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You might have heard in nearly every locale in the nation home prices have soared. Many houses get multiple offers and sell for way more than the posted price. The Veterans Benefits Administration has been tinkering with the 75-year old home loan program to ensure it gives veterans a shot at the house they want. For an update, VA’s Executive Director of Loan Guaranty John Bell III spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. Bell, good to have you on.

John Bell III: Thank you, Tom.

Tom Temin: And just give us a sense of the scope of the program. How much money do you have under guarantee and what’s your entitlement from Congress to be able to offer? How big is this program?

John Bell III: If you put things in perspective of 27 million loans since 1944, that’s totaling over $3.4 trillion. Last year, we set an all-time record for purchases: 444,000 loans. We are about 12-13% market share of any mortgage product out there. So we’ve grown that over the past 10 years from 1% of the mortgage market to, again over 12% of the mortgage market as we stand today. So VA’s had a lot of growth, over 380% over that time period. And we credit a lot of that to changing the processes and procedures that we’ve had, the technology modernization advancements that we’ve had for the program, trying to get the word out about just how strong our veteran borrowers are. And one key characteristic that we change is the mindset. The mindset of this is not just a program that is available as a soft landing for veterans, this should be their product of choice. And by choosing VA over all the other home loan products out there, we’ve been able to really capture you know, a lot of that market share back.

Tom Temin: And just to be accurate, the Veterans Benefits Administration doesn’t loan money, you back loans, correct? That are made by regular commercial lenders?

John Bell III: That’s 100% correct. We have a 25% guarantee. And what that does is it entices lenders, because we carry 25% of the risk for them. So lenders will make mortgage loans. Then they will sell those mortgage loans called mortgage-backed securities. They will sell those in the open market. But this gives an assurity to the entire industry that the government backing of that 25% is going to stave off the faults, which is again, our default ratio is in line with conventional and much less than other agency programs out there.

Tom Temin: So a given borrower with VA backing, then if they had a risk rating to a lender of X, after they are backed by VA, then their rating would drop 2.75 risk or something?

John Bell III: That’s a great way to think about it. That’s pretty much what we do to try to limit cost to the veteran and to the lender that’s lending that money. And then on the back end of it, it’s from the default space. If that loan is going bad, VA is there to help mitigate between the borrower and the servicer so that we can figure out the best option available at that time. So servicers aren’t they’re doing it on their own. They also have the backing of VA to help our veterans make sure that they can stave off some of that financial impact.

Tom Temin: And then rolling up the mortgage portfolios into those securities, do you have any connection to the markets that are controlled by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae?

John Bell III: I think from a total market share that is correct. From a collaborative space, which is, if you take COVID for instance, we all had to work together to make sure that we stood up the mortgage industry while we went through COVID. So we had to ensure that we could still lend money, even if appraisers couldn’t make it into homes, right, we had to make sure that lenders still felt comfortable, and that they still had the government backing and originating those files. And then also keeping costs down, we were still able to break origination records through 2020-21 and now on to ’22.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with John Bell, he’s executive director of Loan Guaranty at the Veterans Benefits Administration. And you mentioned that you made some process changes and some back-end information technology updates to make the program, I guess, easier to use for veterans. Tell us about some of those.

John Bell III: Yeah, some exciting things. If you think about VA 10 years ago, and how we would review files, a lender would mail in this file that was probably 300-400 pages thick. And we couldn’t glean any data from those files. We couldn’t share that nationally. So if Wells Fargo was doing a loan in the state of Oregon, and also doing a loan in the state of Washington, we couldn’t compare and contrast what that experience was like. Now we’re able to glean 237 pieces of information, data, from each one of those files we review and then we’re able to scorecard performance of our lenders so that they understand how they’re competing and benchmarking against other lenders. It has improved the overall health of the program, because they’re not only able to see how they’re performing against others, but they’re also able to see why they aren’t performing as well against the rest of the country.

Tom Temin: And what is performance for a lender? I would think, I guess, I presumed you were more worried about the performance of the borrower. But what are some of the parameters of lender performance that you need to track?

John Bell III: So what we require are lenders to at least follow our guidelines. And then lenders because they own 75% of the risk, they can establish or put on additional guidelines on top of ours. And so what we’re trying to understand is, is that additional requirement worth the value of preventing a veteran into the home? And so as we’re able to benchmark what those differences are, and the additional requirements that they have, were able to teach the lender, that value isn’t necessarily getting you the right result. And so that’s the piece that we were missing in the puzzle is being able to go back to the lenders and say, Okay, fine, you want to put a six-month reserve requirement on a loan that’s over $600,000. But the value of performance in that loan versus a loan that doesn’t have that requirement is the same, equal or better. And so while they’re missing out on all of those originations, they’re doing it for the wrong reason.

Tom Temin: And you were able to glean this information from these paper packets, in what manner? Scanning them or digitizing them, or –

John Bell III: No, it’s a wonderful question. So we started with electronic uploads. So they would be able to upload their packages directly from their what’s called the their loan origination system. And then we just switched earlier this year to a true electronic system-to-system transfer of that data. So they no longer have to download a package and upload it. It’s all done electronically. And then at the end of the year, we’re actually moving into our API tech, API’s application programming interface. And it gives us a lot of opportunities from an analytics shareability that we just didn’t have before.

Tom Temin: And what about the aspect of the program that faces the veteran borrowers?

John Bell III: So one of the big key changes are actually two of them, real quick. One is we improve the eligibility timelines. Ten years ago, we averaged about 20 business days in determining what the eligibility of the borrower was just to participate in the program, just to be benefit-eligible. Now, because we do those electronically and instantaneously. Now, 95% of applicants that apply for eligibility are approved in less than three business days. So it has really been a game changer for us in reducing the time that it takes in that process to get a borrower from an applicant to an eligible applicant for lenders. We also have improved our appraisal process. And in November, I actually testified in a hearing in December, but through November, we had 1,500 unassigned appraisals at that time. We just had a huge need for recruiting more appraisers, in particular areas. We had an impending volume of loans coming in. And so we’re at about 1,500 in unassigned appraisals, we’re now down to zero. But we’ve also reduced the time it takes to deliver an appraisal from 11.8 business days down to eight business days, which is honestly in line or better than most other markets out there and loan products. So by fixing those few things, we’ve decreased the timeline that takes to get into a loan, which then allows veterans to compete better when they go to bid.

Tom Temin: Yeah, my question then, has all of this helped veterans in this crazy market where sometimes you have to act fast, or go above the asking price, and not have any baggage associated with your bid for a house in the eyes of the seller?

John Bell III: So last year, we did 444,000 purchases. Wwe’re about 4% off that mark right now. And what we’re seeing is while rates are increasing, and prices in certain areas are stagnating, we’re seeing fewer bids, which are enabling more veterans to be able to take advantage of this time. What veterans were competing against six months ago, eight months ago were cash offers. Most of those offers were from investors that were flooding the market. Now that investor activity has constricted and it’s allowed veterans to compete better. Are we at a spot where we’re saying that we’re done? Of course not. We’ve got to get the message out. The message is mostly being lost to those sellers and the listing agents that really aren’t even accepting agency contracts to begin with. So when they go to list the property, they’re not marking list property available to submit from an agency. And so they’re not even seeing our veteran loan. So we’re hoping to reduce that by working with the National Association of Realtors. We’ve done a couple of videos with them. And then also, we talked to them again this week about getting the message out. And then for us getting lenders and we’re building out a training team to help with establish more materials so that we can combat those issues.

Tom Temin: John Bell is executive director of Loan Guaranty at the Veterans Benefits Administration. Thanks so much for joining me.

John Bell III: Tom, thank you so much for having me. And look, I want to leave you with one thing: If you know a veteran, they haven’t used their benefit, or they haven’t been able to use it because someone tells them they can’t, you’re costing them money. Tell them they’re leaving money on the table.

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In an agency as large as Veterans Affairs, with a third of a million employees, there is no shortage of things to go wrong. Often it’s whistleblowers that point them out, often to the Office of Inspector General. Now a bipartisan bill that passed the House would ensure continuance of a policy that every VA employee received training by the OIG to learn how to report alleged wrongdoing. For more on the VA Office of Inspector General Training Act, one of its original sponsors, Illinois Democrat Lauren Underwood spoke to the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Rep. Underwood, good to have you with us.

Lauren Underwood: Thank you so much for having me here today.

Tom Temin: And looking at this bill with respect to Veterans Affairs and the Office of Inspector General, it seems to have provisions for both employees and for the OIG. Let’s talk about Veterans Affairs employees for a moment, what would it do with them?

Lauren Underwood: So I introduced this bipartisan bill. It’s called the VA OIG Training Act, with Congressman McKinley last year, to codify the OIG training requirements to protect the VA employees who report wrongdoing and obviously honor our veterans. So for the VA employees, there’s currently a requirement that they complete OIG training, but it hasn’t been codified into law. So that means that the next administration could reverse the policy. And we want to make sure that staff are equipped with the knowledge and skills that they need to spot and report fraud and abuse happening within VA program.

Tom Temin: And does it say anything about the nature and content of the training itself?

Lauren Underwood: So the training is already being deployed, and we are not changing that training requirement. So what we’re doing is just ensuring that the training includes information about, again, the mechanisms for reporting fraud, waste, abuse, and other wrongdoing at the VA. It offers protections for the VA employees who report the wrongdoing to the Office of the Inspector General. And then the training includes information on how to strengthen the Office of the Inspector General programs, Operations and Services, to ensure that the OIG provides effective oversight. It reduces fraud and protects taxpayer dollars.

Tom Temin: And just a question on the protection for VA employees. There are statutory protections for all federal employees at this point. What would it add here for Veterans Affairs employees, if anything?

Lauren Underwood: Oh, it doesn’t. So this is just a training so that every VA employee understands the current law and the protections that are in place. What we don’t want to have happen is that this training requirement be removed by a different administration who has a different posture towards federal employees. And then those individuals who are interested in reporting fraud, waste and abuse, no longer have the knowledge on how to properly do so, right, and then that opens them up to retaliation, and, other kinds of harmful actions in response.

Tom Temin: Right. So it would reinforce their knowledge of the protections they do have.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right.

Tom Temin: And is there any evidence that say, during the Trump administration, which was a little different, maybe than the current administration, there was any reduction or suppression of that training? Do we know that?

Lauren Underwood: I don’t know that. But I believe that federal employees offer a great service to the American people and certainly to our veterans. And as we do the work to make sure that the federal employees have an excellent workplace, we want to make sure that they are trained and skilled and empowered to be able to fully do their work and offering the federal services and benefits to our veterans. And I think that this kind of knowledge is really important, particularly in an environment that can become very politically charged.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Illinois Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. And you mentioned that the bill also has provisions to strengthen the Office of Inspector General itself. And my experience with VA OIG is they’re not bad right now.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right. And so the requirement is that the VA provides the training to their employees. And obviously, then there’s a benefit for the patients that are receiving care from the VA. Because we know that accurate reporting, and certainly early reporting of issues can save patients lives. It protects their colleagues, and ensures this Veterans actually get their needed benefits and services. We also know that it helps the VA because we’re saving taxpayer dollars. Every dollar that is spent on oversight initiatives, through the Office of Inspector General at the VA yields approximately $21 in return. And so, with those extra resources, if you will, the oversight initiatives ensure that every veteran gets this world class care that they’ve earned.

