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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.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade on June 24 holds potential ramifications for agency employees across the country, such as the need for some feds to travel across state lines to obtain an abortion.

There are approximately 770,000 federal employees in states that already have abortion bans or are expected to move quickly to enact abortion bans following the decision, according to estimates from the Department of Justice Gender Equality Network (DOJ GEN).

The Office of Personnel Management issued a June 27 fact sheet reminding federal employees that they can use sick leave to get medical care, including time spent traveling to obtain that care.

Additionally, agencies can grant advanced sick leave to employees who haven’t accrued enough — and that applies to travel time associated with sick leave. The policy also covers federal employees taking family members to medical appointments.

“This may include, for example, providing transportation and/or accompanying a family member to a health care provider’s office or to a hospital or other health care facility,” OPM stated.

Although OPM’s reminder did not specifically mention abortion, the federal sick leave policy includes reproductive health services.

But some groups, like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), are calling on the federal government to go beyond sick leave to provide paid administrative leave to cover health care services.

“The federal government, as a model employer, must immediately agree to provide paid leave and cover the travel costs of any federal or D.C. government employee who must leave their state of residence in order to obtain an abortion,” AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a June 25 statement.

Relying on the existing sick leave policy will “disproportionately harm women and other employees who need to travel for abortion care,” Stacey Young, the president of DOJ GEN, told Federal News Network.

The group describes itself as an “employee-run organization” with 1,150 members that has advocated for gender equity and equality at the Justice Department since 2016.

“You shouldn’t have to use more sick leave now that states are banning abortion,” Young said. “The federal government can mitigate the harm by allowing employees to use administrative leave for travel, which will not require employees to dig into their limited sick or annual leave more than they already need to. The government can also pay for public servants’ travel, in same way that private employers across the country are already doing.”

Young also pointed to how agencies provided employees with additional paid time off so they could get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“We think that the administration would need to figure out how employees could request administrative leave without having to disclose their need to an immediate supervisor or someone else in their office,” Young added. “Privacy measures are paramount when it comes to reproductive health care.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it was planning to provide federal employees with additional paid leave and covered travel expenses.

There’s another caveat that affects federal workers seeking to obtain abortions: Currently, the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) Program does not cover the cost of abortion services.

But that’s something House Democrats are trying to change. The House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2023 financial services and general government bill includes a provision that would remove the FEHB ban on abortion coverage.

Although House appropriators included the provision in the draft spending bill last year, too, it didn’t make it into the final version. The committee approved the 2023 spending bill on June 24, but it still has to make it through both the full House and the Senate, which could mean more revisions to the legislation.

Lawmakers will likely need to overcome the Hyde amendment to remove the FEHB ban on abortion coverage. The Hyde amendment is a standing legislative provision that bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, except in cases that endanger the life of the patient, or if the pregnancy arises from incest or rape.

Meanwhile, Young from DOJ GEN said the Hyde amendment should not be a factor in providing paid leave and covering travel expenses for federal employees seeking abortion services.

“For decades, the Hyde amendment has placed undue obstacles to federal employees’ access to reproductive healthcare,” she said. “But under its plain language, ancillary expenses that don’t actually pay for an abortion itself aren’t covered. So providing money to fund administrative leave, or even directly paying for employees’ interstate travel, I don’t think that would in any way run afoul of the amendment.”

Federal health care workers

Along with federal employees who may decide to obtain an abortion, agency leaders are also offering some guidance for federal healthcare workers. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department is working to protect federal employees who provide reproductive services that are allowed under federal law.

“Federal employees who carry out their duties by providing such services must be allowed to do so free from the threat of liability. It is the department’s longstanding position that states generally may not impose criminal or civil liability on federal employees who perform their duties in a manner authorized by federal law,” Garland said in a June 24 statement. “The Justice Department is prepared to assist agencies in resolving any questions about the scope of their authority to provide reproductive care.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs, which employs some of the government’s reproductive health care workers, said it is continuing healthcare operations consistent with legal authority.

“Access to gender-specific reproductive health services, including contraception and fertility services, is and will remain a critical component of veteran health care,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a press statement. “VA will work with DOJ to ensure the full strength of the federal government is available to defend eligible VA employees if necessary. Our commitment to providing reproductive health care to the veterans we serve is unwavering. We recognize this is a rapidly evolving landscape, we are monitoring the situation closely and will remain in close contact with you.”

