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UPDATE: VA DOCUMENT SCANDAL -- WHAT WAS MADDENING,

IS NOW CRIMINAL -- Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland:

"The issues at the VA have reached critical mass. The only

fix is an investigation by the Department of Justice."

Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland provides regular columns for VA Watchdog dot Org.

If you would like to contact Jim about his columns, you can email him here...

The archive of Jim's articles is here...

To find an answer to a specific VA benefits question, use the VA Watchdog search engine... click here...

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VA DOCUMENT SCANDAL -- WHAT WAS MADDENING, IS NOW CRIMINAL

by Jim Strickland

The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) is in crisis.

This is not business as usual. The recent revelations of the willful and wanton destruction of vital veterans records are not just another "isolated incident." We have now moved to the next level of the game. What was maddening last year is now criminal.

The issues at the VBA; atrocious customer service, a startling lack of any computerized records, an inability to meet any standards recommended by oversight agencies and the arrogance of the well-entrenched leadership have been acknowledged for years.

Few attempts have been made to improve VBA and they've been half-hearted...more window dressing than an effort to substantially improve. The VBA has a well deserved reputation as having the ultimate Teflon jacket; no criticisms ever stick to it. Even with the continuing decline in services to its customers, generous bonuses are the norm, handed out annually with considerable hubris and patting of backs for a job well done.

Today these issues in VBA have reached critical mass. The extremely low quality performance is established as acceptable for the long run by administrators and employees alike. This has fueled a continuing decline across the system. There are not one or two of the 57 Veterans Service Centers (VSCs) that are poor performers or outliers on the chart, they are all functioning at an unacceptable level. The Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) has decided that there is no way the department will be brought up to some level of service that would be approved by an outside critic so there is no longer any reason to try.

VA applies a patch here and there in attempts to stop the bleeding only when a disaster is imminent. Otherwise there are no ongoing programs to guarantee any improvement. The programs that do exist are hardly ever successful even on a modest scale and none of them reach named goals.

There have been no areas of service at any VSC that can be highlighted as "improved". Even the staunchest defender of the VBA can only say that they are hiring and training new people and hope that they will catch up. The fact is that the new hire program which we (along with our insider) predicted would be "Lipstick On A Pig" has been a disaster. http://vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfDEC07/nf120707-1.htm

The new hires have not improved any services but have apparently contributed to a much higher error rate in some routine tasks...such as the mailings of VA Form 4140. A friend who is a long time VA employee recently told me,

"...over the past 10 years or so, VA has increased its staff dramatically. All of these increases have occurred at the GS-9 level and above. Much of this staffing came from outside VA, but there was a systematic stripping of any talent already on board. This meant promoting all the clerks with any brains and some with none.

(There are) horror stories of how incompetent GS-5s...are now Decision Review Officers and first-line supervisors. That's bad enough, but the other side of the coin is worse. Those left in clerical positions are now the very dregs of the agency. These are the people who could not get promoted when Regional Offices (VAROs) were doubling and even tripling the number of technical positions. These, alas, are the people opening the mail and making the initial decision on where it goes. Since they are clueless, mail backs up and, I am afraid, must be 'disposed of in an expedited manner.'

The culture of the VA has always been schizophrenic towards its mail. Even though the agency runs largely on paper, the actual tending of the paper has always been left to the least experienced, least competent employees. The good mail room clerks were always promoted, while the bad ones kept losing the mail."

The same employee let me know,

"By the way, I will be eternally grateful to you and Larry for ruining the weekend of hundreds of middle managers in VA who had to rummage through the trash looking for claims. Keep hammering them!!"

We know that there is no VARO in the system that provides an acceptable level of service. Having said that, when the VA asks us to believe that recent events where documents are intentionally destroyed, we can't accept that the practice is confined to a handful of facilities. To accept such a thing implies that the others are performing well and as it is so plainly obvious that they aren't, we are left with no choice but to assume they haven't been exposed yet. If they are doing a good job at all it's only in covering up their unprofessional activities.