Tom Temin: And the status of this bill then is passed in the House and introduced a version of the Senate?

Lauren Underwood: That’s right.

Tom Temin: So you do have that senatorial kind of side and any chance in your sense of the situation of that being enacted in this current session?

Lauren Underwood: So Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and John Boozman (R) from Arkansas introduced the Senate companion bill last summer. And so because we were able to get such a strong bipartisan vote in the House, we are really optimistic that there is a path forward for prompt Senate consideration before the end of this calendar year.

Tom Temin: And while we have you if you’ve got a moment, there are a couple of other bills that have your fingerprints on them.

Lauren Underwood: Well the Veterans Rapid Retraining [Assistance Program] was signed into law in June, which we’re very excited about. I was at the signing ceremony. I introduced that legislation with Congressman Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). And so that one has been signed into law. And then we’re obviously working hard on the honoring our pact Act, which has passed the Senate and we look forward to coming back to the house this summer, or passage, so then we can get that signed into law as well. That’s to help veterans living with the effects of toxic exposures.

Tom Temin: Right, yes. And getting back to the one on education, so if people got an unsuccessful education under VA benefits from a for-profit, or unaccredited institution, they can still have that benefit for a proper institution.

Lauren Underwood: That’s right. We know that there has been a lot of students who have been defrauded by institutions that have lost their accreditation or had improperly presented their credentials. And so there’s, throughout my time in Congress, we have been working to help people be able to move forward with their careers and the credentials. And so we are very excited about this Rapid Retraining Assistance [Program] Restoration and Recovery Act, so that these education benefits can be restored. If a veteran has been ripped off by an unaccredited institution. This mirrors some of the activity that you’ve been seeing from the Department of Education, where they announced a big student debt relief for those individuals who had received degrees from unaccredited institutions like we’re talking about really the same general population, but this specific bill apply for veterans whereas that executive action was for the entire universe of affected individuals across the country.

Tom Temin: And given your interest in Veterans Affairs affairs in general, are you watching what’s going on with respect to the electronic health record, and what’s your assessment so far of Secretary McDonough this far in?

Lauren Underwood: Well, I’ve been really pleased to work with Secretary McDonough. We’ve had an opportunity to have several conversations, I’ve been over to the VA for meetings. I’m a nurse. And so I focus a lot of my work on the Veterans Affairs committee on health care issues and making sure that we have high quality gender-specific care on the health care issues in particular, we have been strongly supportive of ensuring that we have full ability for advanced practice nurses to practice to the full extent of their education and training. And making sure that the certified registered nurse and ethicist can be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training. As you may know, Tom, that the VA at the end of the Obama administration allowed nurse practitioners and nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists to practice without that kind of physician oversight. But the nurse and ethicist were left out. And so we have really been pushing VA to take action. They have all the authorities that they need to expand access to care and make sure that veterans are not having to wait for procedures. And that’s what this is about. And so we’re making progress on that front. And then also, I was very proud that my VA physician assistant and nurse RAISE Act was signed into law as part of the fiscal year 22 budget deal. So the federal funding law that was signed in March, which allows physician assistants and advanced practice nurses to get a raise. So we’re firing on all cylinders here.

Tom Temin: Illinois Congresswoman Lauren Underwood is co-sponsor of the VA Office of Inspector General Training Act. Thanks so much for joining me.

Lauren Underwood: Thank you so much.

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The Biden administration is setting a high bar for customer experience across government, but it’s the General Services Administration that’s laying the foundation for those improvements.

GSA, under the administration’s executive order on improving customer experience, is looking to make digital services at other agencies secure and accessible through Login.gov, a shared service for online identity verification across the federal government.

GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan, in a recent interview, said Login.gov has about 40 million users right now across 27 agencies, looking is looking to increase usage to 100 million users by the end of the year.

“We’ve got big aspirations there. My personal view is that this digital identity area is one that is in serious need of attention by the government,” Carnahan told Federal News Network.

Carnahan said that government-issued photo IDs, including driver’s licenses, have long been the “gold standard for identity.” But she said a digital equivalent of that gold standard has not yet come into focus.

“When it comes to digital identity, I think we need to equally let people have access to a digital identity from the government that is secure, that protects their privacy and that is accessible to everyone, so we want to be able to offer this,” she said.

Carnahan pointed to COVID-era fraud and inaccessibility of unemployment benefits earlier in the pandemic as reasons for prioritizing a secure digital identity for online services.

“We also saw that scammers took huge advantage of this, and that billions of dollars were lost, all because of this notion of getting a digital identity, and so we think it’s really important. We think it saves a lot of money for taxpayers, and it helps government deliver at people’s time of need,” she said.

The Biden administration’s customer experience executive order directs GSA to work with the Department of Veterans Affairs to make Login.gov the identity-verification foundation across all VA’s online services.

Carnahan said about 60,000 veterans currently use Login.gov as an identity proofing service, and that those numbers are going to increase.

The VA made progress on that goal this week, when it announced veterans can now use the same through Login.gov username and password to access VA.gov, My My HealtheVet, and VA’s Health and Benefits mobile app.

VA Chief Technology Officer Charles Worthington said in a statement that the rollout of Login.gov at the agency will “streamline how users access government benefits and services.”

“As part of the department’s digital transformation efforts focused on continuous improvement, we’re embracing the innovative technology designed by Login.gov to provide our veterans a seamless sign-in experience to better serve, engage and enhance the customer experience,” Worthington said.

Dave Zvenyach, the director of GSA’s Technology Transformation Services, said Login.gov will provide a “secure and seamless digital experience for veterans and those supporting them.”

The service also allows veterans to use the same credentials to access services across multiple federal agencies. Including the Office of Personnel Management and the Small Business Administration.

Carnahan said GSA is also “having lots of conversations with the IRS,” as it plans its own adoption of Login.gov as an identity verification service.

“Obviously this is one of the primary interactions people have with government every year, and we ought to make that seamless. We ought to do it in a way that protects the privacy and ensure security and make sure it’s accessible to everybody,” Carnahan said.

The IRS announced it would pivot to Login.gov after it launched a new identity verification process last year, which initially relied on facial recognition technology from ID.me. The process, however, received strong pushback from Congress and the public.

The administration tapped Carnahan to serve as one of three interagency leads on improving customer experience across government as part of the President’s Management Agenda.

Biden administration, under the PMA, is directing agencies to prioritize customer experience improvements around five cross-cutting priority “life experiences.”

These include helping individuals who are approaching retirement age, recovering from a disaster, or transitioning from active-duty military service.

GSA, as part of this interagency team, is focused on improving public-facing services at 35 agencies and programs designated as High-Impact Service Providers.

“We’re going in and having technology teams that focus on user experience and customer experience look at those journeys to see what that actual interaction is like, and how to streamline the process and make it easier,” Carnahan said. “Part of that’s about communicating in plain language. Part of it’s about how you design the websites. Part of it’s about how many steps there are in the process.”

The Biden administration’s executive order also directs GSA to make USA.gov a “digital front door” for individuals seeking federal services.

“A citizen shouldn’t have to try to figure out what agency to go to for some service and have to understand the structure of government. They ought to be able to go to usa.gov, talk about what their interests or need is, and then be directed to the right place,” Carnahan said.

The administration is focused on ensuring historically underserved communities have access to government services. To achieve that goal, Carnahan said agencies need a diverse range of experts at the table to create these services.

“We don’t pick our customers. It’s all Americans that we’re here to serve. The only way you can do that effectively, is if you have a cross-section of people in the room being talked to about how to make sure the services we’re providing are accessible to everyone,” Carnahan said.

GSA is also looking at ways to support the federal workforce as it looks to improve service to the public. Carnahan said the agency is looking at developing “easier on-ramps to be able to come work in government,” and helping agencies re-imagine their workspaces as part of its “Workplace 2030” initiative.

Through its Workplace 2030 initiative, GSA is also looking at offering federal employees a “home office in a box,” giving workers the option to furnish a home office with work gear needed for their jobs.

Carnahan said GSA is also looking to provide federal co-working spaces where federal employees can work out of the office.

“We’re talking a lot to our customers about what their needs are. But we know the future is going to look different than the past. And GSA is going to try to be on the front lines of serving our customers so they can better serve the public,” Carnahan said.

A bipartisan group of dozen senators is rejecting the Department of Veterans Affairs’ plan to close or overhaul hospitals and medical facilities that no longer meet the health care needs of veterans.

The senators, half of which serve on the Senate VA Committee, said in a statement Monday that they would not proceed with nominees to serve on the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission.

The commission, under the 2018 MISSION Act, is supposed to review the VA’s recommendations released in March on how it expects to right-size its real-estate portfolio of medical facilities across the country.

“As senators, we share a commitment to expanding and strengthening modern VA infrastructure in a way that upholds our obligations to America’s veterans. We believe the recommendations put forth to the AIR Commission are not reflective of that goal, and would put veterans in both rural and urban areas at a disadvantage, which is why we are announcing that this process does not have our support and will not move forward,” the senators said.

President Joe Biden submitted nine nominees to serve on the AIR Commission, but the Senate has yet to act on any of those nominees. If confirmed, commissioners would review VA’s plans and issue their own recommendations to the White House.

President Joe Biden, under this timeline, has until Feb. 15, 2023, to approve the AIR Commission’s final recommendations.

If he doesn’t submit his approval to Congress before March 30, 2023, the process for modernizing and realigning VA’s facilities under the MISSION Act ends.

Without the Senate’s confirmation of the nominees, the commission will not be established, and the process to right-size VA real estate under the VA MISSION Act will not move forward.

Melissa Bryant, VA’s acting assistant secretary for public and intergovernmental affairs, said that whatever Congress decides to do with the AIR Commission, “we will continue to fight for the funding and modernization that our veterans deserve.”

“President Biden has insisted that our Veterans in the 21st century should not be forced to receive care in early 20th century buildings.  The median age of VA’s hospitals is nearly 60 years old, and that’s why the President requested nearly $20 billion in new VA infrastructure spending last year and it is why he has requested the largest ever investment in VA infrastructure in his FY23  budget,” Bryant said.

The VA’s recommendations to the AIR Commission are based on market research that started in 2019, and doesn’t account for shifts in the demand for health care since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AIR Commission process received criticism before the VA even issued its recommendations.