When is the last time you and your significant other took a romantic weekend to rekindle the fire? And spent most of the time, at the beach or in the mountains, talking about the pros and cons of an irrevocable trust?

Wild guess: How about … never?

Although vitally important in some cases, irrevocable trusts are sort of like heel spurs or picking kitchen paint colors as a topic of extended conversation. And yet …

There may come a time in your family’s life when having the should-I-have-a-trust conversation is critical. Whether you did it, or especially if you didn’t do it but should have!

All this is a sneaky way to lead into today’s Your Turn radio show. And while the subject doesn’t automatically draw your attention, in many cases it should. What such a trust is, and whether it is vital or useless for you and yours is something you have to deal with while you are still around. It won’t wait until after you’ve gone and mourning — maybe fighting — loved ones are dealing with your estate which, by the way, even the most modest feds have. Today at 10 a.m. we’ll be talking with Tom O’Rourke, a Washington area tax and estate attorney. Many of his clients are current or retired feds. Some need a trust. Some should avoid it. So how do you know? Here’s Tom’s explanation of what it is, and why you may need one. Or not. The show is at 10 a.m. on federanewsnetwork.com or 1500 AM in the D.C.-Baltimore area. The show will be archived on our home page so you can listen anytime or refer it to a coworker. If you have any legal questions about wills or trusts send them to me before showtime: mcausey@federalnewsnetwork.com

Irrevocable trusts are commonly used as part of a comprehensive estate plan, but they are not for everybody. They have significant tax and legal consequences and should only be entered into after considerable thought and with the guidance of a knowledgeable advisor. Once an irrevocable trust is signed and funded, it cannot be revoked or changed.

Irrevocable trusts allow you to accomplish several important goals. They can be used as a tax-planning tool, they can provide a vehicle for managing assets for the benefit of a person who is not capable of managing their own assets, and they may be used to protect assets from the claims of creditors.

Some of the more common tax planning trusts include a life insurance trust, a QTIP trust, and various types of charitable trusts. For many individuals, however, tax planning is no longer an issue. The federal estate tax exemption is now $12 million per person. Many states either have eliminated their estate tax, or have significantly increased the exemption amount.

Irrevocable trusts are also commonly used to accomplish non-tax goals. Some of the more common irrevocable trusts include a trust for a minor child, an education trust, a special needs trust for a handicapped adult child, a trust to protect an inheritance for a spendthrift child, or a trust to protect a child’s inheritance in the event of his or her divorce.

Irrevocable trusts also have a number of disadvantages including the following:

1. You must irrevocably give up the right to control the assets transferred to the trust.
2. It is a separate tax and legal entity and it is advisable to seek guidance from a knowledgeable advisor to make sure you are not falling into a tax trap.
3. It is often more expensive than using other less complex estate planning tools.

While irrevocable tools are certainly available to help you accomplish your estate planning goals, they should only be used after you have considered all advantages and disadvantages, and had the benefit of professional guidance.

-Tom O’Rourke

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Daisy Thornton

Source: Amusing Planet

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.

In the past two years, and then some, employers have been addressing change and challenges on a near constant basis. Businesses have experienced major delays and setbacks due to worksite closures, public health precautions, and supply chain concerns. Beyond the businesses themselves, the massive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the American workplace has left many employees feeling uneasy as they grapple with the aftershocks. This combination of workplace disruptions and rattled employees has created a new generation of expectations and benefits that many companies will be carrying into the future. Flexibility is a huge theme in this shift, with many companies opting for hybrid work schedules or moving to a fully remote workforce, and health benefits like telemedicine are rising in popularity. Employees are prioritizing balance and flexibility.

Industries with close physical proximity between employees – like construction and the service industry – as well as a population of hourly workers have been hit especially hard by the pandemic period. For this same group of employees, the personal health risks associated with the pandemic are higher and, therefore, so is the demand for benefits. Now more than ever, employee wellness is a focus. Beyond the physical needs of employees and keeping them safe during the pandemic, employers have also been looking to mental and financial health and wellness and how those needs can be met.

At this moment, the message is clear: Employers need flexibility, adaptability and the ability to weather the storm created by the pandemic, plus provide for their valued workers. Employees need stability and to know that their wellbeing is valued and protected. Benefits can provide that assurance and peace of mind. An effect of the pandemic is that many American employees are experiencing major mental health struggles and professional burnout, as much as 41% according to research from the Society of Human Resource Management.

