from your repository and because of that canceled the scheme that was called discovered claims. you were sworn at the time to get the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. do you think that you told this committee the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? >> yes sir macri do. >> chairman miller bat as he was under my guidance in my direction to suspend the letter and that happened from me to mr. murphy and mr. murphy took the action. >> i believe it was a recommendation of the office of inspector general so you took their recommendation. it was not your idea, was that? >> in fact chairman nye did take their recommendation from the inspector general but we were concurrently at the same time considering that the best thing to do while they investigated further.

>> undersecretary hickey whited somebody sent out a memo basically that says though we may not agree with this procedure is a national guidance and we will follow it. >> chairman i don't know what memo you are referring to. if you would like me to look at it like could make comment to you. >> i think the subject line as assistant director huddles went out on july 10. and it was put out because of the hearing that we had several weeks ago. i would be glad to provide you a copy of that but i think it's very curious that folks would say that they don't agree with the national guidance that they are going to follow it. >> chairman i will take that for the record and get you an answer. >> to all of the va witnesses i

want to ask questions about the backlog numbers that you reported in your monday morning workload reports. it's important to know that in your report you don't include the end product 930 the number which in fact has grown substantially as of late and the end product of 400 which includes provisional ratings. if you were to include me and product 930 which is essentially a place to hold rushed and incomplete claims are backlog percentage would drop to 60% an and addition over 14 month period march of 2013 to may of 20:14 p.m. atari up and product 400 which again includes provisional ratings surged from just over 29,000 to over 1007000 by 3607% increase folks playing to me what you are doing with

the end products 930 and 400 simply makes them a secret category whereby you are able to hide prematurely decided claims to approve the appearance of your backlog numbers. >> secretary hickey. >> chairman miller i told you i would tell the truth when i put my hand up so i will tell you the truth. i don't know every number that is called in and product so i apologize for not being able to cite you. >> can you give me who does at the table. either one of those will know the answer. >> i will happily do that bad. >> i have 38 seconds left. >> i will ask ms. rubens to please comment. >> mr. chairman i would point to the monday morning workload reports were in fact your

numbers on the end product 400 are controlled correspondence and have been used for development and the 930 and product which are reviews including quality assurance are in fact reflected in the work that we demonstrate for completion. >> mr. chairman now that i note that i know the titles i can add to that discussion. >> no maam i don't believe that anybody at the table is telling me the truth from the va. i think you are using the numbers to high backlog claims. i think of included backlog numbers to make -- data -- mr. michaud you are recognized. steve thank you mr. chairman. ms. halliday as you've done your investigation have continued to iterate that a singular focus on reading claims is starting to, the cost of other workload

falling through the? what would you are or what would be your suggestions to address the situation? >> mr. met cod we consistently looked at the quickstart progr program, the special initiative to clear the backlog of claims. we have looked at appeals. there has been a constant reallocation of staffing away from some of these initiatives to work the pending backlog of compensation paid at some point if you want these initiatives to be successful you have to dedicate the workload to accomplish the job. >> thank you. dependency claims have risen by 2000% in four years with the majority of those being backlog.

when does the va anticipates ending the nonraiding backlog? do you have a specific date or a proposal? >> congressman michaud in 2005 was the first time under completely different administration the 125 day initiative was set. in 2009 the former secretary of va secretary shinseki said the aspirational goal of no claim all over the 125 days. prior to that i have been an average of 125 days and 90% accuracy. in all of these cases even dating back as far from history that i can take because i've only been here since 2011, the focus has been on the raiding work and party and there's a really good reason for that. in order to access, and noted to be able to get a different

benefit that the nonraiding bucket you first must have a rating so by example in order to get a dependency claim you have to have been rated at least 30% and a rating claim that you gave us. that's the reason why the backlog is focused on the raiding claims. i can tell you this. i can tell you that we have a that we ever really could plan around a special dependency claims. we have built a system called a rules-based processing system whereby when a veteran goes and files on line for their dependency claim that 50 to 60% of the time they are paid in a single day. that is what we are moving towards from a technology solution. but the ones that awaiting congressman i will tell you have also done a contract. the contract is lifting them up on paper and putting them into the rules-based processing system. >> do you have the date? >> i do not affect a congressman. there has never been a goal set

that as a specific date associated with it. >> okay. mr. bertoni did you find any instances in which va is intentionally manipulating to present better outcomes than what is really happening? >> i wouldn't say it's intentionally manipulating. i think and as i noted in my statement's in several basic areas they are not fouling general statistical practices. that looseness inter-methodology translates to numbers that aren't accurate and aren't helpful in terms of looking at trends over time a performance and accuracy rates and comparing offices in terms of relative performance. as i said when we applied simple waiting we had several swings and offices that suddenly improved relatively speaking. that's not good metrics and an

organization where the mission is as important as as important is this the dollar symbol the numbers involved you need to have precise estimates. there's more work to be done to get there. >> thank you. general hickey quickly there are some pretty serious allegations and compelling allegations made by ms. ruell with regard to the sure shredding up 96 boxes and a cap of military returned mail documents. can you provide us with any additional information about how va handled the situation when it was highlighted by ms. ruell? >> i can't congressman an impact i reacted quickly. when i first heard the conversation ms. ruell said it came to my e-mail. i dispatched director from pension service. he took a tame affair with everyone of those boxes to make sure there was not anything that was amiss in those boxes and in fact i believe that i can attest

to the fact that it's not. let me explain what's in those boxes. the pension service works a little differently than a compensation service. they are not in vbms yet though i would like to see them at vbms in the future. what they do do is they work the claim in paper first and then they scan in documents afterwards. once they have this document scanned and afterwards then there is a normal procedure for the proper disposition of that paper. we will address the same issue on the compensation side. we are working closely with dod on what do we do with paper that we don't use anymore because it's all electronically scanned in the system. we will have to address that same thing. i understand and i'm very concerned about any ideas that we might be inappropriately shredding documents and that is why we are taking our time figuring out what we do in the

compensation business around that. >> mr. lamborn you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. ms. hickey, the people working to you at the veterans administration? >> congressman there are over 20,000 people. >> okay and an average given near how many of them get fired? and please consult with mr. murphy or ms. rubens if you need to. >> i will probably ask ms. rubens to further elaborate. what i can tell you as we go through a fairly extensive process before people are fired. >> i didn't ask you your process. how many in an average year? >> i don't know if i have that information but i will ask ms. rubens if she does. >> sir i don't have the current number that were fired in the last year. currently across the workforce today we have 66 employees who are in performance improvement plans. >> they would be the ones eligible for firing if they

didn't improve their performance? >> our goal first is to help them improve their performance and look for other things that they have been successful in other positions. >> you can't tell me how many people get fired an average year? >> we could do that congressman lamborn. i apologize i don't have an immediately available. >> the procedure you have to go there is probably small number i would guess. >> i believe it is probably appropriately a small number. we can certainly remind this great committee that i have 52% of those employees who are veterans and i have 46% who are a direct family members. >> of those who were fired how many of those are many of those are for cause versus how many of those are let go without being given a recent? >> generally we do not let people go without giving them a reason. >> you heard javier soto's comment earlier in response to