The American Federation of Government Employees has held several rallies protesting the planned closure of VA medical facilities across the country.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley, an Army veteran, said senators’ rejection of the AIR Commission plan “is a major victory for veterans, military families, the American health care system, VA employees, and all those who rely on the VA,”

“This closure commission was a bad idea from the start. Automatic, mass closures of VA facilities would deny veterans the comprehensive, quality care that our nation owes to those who have defended our country – an obligation first recognized by President Abraham Lincoln,” Kelley said in a statement.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposes the closure of two VA medical centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn. House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) also opposes plans to close the VAMC in Manhattan.

The 12 senators, in their statement, said the AIR Commission “is not necessary for our continued push to invest in VA health infrastructure.”

“Together we remain dedicated to providing the Department with the resources and tools it needs to continue delivering quality care and earned services to veterans in 21st-century facilities — now and into the future,” they added.

The VA, under its plan, is looking to close approximately three dozen VA medical centers (VAMCs) but would replace about half of them with new construction. The VA would permanently close the other half, and would shift veteran care to local VA inpatient and outpatient facilities.

Meanwhile, the VA proposes building VAMCs in new areas. The plan calls for a net reduction of three VAMCs, bringing the total from 171 to 168.

While the total number of outpatient points of care would also decrease under this plan, the VA states the relocation and expansion of facilities and services will increase veterans’ overall access to VA care.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told reporters last week that its recommendations are focused on providing veterans with modern facilities that would improve the quality of care they receive.

“I define the entire project that the commission is designed around to be modernization. We are bound and determined to do right by our veterans, and that means upgrading our physical infrastructure. And so we will not be deterred from that,” McDonough said.

But if the AIR Commission process doesn’t move forward, the MISSION Act still requires the VA to conduct four-year reviews of its real-estate needs in each of its regional health care markets.

McDonough said the VA would be on the verge of starting the next quadrennial review soon.

The following senators joined the statement  rejecting the AIR Commission process:

1.  Jon Tester (D-Mont.),
2. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.),
3. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.),
4. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.),
5. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.),
6. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.),
7. John Thune (R-S.D.),
8. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio),
9. Patty Murray (D-Wash.),
10. Steve Daines (R-Mont.),
11. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.),
12. Rob Portman (R-Ohio)

The top Republicans on the House and Senate VA committees, however, expressed continued support for the AIR Commission process.

Senate VA Committee Ranking Member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said many VA’s are “empty, underutilized and severely outdated,” and said the AIR Commission process would have addressed this issue.

“We passed the VA MISSION Act to address these issues but by refusing to confirm commissioners, we are essentially shutting down the work of the AIR Commission and possibly our only opportunity to fix this long-standing issue,” Moran said.

House VA Committee Ranking Member Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said the AIR Commission remains critical to updating “VA’s failing medical care infrastructure.”

“This process is vital for the future of modern, state-of-the-art VA care. It is wrong for these senators to outright refuse to even consider the nominees put forth by the Biden Administration. This decision does an immense disservice to veterans and VA staff who will feel its repercussions for years to come,” Bost said.

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June is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month.  How the risk factors stemming from military-connected PTSD best managed? It isn’t just a job for the defense department or the VA. Dr. Ken Marfilius is a former air force clinical social worker and mental health therapist. He’s now an assistant professor of social work at Syracuse University. He spoke with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin about the “it takes a village” approach to mental wellness in the military and veteran populations.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Ken, thanks for making time for this. And I do want to start with the “it takes a village” point that you make in your article. A lot of resources in DOD and VA pointed toward PTSD, pointed towards suicide prevention. But what should the rest of us be doing?

Ken Marfilius: Yeah, it takes all of us. First, post-traumatic stress disorder is a common consequence of war. However, that is certainly not the sole factor for one to develop PTSD. According to the national center for PTSD, about 15%, of returning post 9/11 veterans have PTSD. And there are several risk factors that have an important impact on whether somebody develops PTSD. Particularly risk factors and recovery environment. One of the risk factors could be prior trauma exposure, even prior to having served in the military. We do know that prior trauma is a significant risk factor for the development of PTSD. What we see in the research is this notion of adverse childhood experiences are commonly referred to as bases. So traumatic experience that occurred during childhood or adolescence, that can be anything from physical, sexual, emotional abuse, violence in the home. And these bases do, in fact, have an effect on one’s health across the lifespan. And so multiple adverse childhood experiences pose significant risk for numerous health conditions like PTSD, substance use disorder, depression, suicidal ideation. And research points to individuals with military service reporting more bases, and one may say why? Individuals who experience traumatic events during childhood may seek sanctuary in the military. So while this can be very positive, we should also be exploring the associations between childhood trauma, mental health challenges, and how this impacts ultimately the rise in depression, PTSD and suicide in our military and veteran populations.

Jared Serbu: And so knowing everything that you just said, and again, sticking with  “it takes a village” point, what do we know about what tends to work at the community level, you know, outside of the more formal clinical settings that DOD and VA provide?

Ken Marfilius: I look at this little sort of public health priority. We need the right services in place,  the communities that have the means to allow individuals to both thrive and survive are the best outcomes. And so if we attack this from a prevention standpoint, we must provide our children and adolescents opportunities to thrive, several of these children and adolescents will become military members. So we need parent support programs. Not just in the DOD, but also in the civilian sector. Mentors, job trainings, access to quality education, family-centered schools that include mental health services. And so when I talk about survival services, that’s basic access to medical, dental, mental health care. Stable, safe, and also affordable housing, access to food, and breaking down barriers to transportation. This needs to be done on the local, a county, a state and national level, because our children eventually become service members, and we want them to thrive in the face of adversity before, during and after their time in service.

Jared Serbu: So what resources are out there as of now, and how does that compare to what you think is needed?

Ken Marfilius: Yeah, specifically talking about veteran population. I think there is a plethora of resources. And there’s local vet centers, there’s VA hospitals, there’s VA benefits and claims. So that’s a robust system. Those who may be diagnosed with military related PTSD could be eligible for service-connected disability compensation and treatment. There’s supportive services for veteran families. Also there is housing assistance, both financial and also search processes. locally. There’s lots of organizations that serve military and veteran populations. Obviously, in more acute and crisis situations, we have the veteran crisis line. And as far as treatment modalities, we know that trauma-focused psychotherapy is the best treatment. And trauma-focused psychotherapy is any therapy that uses cognitive, emotional and behavioral techniques to facilitate processing a traumatic event or experience in which trauma focus is really central component of that therapy.

Jared Serbu: A lot of all that depends on an individual’s willingness to access the services, to ask for help. A lot of effort, or at least a lot of rhetoric in DOD over the past, I don’t know how long, for as long as I’ve been paying attention, to try and destigmatize coming forward and asking for help. I’m curious, have you noticed that environment improve or get better during your time in the air force and your time working with airmen there at Barksdale? How has the military in general been doing on destigmatization?

Ken Marfilius: There’s certainly more resources available now, and there wasn’tin the past. We are constantly learning, right. And so post-traumatic stress, we have to understand that it will always will be part of the human experience. It’s just been labeled and treated differently. And so from shell-shocked to PTSD, which, you know, came about in the 1980s, post-Vietnam era. It’s an anxiety related mental health disorder that occurs after an extremely stressful event. And the symptoms associated with PTSD will affect everyone differently. You know, you and I may witness the same event, however, have very different perceptions and experiences, which may lead to a disorder or not. It doesn’t make you weaker or stronger. And I think that that message is certainly starting to get out. And it starts at the top.  So commanders, military leadership, leaders within our communities, an understanding that mental health is part of human existence, right, and recognizing when you’re in a stressful situation, who to lean on, we know that social support is one of the greatest protective factors. right, You don’t need to be a trained therapist to ultimately save one’s life,  just connected in the services. These individuals may not ever even be diagnosed after a stressful event with PTSD. However, there are support avenues that they can go to whether that’s familial-related, you know, whether it’s within your occupation, whether it’s in your local community. And so outside of the treatment center and frame, there are also other options that can contribute to protective factors when we experience these stressful situations. I think that messaging is certainly improving,

Jared Serbu: Since the genesis of this interview was the fact that this is PTSD awareness month, maybe just say a little bit about why it’s important to raise the level of awareness in the general population about what PTSD is, and what are the most important things that average people should know about it, but don’t?

Ken Marfilius: So National PTSD Awareness Month is observed in June, and brings forth many awareness campaigns for those who have experienced PTSD. And what is it? It’s directly experiencing a traumatic event. It’s witnessing in person, an event that happened to someone else, learning about the violent or unexpected death of a friend or family member, experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of traumatic events. And there’s different symptom clusters, as we refer to it. Intrusion, avoidance, negative alterations and cognitions and mood, arousal and reactivity symptoms. And again, the good news is that there are treatments for PTSD. Recovery varies based on the individual. Just a bit of history there, Jared, is in the early 1900s, as I mentioned earlier, PTSD was typically called shell shock or battle fatigue. And over time, specifically during Vietnam War era, PTSD was named and resulted in a mental disorder, which opens up treatment for these individuals. So the whole goal of June being named PTSD awareness month is to raise awareness and let individuals know to include our military populations, that treatments are in fact available, and they can recover. You know, the National Center for PTSD indicates that around six to 8% of the population will experience post-traumatic stress in their lifetimes.

Tom Temin: Dr. Ken Marfilius, an assistant teaching professor of social work at Syracuse University, and a former air force clinical social worker speaking with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu.

Denis McDonough told reporters Wednesday that his “confidence has been shaken” over the rollout of the new Cerner Electronic Health Record, following system outages and IG reports documenting risks to patient care.

“I do now know that there are instances of patient harm, and that there could be a range of factors that contribute to that,” McDonough said.

McDonough said he’s communicated his concerns with EHR vendor Cerner, and that the agency and Cerner are addressing issues with the system rollout.

“There’s been some work over the course of the last 10 days, that seems to have had a major impact on that,” McDonough said.

The Spokesman-Review over the weekend first reported that a draft IG report found 148 cases of patient harm following the EHR go-live in Spokane, Washington.

McDonough told reporters he could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the draft VA IG report. However, he said the VA’s patient safety expert team is looking into these cases of patient harm, and that team at this point “can’t rule out that EHR plays a role” in the harm caused.

McDonough said he’s been in close contact with the VA inspector general about its EHR findings, and said he has “gotten smarter on these reports over the course of the last couple of months.”

“The kind of back and forth that we’re currently engaged with the IG on is really, really important to us getting better at what we do. That kind of ability to exchange candid views, including on draft reports, is really important to us getting better,” he said.

McDonough said that he’s also been in close contact with VA Chief Information Officer Kurt DelBene, who’s been leading the agency’s technical team.

The VA recently announced it will push back the EHR go-live at four locations from this year to 2023. These include facilities in the Puget Sound VA Health Care System and Portland VA Health Care System.

The EHR, however, will still go live in Boise, Idaho on July 23 as planned.

It remains unclear when McDonough first learned of the patient harm cases documented by the VA inspector general’s office.