There is an urgent need for support, in order to retain valued workers, which has led many employers to reevaluate their employee benefit offerings. Just as employers have adapted their work processes, the approach to benefits must also reflect the workplace of now. This concept of ultimate professional evolution takes the form of flexible employee benefits that emphasize stability for workers, while still providing adaptability to the employer.

Benefits offer the value of personal health and the promise of safety and can attract and retain talent. In this new frontier of prioritizing worker wellbeing, healthcare benefits go hand-in-hand with popular options like mental health services and ability to work at home or remote. The rapid shifts and evolutions in the workplace have created a volatile environment for hiring and talent retention. This has led many companies to focus the bulk of their energy on retaining and cultivating the talent that already exists within their company.

Benefit options that have been especially popular during the past two years are hour banking, flexible approaches to healthcare benefits, and telemedicine. What each of these offerings have in common is that they are as adaptable to the realities of the employees as they are the needs of the employer. Companies can build their benefits in a way that works for them while still providing greater value to their workforce. Hour banking, for example, provides necessary healthcare options to employees that are experiencing diminished work hours due to worksite closures. Telemedicine is perhaps the most talked about employee benefit solution recently. The scope of telemedicine offerings has exponentially expanded over the past year and bridges the gap between people and healthcare providers. Once again, flexibility is the undercurrent of all of these popular offerings. Retaining talent hinges on this principle of providing holistic options and greater sense of balance to a valued workforce.

You may be asking “but how does this help to retain talent within my company?” The value of benefits has already been attached to higher productivity and reduced employee absenteeism, according to a study from Employee Benefits. It’s simple. A healthy employee is an employee that performs well. Add the pandemic into the mix and employee benefits and healthcare go beyond being a career perk, they’re a necessity. Overwhelmingly, employees cite a great benefits package as an important part of their overall work satisfaction. Competitive employee benefits are a means of attracting top-tier talent and retaining a valued workforce.

The future of the American workplace is an approach to wellness that responds to the flexibility that employees are seeking. Business success is built on a foundation of employee wellbeing – physical, mental and financial. The entire landscape of industry and business demands flexibility, adaptability and a forward-thinking approach. Benefits provide the ideal foundation for those ideals to rest on. Retaining valued talent in the workforce comes down to caring for that workforce, plain and simple. Benefits that matter to the employee, delivered with the full picture of the current market in mind.

Caitlin Kennedy is the content marketing manager at Boon

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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.

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When Congress created the Federal Employee Retirement System in the ‘80s, one of the most notable changes was that future retirees would get smaller cost of living adjustments than participants in the old Civil Service Retirement System. CSRS and Social Security beneficiaries get COLAs that match inflation; FERS retirees get a smaller adjustment. That hasn’t been a big deal over the past decade of low inflation, but obviously circumstances have changed. The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) is urging Congress to pass the Equal COLA Act, which would get rid of the disparity between CSRS and FERS COLAs. To talk more about it, the Federal Drive was joined by John Hatton, Vice President for Policy and Programs at NARFE.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: John, I think the right place to start off here is remind us how FERS COLAs actually work right now under current law.

John Hatton: OK, well, there’s a couple issues first, you don’t get them until you’re age 62. And then unless you’re in a special category, that you can call, it doesn’t address that particular issue. The second is, when it’s, when inflation is above 2%, you’re not getting the full COLA. So if it’s a 2.5%, you get 2%. If it’s 4%, you get 3%. It’s whatever it is minus 1%. Except for him that two to three range is just 2%. A few too many numbers in there for you. But a good example is last year and 2020, CSRS and Social Security got a 5.9% COLA, FERS got 4.9%. So it’s just a 1% reduction when inflation is high.

Jared Serbu: Right. Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know if there’s any particular policy rationale behind that one point reduction back when Congress first came up with it? Or was it just straight up deficit reduction?

John Hatton: Yeah, it was all part of a balance, you know, they tried to when they switched over to FERS and created FERS they tried to make it actuarially similar to CSRS. So if you take, you know, the first pension, and you add in Social Security, and you add in your TSP at a certain level, it was supposed to provide a similar payout overall, like in the aggregate to CSRS. So they had to tweak some numbers and move some numbers around. So I don’t think there’s a really good explanation for it other than they probably had to make the numbers work. So here’s a way to do that. We’re going to reduce that number down by 1%.

Jared Serbu: And what would the, what would the legislation we’re talking about here actually do?

