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 specia

ms. halliday. during your numerous inspections of the regional offices you have consistently reported the same errors and accuracy and procedures. even after vba has concurred with the previous reports and recommendations. why do you think this happens over and over again? why are we seeing these errors? again it seems like these recommendations are not being followed. can you comment on that? >> yes. i think that we select medical disabilities to look at that we consider high-risk for processing errors. that is where we want to target our resources. we think that's the most important. what we find in something like traumatic brain injury type claims the policy is very complex. it's very hard to ensure consistency in that application so we continue to see errors with that. general hickey has asked for the oig's help it matches recently. to put a team together so we can show her exactly exactly what it benefits inspectors, the teams that mr. arronte leads are coming across so that she can put the ri

ms. halliday. during your numerous inspections of the regional offices you have consistently reported the same errors and accuracy and procedures. even after vba has concurred with the previous reports and recommendations. why do you think this happens over and over again? why are we seeing these errors? again it seems like these recommendations are not being followed. can you comment on that? >> yes. i think that we select medical disabilities to look at that we consider high-risk for processing errors. that is where we want to target our resources. we think that's the most important. what we find in something like traumatic brain injury type claims the policy is very complex. it's very hard to ensure consistency in that application so we continue to see errors with that. general hickey has asked for the oig's help it matches recently. to put a team together so we can show her exactly exactly what it benefits inspectors, the teams that mr. arronte leads are coming across so that she can put the ri

ms. halliday, simply responding, no. also on the issue of whether vba's quality metrics are reliable to the general accounting office provided this testimony and i quote. in prior work with document shortcomings in pas quality assurance activities and recently concerns have been raised about the lack of transparency related to the changes in the agency's national accuracy rate for disability claims unquote. quote in several basic areas they are not following general statistical procedures. doubtless this in their methodology translates to numbers that aren't accurate and aren't very helpful in terms of looking at trends over time in terms of performance accuracy and/or comparing opposites in terms of relative performance. that is not good metrics unquote. simply the inspector general's office testified that they and i quote continue to identify a high rate of errors in regional offices processing of claims decisions. now under secretary hickey was the one that testified for the va and despite her testimony, which was ref

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 1

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

ms. halliday is accompanied by brent arronte director of san diego division.and then allyson hickey and she is accompanied by dianne rubens who is the former deputy for field operation and thomas murphy and we will hear from the director of education awork' force and accountability office. i will yield to the colleagues for a brief introduction of our first witness. >> i would like to introduce ms. kristen ruell. she is a law school graduate and practicing attorney in pennsylvania. she works as a quality review specialist at the philadelphia regional office that serves hundreds of thousands in the community and throughout the country. she is a strong supporter of veterans and have been reporting various types of data manipuilation to anyone who would listen to her. she was frustrated in 2012 that the va wasn't responsive and reached out to my office for help. i was inspired and honored to work with her to get to the bottom of this. she will tell her story of what can be described as no less than gross mismanagement at the philadelphia office. i appreciate her

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

ms. halliday said you have taken on a tough job at the va. you were here earlier when kristen ruell was giving the testimony by flawed data and duplicate payments within the va and she was was claiming there were duplicate payments and her manager at the regional office for claiming that wasn't the case. would you say now couple of years later that she was more correct than the managers at the philadelphia va office on that question? >> congressman there are duplicate duplicate payments my can tell you we to 10,000 pension claims a month and about 64 of them are duplicate. >> she was calling out a problem that she saw and she deals with these issues every day. she was identifying a problem and she didn't think upper management was concerned about it or understood or was even involved in it. >> congressman i can play the management at the office did raise the issue to us and did have discussion with the pension business line leadership. i think there has been a conversation but i appreciate the situation she found herself in. >> i appreciate y

ms. halliday is accompanied by brent arronte director of san diego division.and then allyson hickey and she is accompanied by dianne rubens who is the former deputy for field operation and thomas murphy and we will hear from the director of education awork' force and accountability office. i will yield to the colleagues for a brief introduction of our first witness. >> i would like to introduce ms. kristen ruell. she is a law school graduate and practicing attorney in pennsylvania. she works as a quality review specialist at the philadelphia regional office that serves hundreds of thousands in the community and throughout the country. she is a strong supporter of veterans and have been reporting various types of data manipuilation to anyone who would listen to her. she was frustrated in 2012 that the va wasn't responsive and reached out to my office for help. i was inspired and honored to work with her to get to the bottom of this. she will tell her story of what can be described as no less than gross mismanagement at the philadelphia office. i appreciate her