McDonough told the House VA Committee last that the agency wouldn’t proceed with the EHR rollout if he determined that issues with the rollout “create a threat to our veterans.”

“If I had known what I know today when I was appearing before Congress, I would have answered those questions differently,” McDonough said Wednesday.

McDonough said the VA right now is “trying our darndest to make the Cerner option work,” adding that a well-functioning electronic health record will improve patient outcomes, but said the agency wasn’t yet prepared to discuss alternative options.

The VA awarded a 10-year contract with Cerner in May 2018 to replace its legacy VistA electronic health record with the same commercial off-the-shelf platform used by the Defense Department and Coast Guard.

“This is the option that we had when we arrived. We’re executing as diligently as we can on that, as transparently as we can, and working closely, for example, with Congress and the IG, and we’ll continue to do that. But I’m not ready to answer hypotheticals about if this doesn’t work,” McDonough said.

The lifecycle of the contract is currently estimated at $16 billion. Previous IG reports warn those costs may continue to increase in light of schedule delays.

McDonough said several degradations and outages since the second EHR go-live in Walla Walla, Washington have “shook my confidence in the system.”

“They have a very generous contract that was awarded several years ago to provide a workable EHR. And that’s what we’re holding them accountable to,” he said.

Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger said in a statement Wednesday that since acquiring Cerner two weeks ago, Oracle engineers have been on the ground, “making technical and operational changes, with an emphasis on patient safety, to ensure the system exceeds the expectations of providers, patients, and the VA.”

“We intend to bring substantially more resources to this program and deliver a modern, state-of-the-art electronic health system that will make the VA the industry standard. We have a contractual and moral obligation to deliver the best technology possible for our nation’s veterans, and we intend to do so,” Hellinger said.

House VA Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Technology Modernization Subcommittee Chairman Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) said in a statement Wednesday that the draft VA IG report’s findings were “seriously troubling and contradict what we have heard from VA officials during public testimony,”

“We have already begun discussions with VA on the performance of Cerner and requested an official briefing on the forthcoming report. Once released, we will be reviewing the findings closely in order to determine if there are any contractual or legal repercussions of these draft findings,” the lawmakers wrote.

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• The Department of Veterans Affairs will postpone the rollout of its new Electronic Health Record at four sites until next year. The agency made the decision following several reports that raised significant concerns about the system’s reliability. The new EHR will now go live in March 2023 for VA medical centers in the Puget Sound VA Health Care System. The EHR will also now go live at two facilities in the Portland VA Health Care System next April. The EHR will still go live in Boise, Idaho on July 23 this year as planned. (Federal News Network)

• The Defense Department is now more than halfway through the deployment of its new multibillion dollar electronic health record. Officials say the latest waves of the rollout, finished earlier this month, brought MHS Genesis to the point where it’s now operating across the continental US, with more than 114,000 users. The military health system is using a customized version of the same Cerner Millennium software VA has been struggling to implement, but the DoD version is much further along. Defense officials say they still expect to finish deploying the system to all of their facilities by the end of next year.

• Three agencies win money to modernize their technology systems. The Technology Modernization Fund board handed out another $95 million dollars to three agencies for network upgrades and cybersecurity projects. The Agriculture Department is receiving $64 million to consolidate the number of networks from 17 to one. This is USDA’s fifth award from the TMF board. The Department of Homeland Security won $26.9 million to help modernize its Homeland Security Information Network or HSIN. Finally, the Federal Trade Commission will receive $3.9 million to procure a security operations center-as-a-service in order to implement a zero trust architecture.

• The General Services Administration receives the highest honor from the Professional Services Council for how it forecasts procurement opportunities. PSC says GSA did the best job of the 62 agencies and sub-agencies it reviewed in its fourth annual Federal Business Forecast Scorecard. The Marine Corps Systems Command and the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command earned honorable mentions for their efforts to provide industry with timely and relevant information about their acquisition plans. Overall, 17 agencies received a high rating, up from 15 in 2021.

• 15,000 federal firefighters are about to see more money in their paychecks. The White House announces a temporary pay raise for federal wildland firefighters. The wage increase is part of a $600 million investment under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Federal wildland firefighters will get the lower amount between either $20,000 more per year, or a 50% boost to their base salary. The firefighters will also receive retroactive pay going back to October of last year. The temporary increase will last through September 2023. (Federal News Network)

• The Army is bumping up its quick-ship bonus for all new recruits. The service is offering $35,000 to future soldiers who go to basic training within 45-days of signing a four-year contract. The previous bonus was $25,000. There is also a two-year enlistment option, which can afford new soldiers with an extra $10,000.

• Lawmakers want to ensure the Defense Department has a stock of rare earth minerals for future fighting systems. The Senate Armed Services Committee wants to authorize $1 billion for the National Defense Stockpile in 2023. That would double the value of the rare earth minerals the Defense Department amasses for rainy days. Concerns over the National Defense Stockpile rose during COVID as supply chains dried up. Many military officials and lawmakers are concerned that China is becoming the United States’ only source to get some critical elements for making weapons.

• The Air Force and Air University are considering the best ways to incorporate joint all-domain operations training into professional military education. JADO is part of the Defense Department’s larger strategy and connects aspects of air, space, land, cyber and sea. The Air Force recently held initial discussions on how to add JADO to its training during a two-day summit. Officials say JADO training is needed for DoD’s next generation of weapons, which will be interconnected and use technologies like artificial intelligence.

• Federal cyber professionals could soon get more chances to broaden their government experience. President Joe Biden signed the Federal Rotational Cyber Workforce Program Act into law on Tuesday. The goal of the program is to give cybersecurity employees the chance to rotate between different cyber jobs in different departments and agencies. The Office of Personnel Management is now responsible for setting up the rotational program.

• The Department of Homeland Security is making some big changes to its disciplinary processes. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is directing DHS components to centralize disciplinary actions. Allegations of serious misconduct will be handled by a dedicated group of trained professionals who are not the employees’ immediate supervisor. DHS is also refining its disciplinary guidance to ensure penalties match the severity of the misconduct. Mayorkas directed the changes after unpublished inspector general reports came to light showing sexual misconduct and domestic violence being overlooked at some DHS law enforcement components. (Federal News Network)

• Challenges in the new Thrift Savings Plan system are raising concerns on Capitol Hill.  Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) calls on the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board to explain the cause of technical issues, unprecedented customer service hold times, and missing financial information. She asked the board to share its plan for how to fix the issues. The board responded to Norton’s letter, saying the new system is an essential modernization effort for TSP, and that they’re making progress to resolve the issues. Norton says the board’s response does not fully address her questions, and she’s continuing to push for more answers.

• The IRS is rounding the corner on its pandemic-era backlog of tax returns. The IRS this week expects to finish processing the backlog of individual tax returns the agency received in 2021. As of June 10 this year, the IRS processed more than 4.5 million of the 4.7 million individual paper tax returns it received in 2021. The agency says it’s also successfully processed the “vast majority” of tax returns filed this year. The agency started 2022 with a higher than average workload because of staffing shortages and the COVID-19 pandemic. (Federal News Network)

• President Biden nominated Marilynn “Lynn” Malerba to be U.S. Treasurer. If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first Native American in the role, which oversees the U.S. Mint and is a liaison to the Federal Reserve. The treasurer also oversees Treasury’s Office of Consumer Policy, and the Biden administration’s new Office of Tribal and Native Affairs at the Treasury Department. Malerba is the 18th chief of the Mohegan Indian Tribe, and she would join at least four other prominent Native appointees in the administration, including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and several federal judges.

• A veteran of the federal science and technology community is up to be President Biden’s chief advisor for S&T. Biden nominates Arati Prabhakar to be the new director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. She was director of DARPA — short for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — under the Obama administration and was the first female director of NIST during the Clinton administration. Currently she is the CEO of Actuate, a nonprofit that designs R&D solutions using the DARPA method for innovation.

The VA’s decision to delay the EHR go-live at these locations after several inspector general and news reports found the EHR rollout at the first two go-live locations have led to several incidents that put patient safety at risk.

VA spokesman Terrence Hayes told Federal News Network on Tuesday that the agency will shift the Puget Sound VA Health Care System’s EHR go-live date from August 2022 to March 2023 — a decision that will affect the American Lake and Seattle VA Medical Centers.

The VA will also postpone the VA Portland Health Care System’s EHR go-live from November 2022 to April 2023, which will impact the Portland and Portland-Vancouver VA Medical Centers.

“In evaluating Puget Sound’s and Portland’s readiness for deployment, VA determined the system hadn’t shown adequate reliability to support the current schedule,” Hayes said.

Military Times first reported the VA’s decision to postpone the EHR go-live for these facilities.

The EHR, however, will still go live in Boise, Idaho on July 23 as planned.

Hayes said the VA adjusted the EHR deployment schedule for a “variety of reasons,” and will allow Oracle Cerner to put system enhancements in place, make the necessary improvements to ensure system stability, fix outstanding issues and address workflow challenges.

Oracle Cerner is obligated to maintain a 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement (SLA) as part of its $16 billion contract with the VA.

“As we have previously reported, there have been unanticipated outages and system degradations from the onset of the new EHR rollout. To be confident that this SLA will be achieved moving forward, technicians must regularly test and validate system resiliency. VA and Oracle Cerner agreed this must be done to have high confidence in the system’s overall reliability,” Hayes said.

Hayes said the VA is also requesting Oracle Cerner develop an execution plan that outlines how it will provide regular testing and ensure the resiliency of the system.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told the House VA Committee last month he’s “very concerned about the execution of the program to date,” but will press ahead with the EHR rollout, unless doing so would put veterans at risk.

McDonough told the committee that the new EHR from Cerner had experienced five shutdowns since March 3, the first of which was so “egregious,” that the company’s chief executive officer issued a signed apology.

In light of these and other recent outages, Cerner officials told lawmakers the company was considering a technical review of the EHR to ensure the system is stable and reliable for future rollouts.

A Cerner spokesperson told Federal News Network on May 31 that the company was leading a technical review “with all parties involved in this effort to improve reliability as part of our unwavering commitment to VA and our nation’s veterans.”

“Implementing a single electronic health record across VA, Defense Department and U.S. Coast Guard is among the most important health IT transformations of our generation and will make care safer, more accessible, and equitable for service members, veterans, and their families,” the Cerner spokesperson added.

Hayes said the VA had already reported its shifts in the EHR schedule to Congress.

A draft report from the VA inspector general’s office, first reported on by the Spokesman-Review on Sunday, found that the EHR rollout at the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Washington caused harm to at least 148 veterans treated there.

An IG report publicly released earlier this month found that Mann-Grandstaff, a year into switching over to the new EHR, ran into data quality challenges so severe that VA officials told the IG’s office they were concerned about whether the facility could maintain its hospital accreditation.

“VA is highly confident that this deployment schedule can be achieved and is doing everything possible to ensure safe and successful deployments. Adjustments to the go-live schedule and other important considerations simply reflect this due diligence,” Hayes said.