John Hatton: It would just provide, it’s very simple, it would just provide, you know, the COLA, cost of living adjustment that’s based on the change in consumer prices, the exact way Social Security is provided, the exact way Civil Service Retirement System annuities are provided. So it’s just whatever that change in the consumer price index that the Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at from one year to the next is, that’s what the cost of living adjustment be, would be, and there would be no reduction.

Jared Serbu: And this legislation has been around before. This is not the first year it’s been introduced. What are you hearing, if anything from the Hill that would give you hope that this is the year?

John Hatton: You know, I think it’s an uphill battle. Obviously, inflation is higher now. So this is more of an issue that’s present. The other thing is that, you know, there’s a lot more FERS retirees, we’re coming up to close to, or more than a million FERS retirees based on the last statistical report that OPM put out. So we’re almost half and half of FERS and CSRS, so more people are affected by this. You know, this is the first time the Senate has introduced the bill, the Equal COLA Act has been around in the house, but they introduced it in the Senate. So we now have a bill in each chamber. And cosponsors keep on going up each Congress, but it is a little bit of an uphill fight for this Congress are in the short term. So we just need to keep on building support getting more people to contact their members of Congress about it, and then we might have some success, you know, getting it through.

Jared Serbu: Yeah. And besides inflation being a real thing this year, I mean, that that is a difference, right? I mean, I think the past decade or so the FERS and CSRS COLA increases were just about equal I think every year just because inflation wasn’t so much of a thing. But now it it does get you into a point where it does start to become a little bit of a fairness issue, right? Because it’s not just a one year hit. That’s, that increase is something you’ll never recover for the rest of your life, right?

John Hatton: Yeah, I mean one year have a lower cost of living adjustment probably isn’t going to do too much to you. But if you start getting two, three, four or five years in a row, you know, that compounds over time as well. And it really starts to add up over the course of a full retirement. It really does have more of an impact. I mean, obviously, it doesn’t come into play if inflation is lower, but when you get multiple years of high inflation, which, you know, we’re gonna see two years in a row and we might see a third. You know, it’s going to really depress the value of that annuity.

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• Federal workers who get injured on the job may soon have better access to workers’ compensation. The House passes legislation that would expand federal employees’ choice of medical providers. The act would cover the cost of medical care for injured federal workers who seek treatment from physician assistants and nurse practitioners. The current law limits reimbursable medical fees just to physicians. The bipartisan bill cleared the House in a vote of 325-83.
• The Senate reversed a 16-year-old law that made it harder for contractors to respond to disasters. The Repeal of Obsolete DHS Contracting Requirements Act rescinded a section of the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. This provision required the Department of Homeland Security to prohibit the use of subcontracts for more than 65% of the cost of certain emergency response and recovery contracts. The section conflicted with a provision of the 2009 National Defense Authorization Act that imposed a governmentwide limitation to prevent excessive subcontracting. Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who co-sponsored the bill, said the provision caused confusion for FEMA officials and contractors, and weakened disaster response efforts.

• Two senators are urging President Joe Biden to update what they say is an outdated government classification system. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said there is an urgent need to modernize rules governing classification and declassification. They are urging Biden to either amend or replace the current executive order on classified national security information. Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told lawmakers that overclassification is a threat to U.S. national security.

• The agency that manages the Thrift Savings Plan has a new team of leaders. The Senate confirmed four members to the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. Dana Bilyeu and Michael Gerber are reappointments, while Leona Bridges and Stacie Olivares are new board members. The confirmation comes after six Republican senators placed a hold on the nominees last month. The lawmakers raised concerns about Chinese investments through the TSP’s mutual fund window, but after the members said they would not let TSP funds invest in China, the senators lifted the hold.

• Federal employees have a chance to help improve the Freedom of Information Act process. The FOIA Federal Advisory Committee is looking for new members after the current group finished its fourth term. The committee is made up of 20 members, divided evenly among the public and private sectors. Members serve two-year terms and attend monthly meetings to discuss possible improvements to the FOIA process. Applications for the 2022 to 2024 committee are due on June 30. The committee is a part of the Office of Government Information Services.

• The National Archives’ FOIA Federal Advisory Committee offered 21 ways departments across the government can improve the Freedom of Information Act process. The committee’s recommendations include advising agencies to post information beyond what is required by law on their FOIA websites and to proactively update an online searchable FOIA log. Their report also includes possible ideas for expanding documents included in FOIA to the judicial branch.