Although the VA will undoubtedly try to spin this to make us believe that shredding of documents and monstrous piles of unopened mail are isolated events, we can no longer lend that thought the slightest credence. If the administration of the VA had some little credibility before, it's gone now. This time we aren't guessing we've been lied to, we know it for fact.

Because of some VA employees who were fed up with what they saw, we know the truth. More employees are speaking out each day. We know now of managers conducting forced searches through employees desks. It is confirmed that supervisors and directors are being suspended from their duties. Administrative personnel are being forced to sign affidavits that they won't break laws. On a recent weekend certain administrative employees were forced to come in to participate in an activity that's been referred to as "Dumpster Diving", looking through trash for critical documents.

If the VA Central Office (VACO) follows the path of the past and continues to cover up and patch holes rather than instituting true reform, the current critical mass effect will continue until such time that nothing is being done and all work product is flawed.

Consider how it must feel to be a VBA employee today. Every worker wants to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride for a job well done. Workers always enjoy a sense of belonging to an organization that other people, friends and family, admire. I don't know of any VBA employee who would enjoy a social event where he or she was seated among veterans.

Without positive action driven from the outside, this won't be fixed. The VA has a history, well recognized by all, of "duck and cover". They will invoke their sworn duty to protect the rights of the veterans they serve to prevent their releasing of any meaningful data. We won't be allowed to know the specifics of their malpractice against veterans because they are forced by statute to protect the veterans they're malpracticing against.

"We can't tell you how badly we treated Veteran John Doe by shredding pieces of his civilian medical records and never opening the envelopes that contained those buddy letters. We aren't allowed to tell you that because the law requires us to protect Veteran John Doe from your prying eyes." It's the perfect Catch 22 and VA plays it for all it's worth.

The only way this will be fixed is an investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ). The destruction of any of these records is a crime. Falsification of documents is a crime. The VA's Office of Inspector General (VAOIG) is a paper tiger, toothless and impotent. The employees who have been suspended are yelling for their union representatives and they'll enter into months of negotiations prior to any punitive actions. The DOJ is the only agency that can set the record straight.

It's time we make demands and receive open, honest answers to our questions. This organization only exists for one single reason: To serve you, the veteran. You, the veteran pay the salaries of the employees with your taxes. Their is no other reason for the VA to exist and no other source of revenue to pay its employees. It's your VA and it's time for you and for VA to act like it.

You, the veteran, must demand the answers to these questions. You can't wait for Larry to do it. It isn't up to Jim. Don't think for a minute DAV or VFW will help you.

You must rise up and tell your representatives you want straight answers, nothing less will do. It is, after all, your VA.

How many employees at each VARO have been suspended? What are their job titles and rank? Are the suspensions with pay pending an outcome? Did any of the suspended employees receive a performance bonus during the last two years?

We must know that DOJ is actively conduction a formal investigation into criminal activity. If not, why?

Was there a conspiracy of actors in a VARO or amongst VAROs? Is there evidence of managers discussing ways of lightening their load and ensuring their generous pay and bonuses by falsifying production data or tampering with document dates?

What bonus structure is contemplated for this year? You, the veteran must make this point particularly clear; If there is a bonus of a single dollar handed out this year, you will not stand for it. There is not one manager at one VARO who has earned a bonus no matter how they care to tell their story. We now know that the delays in mail, the errors in your files, the destruction of records had a single goal and that goal was to falsify the overall data of the VARO so the managers would retain eligibility for bonuses.

The current and previous leaders of the company known as "VA" must be the dumbest managers ever or it's a damned conspiracy. Those are the choices. They can't think their way through improving this organization or they are evil and conspiring against us. I can't come up with any other way to look at it.

Either of those choices scares me to death. Whether it's idiocy or criminal intent, the time has come for it to end. It's time for you to send the message that you aren't willing to put up with not one more minute of the disaster that is today's VA.

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posted by Larry Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org

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