Members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations are revisiting legislation that would eliminate the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection’s statutory authority to investigate whistleblower retaliation complaints.

A discussion draft of the bill, if passed, would cease all of OAWP’s ongoing investigations of whistleblower retaliation. Instead, the Office of Special Counsel would take on this workload.

VA employees can already file whistleblower retaliation complaints with OSC.

The bill’s discussion draft would also give OAWP its own general counsel, which oversight and whistleblower advocacy groups claim would help the office maintain more independence from the rest of the agency.

OAWP relies on VA’s general counsel to provide legal advice, but some members of the subcommittee said that arrangement creates a probable conflict of interest, because of the general counsel’s role of defending the VA from whistleblower allegations.

Subcommittee Chairman Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) said VA leadership has committed to strengthening whistleblower protections, but said the agency must do more to earn the trust of whistleblowers.

“We need to see permanent changes to policies and procedures, including through improved laws,” Pappas said.

OAWP in 2021 made 15 recommendations for disciplinary action against employees, but Pappas said VA only acted on five of those recommendations, and only one was fully implemented.

“It is clear to me that the Office has not been performing at the level Congress or the secretary should expect,” subcommittee Ranking Member Tracey Mann (R-Kan.) said. “This is a sustained reality of the office, despite different leaders and administrations.”

Maryanne Donaghy, who currently leads OAWP, said her office remains “committed to the holistic continuous improvement of whistleblower protection,” but said the VA does not need legislation to make reform possible.

“We do not believe the statutory authority is needed for making some of the important suggestions that have been made,” Donaghy said.

“I am always supportive of continuous improvement and suggestions to make that happen. But even more, the transparency to me has given this office, and me personally, excellent suggestions. I see it as my job to execute on that and I believe we’d done that,” Donaghy said.

Thursday’s hearing on reforming OAWP and strengthening its independence echoes similar hearings held in 2019 and 2021.

In 2019, the subcommittee heard testimony from three employees who suffered retaliation after blowing the whistle, including the loss of their positions at VA.

“For these three individuals, the weight for justice is measured in years,” Pappas said.

The bill would clarify some whistleblower protections, such as ensuring that senior agency employees that blow the whistle are protected. It would also clarify the scope of current training for VA employees regarding the rights and responsibilities of whistleblowers.

“There’s this desire now to sort of look at what have we learned, what has the VA learned, since those two hearings,” a committee aide told Federal News Network.

OAWP on its website states that between this January and May, it has issued 11 disciplinary recommendations against VA senior leaders for misconduct or poor performance, and six disciplinary recommendations against senior leaders and supervisors for whistleblower retaliation.

Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said he believes the VA’s leadership is “trying to move in the right direction” and protect whistleblowers, but said the supports the legislation to reform OAWP.

“We are simply not where we ought to be. I’m very concerned that those retaliating against whistleblowers are not facing the consequences for their actions,” Takano said.

The current discussion draft of the bill combines two bills previously considered by subcommittee members.

Elizabeth McMurray, chief of OSC’s Retaliation and Disclosure Unit, said the VA consistently represents roughly a third of its workload. McMurray said OSC has not seen a decrease in its VA caseload since the creation of OAWP.

“We don’t have any reason to believe that the proposed legislation would impact our dockets,” she said.

The committee aide said it helps that there is a “different set of leadership that is more intent on helping us,” but said lawmakers still seek protections and protocols for OAWP that are not yet codified in law.

While no VA whistleblowers testified during Thursday’s hearing, the committee aide said that updates to whistleblower cases the committee has previously heard demonstrate the need for legislative changes.

“Those results have been inconsistent, and I think that’s concerning for us. Some of the individuals have had their cases settled, and they aren’t totally satisfied, but they got their jobs back. Some are still waiting, it’s been four years, and so the committee is very concerned about that,” the aide said.

The bill underscores the subcommittee’s frustration that the OAWP to date has not been the independent office within VA that lawmakers expected it to be when Congress passed the 2017 Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act.

“The past couple of years, we’ve seen OAWP stray away from its original mission, and it’s got this investigative function, which is largely duplicative since OSC already provides this,” the committee aide said.

The committee aide said because both OAWP and OSC currently have the authority to investigate whistleblower retaliation cases, and OSC can further enforce action through the now fully staffed Merit Systems Protection Board “it makes sense to remove the duplicative powers.”

Previous OAWP leaders told the subcommittee at last year’s hearing that they’ve made progress since 2019, when the VA inspector general said the office failed to protect whistleblowers and often misinterpreted its statutory mission.

The Senior Executives Association, in a letter to the subcommittee, said it supports several provisions of the legislation, including eliminating OAWP’s investigatory functions.

SEA Executive Director Gregory Brooks wrote that OAWP’s current investigatory authority is “entirely duplicative of the VA OIG and OSC functions.”

“At best, these duplicative complaints unnecessarily expend taxpayer dollars. At worst, the complaints may result in conflicting investigatory outcomes and either create a bureaucratic paralysis or require further investigation to resolve the conflicts,” Brooks wrote.

Brooks said SEA also supports a provision of the legislation that provides whistleblower protection parity for VA senior executives.

“Because Senior Executives have broader purview and responsibility at the highest agency levels, they are better able to identify and expose the most serious agency wrongdoing than lower-level employees. But making those kinds of whistleblower disclosures is a risky endeavor for any employee,” Brooks wrote.

However, SEA also seeks clarity on what the bill specifies for OSC’s role in VA personnel actions, calling the language “confusing and unclear” on its intent.

Brooks clarified in the letter that the association opposes any language that would authorize OSC to unilaterally stay VA personnel actions.

Congress has never authorized OSC to be able to issue a binding decision for relief, nor has it required MSPB or an employing agency to enforce a unilateral decision of the OSC. Congress has limited OSC to functioning as an investigative and prosecutorial agency. MSPB is the adjudicative agency within the Title 5 framework, not OSC,” Brooks wrote.

“No agency should have all-powerful investigatory, prosecutorial, and binding adjudicative powers over the personnel actions in another agency,” he added.

The Senate on Thursday passed the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (Honoring Our PACT) Act. The bill now heads back to the House for final approval before heading to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The legislation, at its core, would expand disability compensation and health care benefits for veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told the Senate VA Committee on Tuesday that the PACT Act, combined with the agency’s fiscal 2023 budget request, will give the VA the resources it needs to prepare its health care workforce to treat up to 3.5 million additional veterans.

“This is a very important piece of legislation. I think it’d be very difficult to implement, but oftentimes, the most important things are difficult, and I think we’re ready for it,” McDonough said.

The VA said in a statement last month that the PACT Act would be one of the largest substantive health and benefit expansions in VA’s history, comparable in scale and impact to the 1991 Agent Orange Act.

The VA’s budget request for fiscal 2023 includes $42.2 billion for medical service staffing, and provides for 22,789 full-time equivalent hires, an increase of 14,000 FTEs compared to last year.

McDonough said the PACT Act would give the VA much-needed authority to set higher pay caps for certain health care positions, and that the VA’s ability to get veterans into care more quickly is “obviously impacted by the tightness of the labor market.”

“The first thing we need to do is retain the docs that we have, and you’re giving us new authorities to do that. Pay is a big one, and you’re giving us enhanced recruiting authorities as well. We’re thinking very diligently about this and planning very diligently about making sure that we have the people in the spots, and that we have the buildings for the increased demand that we anticipate seeing,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement last week that the PACT Act marks “one of the most significant and substantive expansions of benefits and services in the Department of Veterans Affairs history,” and that the Senate is taking steps to ensure the VA has the support it needs to effectively implement the legislation.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would increase spending subject to congressional appropriations by $147 billion through 2031. CBO estimates that 5.4 million veterans, nearly a third of the 19 million veterans in the U.S., will receive some disability compensation this fiscal year.

The PACT Act contains a slew of provisions meant to bolster the VA’s workforce, health care facilities and claims processing capabilities, and is the latest in a series of bills meant to recruit and retain in-demand health care workers and address the agency’s record-high rate of turnover.

Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) introduced the bill.

Congress in March also passed the RAISE Act, which raises the pay caps for certain VA nurses and physician assistants. McDonough said about 10,000 nurses will see their salary increase next month under that legislation — that’s about one out of every nine VA nurses.

McDonough said the Office of Personnel Management recently gave the VA another year to continue with its direct-hire authority for health care workers.

But even with that expedited hiring authority, Veterans Health Administration officials recently told the committee it’s taking 95 days on average to hire new employees.

“The direct-hire authority, of the many variables in the equation of bringing people on, it’s perhaps the most impactful. It accounts for probably a third of the savings we were able to get, in terms of time to hire. But the hiring and onboarding process is still so sclerotic, that we’re finding things that can change,” McDonough said.

Among the changes the VA is looking at, McDonough said nurses have to write an essay as part of their onboarding process.

“I think that’s antiquated, and we should get rid of that,” he said.

The PACT Act outlines many provisions meant to make the VA a more attractive employer for health care workers in a competitive labor market.

The bill would also give the VA up to $40 million a year to buy out the contracts of certain private-sector health care professionals in exchange for employment at rural VA facilities.

The bill also expands recruitment and retention bonuses for VA employees, including merit awards and pay incentives for employees that have a “high-demand skill or skill that is at a shortage.” The critical-skills pay incentive cannot exceed 25% of an employee’s base pay.

The bill also includes expedited hiring authority for college graduates into competitive service jobs.

The PACT Act also gives the VA 180 days to work with OPM to establish qualifications for each human resources position within the VA, and to establish standardized performance metrics for its human resources positions.

The bill gives the VA a year to submit to the House and Senate committees a plan on how it will recruit and retain HR employees.

The agency would also have 90 days to provide enhanced monitoring of the hiring and other human resources that happen at the local regional and national levels of the department. The agency must also provide at least annual training to human resources professionals in VHA.

VHA officials told the committee last month that non-standardized HR processes at the local level have led to hiring and onboarding inefficiencies across the agency. The legislation, if signed, gives the VA 18 months to develop a national rural recruitment and hiring strategy for VHA.

As part of this strategy, the VA must determine which clinics or centers have a staffing shortage of health care professionals, and develop best practices and techniques for recruiting health care professionals for such clinics and centers. The PACT Act requires the VA to provide the House and Senate VA committees with updates on its progress in implementing the rural recruitment and hiring strategy within 18 months of the bill going into effect and then annually.

The bill would waive pay caps for VHA impacted by the closure or realignment of their official duty stations, which may happen if the agency’s recommendations to the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission come into focus.

The PACT Act also waives pay caps for VHA employees providing care to veterans exposed to open burn pits.

While Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman have opposed the planned closure of VA medical centers in New York, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the VA can’t continue to deliver modern health care in outdated facilities.