• The Postal Service’s regulator finds USPS’ plans to upgrade some its package services might lead to inefficiencies. The Postal Service’s proposal would upgrade service standards for its retail ground and Parcel Select Ground services to a 2-to-5 day delivery standard. USPS currently allows up to 8 days to deliver under its standard. But the Postal Regulatory Commission in a nonbinding opinion finds the plan may lead to more manual processing of packages and a higher demand for staff at facilities. The PRC says this could lead to disruptions in processing and transportation as well as cost increases. The commission’s raised concerns about USPS slowing some first-class mail and its first-class package service.

• A key group behind the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program is rebranding. The CMMC Accreditation Body is now the Cyber AB. The independent group is responsible for accrediting organizations and individuals to conduct CMMC assessments of defense contractors. The Cyber AB said the new name is less phonetically challenging and helps differentiate it from the internal Defense Department program office. The Pentagon is still moving forward with the cyber certification program, but is not expecting to publish final rules requiring CMMC assessments until next year.

• Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael Langley is nominated as the next chief of U.S. Africa Command. In that position he will be responsible for operations in the Africa area of responsibility. Langley is currently the head of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Command. He will take over for Army Gen. Stephen Townsend.

• The Army laid out its digital transformation and budget priorities for 2023. It’s asking for almost $17 billion for its IT and cybersecurity budget in fiscal 2023. About $2 billion of that is for cybersecurity operations. Raj Iyer, the Army’s CIO, said 2023 is a year of inflection for their digital transformation journey. “Our technologies, our networks, how we get to data centricity, how we address cybersecurity, all of these things need to be addressed from that future threat perspective.” Iyer said investments in cloud, business system modernization and the unified network top his priority list. (Federal News Network)

• Women veterans now have more options to get screened for breast cancer. Biden signed two bills into law that will expand veterans’ access to mammograms. One bill expands the eligibility of veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals to get the test. The other bill creates a plan to improve access to breast imaging services in rural areas where the Department of Veterans Affairs does not offer in-house tests. Female veterans are three times more likely to develop invasive breast cancer and it is currently the leading cancer affecting women who served in the military.

• A bill to help VA staff up in underserved areas is introduced in the House. The VA Workforce Investment and Expansion Act would require the VA to create a national VA Rural Recruitment and Hiring Plan, and allow the agency to waive pay caps for certain positions to compete with the private sector. The bill would also expanding hiring opportunities for housekeeping aides, which is one of the most understaffed and hardest to hire positions across the VA.

“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.

The IRS announced Thursday that for the final 6 months of 2022, the standard mileage rate for business travel will be 62.5 cents per mile — up 4 cents from the rate the IRS set at the start of the year.

This new rate goes into effect July 1, and applies to workers who use their own vehicles for business travel.

“The IRS is adjusting the standard mileage rates to better reflect the recent increase in fuel prices,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in a statement Thursday. “We are aware a number of unusual factors have come into play involving fuel costs, and we are taking this special step to help taxpayers, businesses and others who use this rate.

The IRS normally updates the mileage rates once a year in the fall for the next calendar year.

The change comes after the National Treasury Employees Union pressed the IRS to approve the increase, considering the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February and the resulting higher gas prices.

The federal government’s mileage reimbursement rate for federal employees and contractors matches the amount set by the IRS as the maximum rate allowed to be deducted as a business expense.

The IRS set the rate to 58.5 cents per mile — a 2.5 cent increase from the year prior — but Reardon, in a letter to Rettig, said the sudden uptick in gas prices warrants a mid-year adjustment in the reimbursement rate.

“Given the current situation, I urge you to make a mid-year adjustment to the mileage reimbursement rate this year to reflect the actual costs an employee will pay to operate their privately owned vehicle while traveling to perform official business,” Reardon wrote. “This would save federal employees from having to pay out of their own pocket for the increased travel expenses incurred in their duties as IRS revenue agents and officers.”

Reardon said some federal employees whose jobs require frequent travel during the workday, including bank examiners at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, are particularly hit hard by current gas prices. A higher reimbursement, rate, he added, would also provide relief for many private-sector employees.

“I hope you will do whatever you can to see that all Americans who must depend on their cars to perform their jobs get some relief, including those who work for the federal government,” Reardon wrote.

While the IRS usually sets its reimbursement rate to cover the entire calendar year, the IRS has previously made some mid-year adjustments.

The IRS made its most recent mileage reimbursement in December 2021, based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating a car.