“This strategy is untenable. In fact, it’s not a strategy,” Blumenthal said. “There is no way that the Veterans Administration can continue quality care with facilities of that age at a time when technology requires that the entire structure of a facility be designed and built to accommodate the most modern means of delivering care, of monitoring patient health.”

McDonough said that if the AIR Commission process doesn’t move forward, the MISSION Act still requires the VA to conduct four-year reviews of its real-estate needs in each of its regional health care markets.

“We’re watching to see what you all choose to do with the nominees for the AIR Commission. In all cases under the MISSION Act. We’re required to go back and look each four years at what the needs are in each of those markets across the country,” he said.

Meanwhile, the PACT Act authorizes 31 leases for new VA health care facilities across the country.

Bill mandates VA updates on claims automation

The PACT Act also gives the VA 180 days to submit a plan to Congress on the state of IT modernization at the Veterans Benefits Administration.

The report should identify any legacy systems the VA plans to retire or modernize, as well as update Congress on the progress the VA is making in automating claims processing decisions.

The bill states that automation “should be conducted in a manner that enhances the productivity of employees,” but keeps VA employees in charge of making the final decision of granting benefits to claimants.

The bill makes clear that the automation should “not be carried out in a manner that reduces or infringes upon the due process rights of applicants.”

McDonough told the committee that the current claims backlog is 188,000, which is down from 265,000 claims only a few months ago.

The VA announced in January that the automation pilot, through its newly created Office of Automated Benefit Delivery, is processing claims within a day or two, while the traditional method of processing these claims currently takes well over 100 days, on average.

The VA began the pilot by automating claims of service-related hypertension, and is adding three new diagnostic codes each quarter.

McDonough said that by the end of the year, the 12 most common claims will be automatable.

While the Biden administration and some lawmakers have pressed for federal employees to return to the office, McDonough said the VBA productivity increased during the pandemic.

“As we think about questions about do people come back in the office, or do they work virtually, we’re taking that into consideration,” he said.

VA is also in the process of hiring 2,000 additional claims personnel.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs says it’s had some major successes using automation to speed up its disability claims process. But if VA is moving into a world of automation, Congress wants to help guide it. Legislation the House passed last month would require the department to adhere to a list of principles in future automation projects. And to lay out a five-year plan for each major IT modernization project in the Veterans Benefits Administration. California Congressman Mark Takano, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, talked with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin about some of the issues Congress wants to keep tabs on.

Interview transcript:

Mark Takano: You know, I think the concerns that I have are that we make the job of a benefits manager or claims manager as unburdensome as possible, that they’re not stuck with tedium, that any kind of tasks that can be automated, should be automated. But in my experience, what we really want to do is making sure that the time that claims managers have is not spent on tedium, but it’s spent with veterans in a quality way. And I’ve noticed since the pandemic, we’re trying to rise to non-pandemic and where people are flying more, even with pretty good elite status as someone who flies around from Washington to California, I call up, and I didn’t reach a person. Now I reached a recording that says, if you want the option to call back in three hours, and I’m like, man, I got elite status. What is this? And here’s my point. I mean, ultimately, we want a VA where a veteran feels like they’ve got elite status, that it’s that they’re not being treated like they’re treated everywhere else. Dealing with a claim with VA, for too many veterans is frustrating, it can be long. But in order to make that experience better for veterans, we need claims managers that can give them that time that can talk to them on the phone. And in order to do that, we need more claims managers. We also need technology that makes those claims managers as efficient and able to fulfill with dispatch their responsibilities. I’m very hopeful that this monumental bill called the Honoring Our PACT Act, which is going to enable 3.5 million veterans to become eligible for VA medical care, that’s going to add to the already existing job of VBA employees, not to mention the 23 presumptive illnesses that are also going to figure into all of this. So I don’t envision the need for more technology at VBA is about replacing employees. It’s about facing the tremendous need for more employees and making those employees as effective as they can be.

Jared Serbu: Having people do the tasks that actually do require people. Based on what VA has done so far, I mean, they seem pretty pleased with how their automation pilots have gone, so far, based on their numbers, they’ve managed to take average claims processing time down from about 100 days down to two, have you heard different things that give you pause or concerns with how things are going so far on the automation front specifically?

Mark Takano: I haven’t seen anything come across my desk different than that. I’m happy to hear VA is feeling like they’ve made progress and some of their pilots, I’m gonna be curious to see evidence of that. And, of course, if they’re having success, I would encourage VA to do more of these expand and generalize these pilots. But I do know this secretary was happy that we put actual money in the PACT act for technology. I got a little apprehension from the government employees on it. And I’ve told them, “look, I’m optimistic that this bill is going to pass”. I’m also very mindful that we’re going to be asking a lot more of VBA. We’re not going to lose employees, we’re not going to actually lose people, people are gonna be able to work. We need to put more people to work. And we need to make sure that we’re going to be able to meet the pending demand, the demand that’s going to arise because of the passage of this bill.

Jared Serbu: The other legislation that requires VA to produce a five-year plan on all of its planned it investments in VBA. It’s pretty expansive, it requires this plan on I think basically any it modernization that they’re going to do not just on the automation front. Is that because of any specific concerns that you have, that the house might have about VBA? Is it just a reflection of ongoing frustrations with how VA is pulled off large IT projects?

Mark Takano: I think first of all, let’s remember that VA is the second largest federal department, second only to DoD. We got like 400-450,000 employees, everything we try to implement, everything we try to improve at VA requires IT. So when we changed the GI Bill that required an adjustment in IT, the caregiver program, that was a huge, significant new benefit that we created with the mission act, the implementation of the caregiver benefit, I mean, it’s been hampered by IT. That IT has not been in place, I think the experience that members of Congress have is like, the VA is just got so many different things going on. And that IT is always a, something happens with the IT portion of it. So I can just tick off a few of the IT issues that we’re looking at, I mean, the  integration of the VA, and DoD medical workers. That’s one huge multi-billion dollar project that I’ve been from the day one apprehensive about as a sole contractor. My predecessor, Phil Roe, actually created a whole technology modernization subcommittee to do oversight over it. I continued that practice. And we struggled and made sure we staffed it up. The VA also, in the last administration, we had trouble with making sure we got a confirmed CIO, chief information officer, on board. IT is critical to whenever we want to change something or do anything big, IT is one of the things that can impede implementation. That’s why we put money, actually authorized money, in the PACT act. That’s an ambitious new piece of legislation that’s been called by the press as one of the big deals that the President and Congress got done. It is a big deal. And then look, I’ve done things in the bill to try and like not foist all 3.5 million newly eligible veterans all on the VA at once. We kind of phase them in. So we’ve sort of given VA time to ramp up. But we also give them the resources to ramp up. You know, we say we expect more hires, we also expect that you try to automate as many of the processes that could be automated to do that.  But I’ve just done my 10 years on this policy area. I’ve just experienced time after time, something going on with IT.

Jared Serbu: Well, let me just raise one other big multibillion dollar system that you didn’t bring up, which is the defense medical logistics support system. For listeners this is a large back-end IT system that the VA borrowed from DoD. From what we understand there’s already been an internal recommendation from VA that that system be shut down because it has worked so poorly in the early going. I know you, your ranking member and your counterparts in the Senate have also asked VA to shut it down in a letter back in January. I’m just curious if you can give us any updates on where that all stands. If you’ve gotten any satisfactory answers from VA?

Mark Takano: I remember when it happened. I mean,  I remember where the criticism was, that employees were out there purchasing things on credit cards. And the Washington, DC VA was like, they had to reschedule surgeries because they didn’t know what was in the inventories. I think Secretary Wilkie just he came from DoD, I could see their logic. But as you dug deeper, there was a lot of reasons why, just assuming the DoD processes and methods weren’t gonna work. And that’s kind of what we’re our oversight uncovered. So if you want to know about the plans and processes and why you want VA to  give us five-year plans, this is why. I mean, I want to  get the management, the higher management at VA to understand that they’ve got to get their arms around all these different IT projects. Some of them are large, some of them not so large, but all of them are critical. And I’m constantly asking, Do you need more resources? More resources? They tell me the most recent answer was no, except for the PACT act. They said they appreciated all the money that went into the automation there. But always a concern. You know, IT is just one of those things that for somebody who’s not an IT specialist, you’re always kind of wondering whether or not you got the right program going or whether you’re being sold a bill of goods.  It’s not going to not gonna work out. I was just in a hearing yesterday with Kurt DelBene, who was formerly a very high up executive with Microsoft, and who fixed healthcare.gov or led the team that fixed it. I feel very comfortable with him at the helm as CIO. We talked a lot about about the national cybersecurity issues in VA, and we do a lot of interface with with DoD. And one of my big concerns there is that we definitely need less consultants and more of our own in-house employees. And the big challenge there is, of course competing with the private sector for these employees to actually retain these employees. And so that was part of our discussion yesterday in oversight. So, as chairman, I’m always kind of wondering about how do we reduce that ratio of consultants to employees? And Mr. DelBene’s answer was partly that we need to make sure that whoever in VA is managing all these projects, we need maybe more of those, we may not be able to totally offset the consultants with our own employees, but we can certainly get better-equipped team leaders who do work for VA to deal with these contractors.

Jared Serbu: That’s California Congressman Mark Takano, the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

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When a veteran passes away, it currently takes more than two months on average for the Department of Veterans Affairs to process their survivors’ claims for dependency and indemnity compensation. But automation is helping to drastically shorten that timeline. Assuming the application is complete on the front end, the department can now approve those claims within about four hours without a claims process or ever having to see it. Kevin Friel is deputy director of VA’s pension and fiduciary service. He joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk more about how they’ve been using automation he in his section of the department.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Kevin, thanks for doing this and wanted to start by getting a little bit of an update on where you are with automation. VBA automation has been a little bit in the news lately with the disability compensation part of the administration, Getting in on some pilots, but you all in the pension and fiduciary service have been working on automation for quite a bit longer. Tell us how robust, how mature all your automation efforts are, what kind of progress you’ve made so far.

Kevin Friel: Yeah, Jared, thanks for your question. Just to be clear, we are separate from compensation service. So our automation, as you said, is a lot different. We’ve actually been automating since about 2014. There was a public law 114-315 that Congress passed that basically told us, as it relates to surviving spouses, we should pay them the benefits they’re entitled to based on the evidence or record. So in the past, if a veteran passed away, the spouse would have to submit an application to us. And we would have to go through that process. When that law was passed, what we looked at is what we could do so the two things we made out that we could do is we could pay burial benefits.

So VA helps to offset burial benefits for veterans who pass away and are in receipt of VA benefits at the time of their death or have a claim pending where they would have been or if the remains are unclaimed, right, for unclaimed remains. So with that, if we have we have the surviving spouse on record, once we get that notification, and the spouse calls us, we can process the burial claims and burial awards and get them out to the spouse without even getting an application just because we know we have identified the spouse and linked them to the veteran. And then we have for, DIC, dependency indemnity compensation, right, typically that is meant for to be payable to the surviving spouse for the veteran’s death was related to a service-connected condition.

However, there’s a law that says if the veteran was rated 100% compensable, right, for service-connected for periods of time, that we can go ahead and pay that administratively. So we also look at that in the automation process. And if the veteran meets those criteria, we will go ahead and initiate DIC to the surviving spouse automatically, once again, without an application. We also do some automation, State Veterans cemeteries, who in turn into our veterans, right who are eligible for burial in the National Veterans Cemetery. They do that at no cost to the beneficiary, or the survivors. The VA will, however, reimburse them, the cost of plot and plot benefit, which is about $832 – I may be a little off on the money, but it’s over $800. We went through that process and looked at it to see how we can improve it. And we’ve automated that process, too. So now when the state submit us, we can run those through automation and get them done quickly. And then we went to our next level, which was how do we do something where we get a claim report from a survivor or for … a DIC. And over starting in 2019, we started to work on automation, we have been looking at it and trying to get it implemented over a period of time. In 2019, we finally got everything lined up. And we started to roll that out.

So today, we’re seeing an application for burial claim or for a DIC claim (dependency indemnity compensation claim), we extract the data from that, and then we run it through our automated processes. If automation can process that claim to completion, which is normally the award, right, always an award or benefits, it’ll run that through all the rules, and it’ll pay that out. With our current processes if the surviving spouse or gives us all the information we need, which is typically the form is completed the way that it needs to be completed, all the blocks are filled in that need to be filled in. And we have a copy of the veterans death certificate, we have been able to process those claims in as little as four hours. From when it comes in, it’s it’s automatically established, the data is automatically extracted from the form and then it it is run through our automation thing. And it’s processed out. If we don’t have that if the information isn’t clean, or if we don’t have the death certificate, it just delays the process.

So getting all the information up front is where we’re going to be. However, what we don’t want is somebody to hold off on applying. Because, we know we understand that there’s there’s many times delays in getting a death certificate, right? They’re not always readily available. Typically you have a year to apply for the benefit, which will go back to the date of the veteran’s death. So our thing is get the application in, if you don’t have the death certificate or you’re waiting for it, get that application in. At least we have your benefit, your claim established, as as you work to get that death certificate. Once we get the death certificate automation, we’ll go through and extract that just like it already has the form and if we have everything we need once the death certificate comes in, automation will pick that up and run it. So it’s not like a one-and-done, we look at these claims every evening. And if there’s a change in status, we will go ahead and work that out.

Jared Serbu: In a best-case scenario, if the claim has been submitted with everything that VBA needs to process it, does a human ever need to touch it , or is it automated end to end?

Kevin Friel: In the best case scenario, right now, no a human doesn’t need to touch it. We have done it, we have an automatic claims establishment, we have criteria around that. So if we the information is within our system, we could establish that claim right away based off of the form and the information we have on the form, then we do accept we do the automatic data extraction from it. And so if the data extraction, it comes in clean, we run those likely. And if if everything’s there, it’ll it’ll go right through.

Jared Serbu: And we were mentioning a little bit off the air that pension automation is coming a little bit later. Is that just a more complex process? And and tell us how that’s been going? If you could,

Kevin Friel: it is pensions a little more complex, because basically, we have to look at all the income that a beneficiary has, we have to look at the medical expenses they have. And in the pension program, we use medical expenses as a means to reduce income. It’s a needs-based program, right, so it’s an income-based program. And the income levels are are set by Congress, the thresholds, but we are allowed to use a medical expense to do reduction of the income to potentially get them below the threshold. So just to use round numbers, say that we say a veteran can have $14,000 a year in income. If they have $17,000 or $18,000 or $20,000, but they have, $7,000 or $8,000 or $9,000 [in] medical expenses that they have paid, we would, eventually we can reduce that income down based off of their medical expenses to get them below the $14,000 threshold and then be able to pay them benefits.

Jared Serbu: Similar objectives on the pension side to get to somewhere in the four-hour area, or at least inside a day?

Kevin Friel: There are. I mean, and I’d say I like the four hours, the best case scenario, we don’t get many of those. But we do get a few every every evening. Typically we have to send these out because we don’t get all the information. But yeah, the goal would be to get as many of these through as quickly as we can. Because when the beneficiary comes into us for what we see within the pension world, because we have responsibility for burial and DIC and pension. So as I said, pension’s needs-based. So when they come in to us, they’re really in need of this benefit, right? Financially, they’re struggling, and the faster we can get money into their hands, so that we can help them meet their day-to-day living needs and stuff like this is where we want to be. And with the survivors benefits the DIC and burial, typically, these are people who’ve been married to the veterans, veteran and spouse have been married for years. It’s typically not like, a short period of time. But you’re talking, 20, 30, 40 years, and so they’re going through the worst time of their life. So if I can do anything I can to get their, A) is to get them the money to help reimburse for the funeral and then B) is, if they’re eligible for DIC to get that flow where they can help offset the loss income, we want to do that as quickly as we possibly can. That’s why even like with the first automation, as I said, we do that without getting any application. We get a call, we send a letter out. And then six days later, we don’t have anything that says we shouldn’t pay. We pay that benefit.

Jared Serbu: Regardless of whether the application is being processed manually or going through automation, veterans still need to submit essentially the same thing, or veterans or survivors still need to submit essentially the same documentation.

Kevin Friel: Correct, yes.

Jared Serbu: Can you give us just what was some of the most important things that VBA needs to ensure that they’ve got the best chance of getting through that automation process as quickly as possible?

Kevin Friel: Sure. So for the veterans’ purposes, when we get a pension claim, one of the things that we – two things actually that kind of slow us down. One is the application not being completely filled out, right? So for the application to be eligible for pension, whether it be a survivor or veteran, we need to know their income. We need them to put down and tell us what income they have. Typically, it’s only for our population. It’s a small, it’s either social security and maybe retirement or annuity or things like that. But that all has to be listed. And we need to narrow history and we need the medical expenses. And if they’re in a nursing home, we need specific forms filled out. So filling out the application completely, right, as completely as possible will help us expedite it.

Also, if they’ve never filed a claim with VA before, submitting their proof of their service verification, right, so the 214 or the 215, whatever they have for service verification, because one of the requirements is you have to be a veteran, right? So we need to validate that they are a veteran. For the population that we look at, like when you go back to like Vietnam, Korea, World War II where we get the veterans and survivors within that population, they’re typically, we don’t have their electronic records. So we’re totally tied to paper on these people. So for all these veterans and their survivors of getting that form 214 in and we’ve actually recently in November of 2021. We changed our rule, right? Previously that 214 had to be certified, had to be stamped by a VSO (veteran service organization) or it had to come right from the Department of Defense or the branch of service.

We have now said, if we get one that comes in from the beneficiary, from the applicant, and there’s no indication that it’s been altered or adjusted or whatever, we will accept that. So we won’t delay the claim anymore. Because I’m sure we’ve all heard about the federal records delays that we’ve had because of COVID. Right now, with our new rule, if it comes in, and it says it looks good, we’re going to take that and move that forward. But having that as part of the package, too. And then on the survivor side, when we get a DIC claim, one of the big things is having the death certificate. To be eligible for DIC, [the] veteran had to have passed away from a service-connected condition, whether it be a primary or secondary cause of death. So, having the death certificate is the only way we can make that link.

Now, one of the things that I will tell everybody is, do not make the decision on your own whether or not you’re eligible for our benefit. If the veteran passed away, and you believe it’s service-connected, or you think it may be just send it in, let us make the determination, I can’t tell you that we’re going to grant it to everybody, but allowing us to make the decision, and allowing us to review the data is probably the best scenario for anyone, even if we deny it. And at least you know that VA has looked at it, and you haven’t been told by some third party “don’t apply because you’re not eligible,” right? Let us make the decisions and submit the applications to us.

Jared Serbu: And then the lesson in our last couple minutes here, Kevin, I do want to emphasize that there is third-party help out there for folks who want to use it. VSOs, attorneys, others, can you talk a little bit about what VBA generally recommends, if someone’s gonna go that route and some of the red flags for people who may be a little bit less honest about helping veterans?

Kevin Friel: Sure, thank you. That’s a great, great lead. And so I will tell you that for our purposes, the veterans service organizations are our biggest advocates, right? For VA, they are our frontline. They are actually out, working with different communities and being available to them, especially like rural areas where you have VFW’s and American Legion posts and things like that. That’s where you should be going if you need assistance,. Or you can call the 1-800-827-1000 number, right? Which is our VA call centers, and we have representatives there who will assist in filling out a form and providing guidance in there. And then if you’re close enough to a regional office, you can schedule an appointment and walk into a regional office and they will sit down and help you fill that all out.

And it’s really important that if you’re going to need to seek assistance, seek something from these organizations, these are these are all representatives. Veteran service organizations have all been that validated by the VA and they they’ve all been certified to do the work that they do, and they don’t charge. We even tell it on our forms. Individuals cannot be charged to submit an original claim. So a lawyer fee can’t be charged, shouldn’t be charged for submitting an original claim. Now, on a subsequent claim, or where they are appealing something and they want a legal representative, that’s a completely different story. But for their original application, there should be no fee. VSO will help fill that in help submit it. And the other thing with the VSOs, that’s beneficial to the beneficiary or the claimant is the VSOs have direct contact with the VA. They have lines that they can call, they can talk to us. So they have the ability to follow up on your claim, even if the circumstances changes.

So if someone is terminally ill, or if they’re about to become homeless … the VSOs can let us know that and we will work to expedite the claim, and make sure that we can help these veterans out and their survivors as quickly as possible. But you have third-party companies out there that are coming in and and saying we’ll help you with these medical expenses and we’ll help offset these, we’ll give you a loan and then you can repay it or we’ll take a percentage of whatever your payment is for this period of time. And that shouldn’t be happening. So our thing is to stay with the VSOs. Like I said they’re certified by the VA, right, and we work closely with them. So that’s probably the best benefit.

• Forty new technologists are coming to help agencies improve their digital services. Thirteen agencies will welcome the first ever cohort for the U.S. Digital Corps. The fellows will work at places like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Biden administration launched the program last year as a cross-government effort to recruit early-career technologists. The Digital Corps received more than 1,000 applications in one week and offered 10 more positions than the initial plan.
• The Army is about to kick off a major business systems modernization effort. The Army’s Office of the Chief Information Officer wants to modernize and consolidate five enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and 150 support systems. Raj Iyer, the Army’s CIO, said the service will release later this summer a call for white papers under an OTA. That will lead to several prototypes over the next 12-to-18 months to help determine what commercial products can meet the service’s needs. Iyer said this business systems initiative will be done using an agile approach and could take up to 10 years to complete. The Army is asking for $1.4 billion in fiscal 2023 to support those 5 ERPs and 150 support systems.

• The Department of Veterans Affairs is trying to streamline how contractors interact with the department. Last month it announced the Pathfinder site, a new digital one-stop shop for contractors looking to work with the VA. On June 7, that website officially went live. VA also has a portal to help developers interface with VA services. A third shares style and design guidelines to promote consistency. (Federal News Network)

• Federal Executive Boards prioritized emergency preparedness and workforce development for agencies. FEBs across the country provided training for 23,000 federal employees over the last year. The training covered areas like managing virtual teams and preparing for retirement. The boards also hosted 36 workshops and six exercises, and helped agencies collaborate with state and local governments. That’s all to better prepare for emergencies like pandemics, natural disasters and cyberattacks. The Office of Personnel Management said the boards made significant progress in 2021 to improve cross-agency collaboration.

• Military personnel are at risk for some brain injuries, but not the same kind as football players, according to a new study. A limited study of service members’ brains found the chronic traumatic encephalopathy may be rare in military personnel. CTE is most famous for being linked to sports like football and boxing and is caused by repeated sub-concussive hits. About 4% of the 225 brains studied had the disease, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. All of those service members had a history of playing in contact sports. The military is still increasingly concerned about brain injuries caused by being in blast zones and from using heavy weaponry.

• The Pentagon is moving forward with a plan to build a mobile prototype nuclear reactor that may be an alternative energy source in some locations. The Defense Department chose BWTX Advanced Technologies and X-energy to build the prototype for what it calls Project Pele. The contract could be worth as much as $300 million, with a delivery date in 2024.

• The Biden administration is outlining its plan to maximize COVID-era IT modernization funds from Congress. The Office of Management and Budget plans to spend what’s left of the $200 million Congress gave its IT Oversight and Reform Account to hire technical experts who can lead modernization projects across government. The General Services Administration will use what’s left of the $150 million that went to its Federal Citizen Services Fund to improve customer experience across several dozen agencies and programs designated as High-Impact Service Providers. The Technology Modernization Fund will use its remaining funds, in part, to identify new opportunities for shared services across government. (Federal News Network)

• The IRS is suffering from more and more impersonation scams. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration finds that between October 2013 and March 2022,  more than 16,000 victims have lost $85 million to these IRS impersonation scams. The IG said scammers usually try to obtain sensitive taxpayer information or coerce victims into buying gift cards. TIGTA said it has initiated 893 impersonation scam-related investigations. These efforts have resulted in 300 individuals being charged in federal court. Of those, 197 individuals have been sentenced collectively to more than 910 years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay more than $224 million in restitution.

• An advisory panel is pushing for a review of how the Department of Homeland Security handles immigration records requests. The Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee is recommending Congress fund an independent assessment of how DHS handles FOIA requests for Alien Files. So-called A-Files are one of the largest categories of FOIA requests. They are crucial for those requesting immigration benefits or seeking to defend themselves in court proceedings. The FOIA Advisory Committee’s latest report also recommends U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services establish a fast-track processing alternative for A-File requests. (Federal News Network)

• Agencies are inconsistently addressing the risks brought on by using time and materials or labor hours type contracts. The Government Accountability Office found agencies spent $139 billion between 2017 and 2021 using these contracts, which require the government to play a more active role in managing costs. Auditors said agencies — such as the Army and the Department of Homeland Security — have taken steps to switch T&M contracts to firm fixed price-type contracts to reduce risk. Meanwhile other agencies, like the Air Force, the Department of State and the Social Security Administration, have increased their use of T&M type contracts.

• The General Services Administration is taking the next steps to transition to an electric fleet. The GSA launched 19,000 new telematic devices to collect data on vehicle usage, trip duration, idling time and fuel use in its automobile fleet. The data will help the agency understand which vehicles can be replaced with electric ones. The new devices are an addition to the over 60,000 already in use. The GSA is working with other vehicle manufacturers to put the telematic devices in more models.

“This is a focused point of entry to selling and innovating with VA for our industry partners,” said Michael Parrish, VA’s chief acquisition officer, in a press release. “It fills a gap we’ve found in the acquisition lifecycle by creating the fusion of acquisition and innovation with this intelligent system.”

Parrish said last month that the new Pathfinder site will help vendors that haven’t worked with VA before getting certified through SAM.gov. But the site will also pre-filter to show only VA-specific solicitations.

“One of the great things about [the Pathfinder tool] is that it does provide a connection to that more innovative area,” said Charles Worthington, chief technology officer for VA’s Office of Information Technology. “So in cases where it’s a solution that the community thinks might help solve a problem that VA has, there is a path that it’ll lead you down, that can kind of flag you into that.”

Luwanda Jones, deputy chief information officer at VA, said during a VA Advanced Planning Brief to Industry on June 8 that the site will also facilitate vendor engagement scheduling. Eventually, she said, it will replace the VA’s IT Vendor Management Office scheduling email.

But Pathfinder isn’t the only way VA is trying to make it easier for vendors to work with them. Worthington said VA is trying to build a culture of transparency on the IT side, especially with vendors, in order to make it easier for them to integrate solutions. That’s evidenced in the new Lighthouse program, Worthington said.

Previously, he said, the team behind Lighthouse was primarily focused on vendors building third-party applications on top of VA services. For example, that might include a veteran linking their VA medical records to an approved health care app on their phone.

But now that team is turning its focus to internal interfaces as well.

“You’re going to be seeing more about this in the coming weeks and months. But what we’re really hoping to do is for all the different systems that run within our VA internal environment, we want to document the interfaces that those systems provide, and make it easy for teams to use those interfaces,” Worthington said. “We want to focus on making it easy for teams to leverage existing capabilities that are existing in other systems. And Lighthouse is a key way that’s going to help us do that. So more to come on this but keep your eyes open. And really, teams should be thinking about the core transactional capabilities of whatever system you’re working on. Exposing those to other systems in a standard way with an API is really the approach that has been most successful for integrating systems at VA, and we’re going to be leaning into that even more with our Lighthouse Developer Experience platform.”

Worthington also mentioned a VA design portal that’s intended to provide style and format guidance to contractors working with VA, in order to match the look and feel of the VA website. The idea is to ensure consistency across all communications involving the VA. Worthington said that can range from as simple as whether or not to capitalize the V in veterans, to technical minutiae like fonts, margins and color palettes.

Finally, Worthington discussed a shared service for notifications that VA is beginning to implement on its internal network. It will allow vendors to send personalized notifications to veterans via email or text. So, for example, they can let veterans know their application was received, or their prescription was updated. Worthington said the service is already integrated with VA’s veteran profile databases, as well as with its veterans preference engines. It also has a high level of trust with email providers, meaning it’s more likely to bypass spam filters.

“To me, that is the nation saying that, ‘Hey, we know up front, you’re going to need supplementals,’” said Reid, a military fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program.

Food insecurity affected one in five military families as of 2021 — up from one in eight in 2019 — according to the Military Family Advisory Network. The issue has existed for decades and has bipartisan support in Congress, but Lloyd Austin was the first secretary of Defense to publicly direct DoD to address food insecurity for military families, just last year. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act called for a study of food insecurity in the armed forces with results due to Congress by Oct. 1, according to CSIS.

The issue links to global supply chain complications, inflation, government assistance programs and family needs. Caitlin Welsh, director of CSIS’ Global Food Security Program, wrote in a 2021 analysis that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or “food stamps,” eligibility is inconsistent and problematic.

“For service members who live on base, the income USDA uses to assess SNAP eligibility does not include the cost of on-base housing, as this cost is simply subtracted from the service member’s pay. For service members who live off base and receive a housing allowance — the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) — the income USDA uses to assess SNAP eligibility does include BAH, even though BAH is not considered as income for tax and other purposes,” she wrote. She went on to suggest USDA could work with Congress to exempt BAH from SNAP eligibility, as the Defense Department said it could create inequalities based on geographic location and family size.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), in a taped message for CSIS’s Policy Brief Launch: Solving Food Insecurity Among U.S. Veterans and Military Families on Tuesday, said he was perplexed that DoD has waited to study or address food insecurity for active and veteran service members until now.

“We did the hearing in the [House] rules committee that you referred to, we heard from experts who told us that our service members and veterans and their families need more support, to be able to put nutritious food on the table. They talked about improving data collection, removing the basic allowance, for housing from the SNAP calculation, base pay increases or expanding short term SNAP guarantee a smooth transition to civilian life,” he said. “But … there are answers, and there are solutions here that are simple.”

Military families struggle to make ends meet

Outside groups who have studied the issue of food insecurity in the armed services say the most impacted are junior-level enlisted service members in the E1 to E4 ranks, especially those with children. Modest pay, frequent moves that make it difficult for military spouses to find steady work, and an internal culture of self-sufficiency “leaves many reluctant to speak about their difficulties, for fear they will be regarded as irresponsible,” the Associated Press reported.

Although many soldiers rely on base dining facilities to supplement their and their families’ meals, during the pandemic those facilities closed. Much like how schoolchildren could not access lunch programs, affected service members had to look elsewhere, as Army Col. Danielle Ngo, another CSIS military fellow, pointed out.

She added the same goes for families who relied on child care providers — another scarce resource, pandemic or not — to serve daily meals. Ngo said that when she was stationed in Hawaii, she went through 11 child care providers in one year while waiting for a child development center to open. She was a brigade commander at the time but did not want to skip to the front of the line because she knew other soldiers could not afford off-base providers.

“So I looked off base to try to find child care, and it’s really hard to find qualified people who you trust to take care of your children and who will feed them a good healthy diet,” Ngo on the panel. “So it’s really important, good child care, so families don’t have to worry, soldiers don’t have to worry about how their children are being taken care of.”

Implications for military mental health

Food insecurity could have links to a separate concern in the military: mental health and suicide prevention. A separate survey of more than 5,600 respondents at a “major U.S. Army installation,” conducted by the U.S. Army Public Health Center and the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research, found that nearly 33% of respondents were marginally food insecure. The study authors said they were prompted by a commanding officer’s call to the Public Health Center to investigate a perceived increase in suicidal behavior and preventable deaths in 2019.

“Marginally food insecure” refers to individuals who report any indications of compromised economic access to food among themselves and their families.

“The mediation analyses showed that marginal food insecurity was significantly related to mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation) which were related to intentions to leave after the current service period (full mediation). These results indicate that by addressing food insecurity, there will be subsequent positive effects for mental health and for reductions in intentions to leave the Army after the current service period,” the study authors wrote.

Last summer, Federal News Network reported the Defense Department would pilot a food insecurity assessment tool for military family counselors, to use in their meetings with military families. Patricia Montes Barron, deputy assistant Defense secretary for military community and family policy, said the reason was that food insecurity can be a hard conversation to have, even with a question as simple as “Did you eat well today?”

During CSIS’s panel on Tuesday, Reid said the stigma around food insecurity could be linked to the fact that that service members are essentially given everything they need to do their jobs when they enter the military, whether at a station or deployed, including tools, equipment, directives and uniforms. Then when they cannot provide food for themselves or their families without assistance, it takes a psychological toll and hinders readiness.