IRS management once again covered by parts of union-negotiated contracts

Meanwhile, the IRS is telling its non-bargaining unit management workforce that portions of its union-negotiated labor contracts once again cover them.

The IRS, in a May 13 memo to all IRS managers, outlined “pass-through” provisions of its 2022 National Agreement with NTEU, which will also apply to agency managers and non-bargaining unit employees.

The pass-through provisions cover a wide range of topics, including performance awards, promotions, telework, travel, sick leave, family leave and annual leave.

IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Kevin McIver in the memo directs managers to bring any questions about the pass-through provisions to the agency’s labor and employee relations specialists.

The Professional Managers Association, which represents IRS management, said Tuesday that the IRS suspended pass-through provisions in 2019.

The PMA said the newest memo not only restores the practice of pass-through provisions, but also reinstates all prior pass-through memos.

PMA Executive Director Chad Hooper said the memo represents “a commonsense change that will improve management and eliminate inefficiencies.”

“PMA has long advocated for uniformity in employee treatment. The previous system required managers to learn different procedures for different employees and ensure the proper procedures were followed each time a basic issue arose. This left significant room for error and mismanagement and created frustration for employees,” Hooper said.

Among the provisions in the 2022 NTEU national agreement, IRS managers are entitled to a per diem when on temporary duty, and more than 50 miles away from their official duty station or residence.

Another pass-through provision makes IRS managers eligible for a child care subsidy if their annual family income is less than $90,000.

Managers are can be granted administrative time to receive a COVID-19 booster shot, if those shots aren’t made available at their official duty station.

Managers and non-bargaining unit employees would also be covered in any Reduction-in-Force mitigation strategies, including early retirement and buyout offers.

NTEU President Tony Reardon said Tuesday that agency leaders often make bargaining unit provisions “available at all levels up and down the pay scale” to improve recruitment and retention.

“It is no surprise that some of the benefits that NTEU negotiates on behalf of frontline federal employees are extended to their supervisors, too,” Reardon said. “Our chapter leaders frequently hear from managers outside the bargaining unit who are grateful for provisions in our contracts like telework, alternate work schedules and other benefits, because it prompts management to grant them to employees not represented by NTEU as well.”

Hooper said that since 2019, agency managers have had to handle basic employee issues in different ways, depending on if the employee was in the bargaining unit.

“Something as simple as processing a sick leave request was subject to varied procedures based on an employee’s bargaining unit status,” Hooper said.

Hooper said the new memo makes official all portions of the union contract that apply uniformly to the entire IRS workforce.

“It establishes consistent and uniform rules for employees regardless of bargaining unit status–increasing efficiency and eliminating confusion,” Hooper said. “Conversely, the pass-through memo ensures managers only need to learn and execute one process and one set of rules,” Hooper said.

For decades, many whose Social Security benefits have been reduced by WEP or Offset have been pushing Congress to fix them. Backers of WEP and Offset say they prevent former feds under the CSRS retirement plan, and state and local government employees whose jobs were not covered by Social Security for most or all of their careers, from collecting higher benefits based on relatively short employment in a Social Security job. Backers of the laws say they prevent people from using what they call a “welfare tilt” in Social Security toward people with lower lifetime earnings, protecting the program from being ripped off by preventing “excessive” payments to government retirees/survivors who spent the minimal time paying into Social Security. Opponents say it was a cruel way to save money by denying some or all benefits to people who need it most, and that the former government people are the ones being ripped off when their benefits are reduced or simply wiped out.

The two laws, the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset, were enacted as reforms. And they are incredibly complex, even by Washington standards. And controversial. Most people have never heard of them. But those who know why they exist and what they do are deadly serious.

Russia and Ukraine are likely to co-host a World Fair before the pro vs. anti WEP and GPO forces agree to coexist. Meanwhile, one side is seeking repeal while the other fights to keep them in place. This year is slightly different, maybe. Backers of repeal — led by the National Active and Retired Federal Employees — are within 14 votes of forcing the House to take up the issue. If they get the full number, there is no guarantee the House will pass it, or that the Senate will act. But they are closer than ever.

John Hatton, staff vice president for policy and programs at NARFE said “While NARFE and organizations representing state and local retirees have built significant support for repeal of WEP and GPO over the years, securing floor voters in either chamber of Congress has remained out of reach, perhaps due to the likely costs of the repeal bills and projected solvency challenges for Social Security. But a recent rule change in the House of Representatives allows bills to bypass committee consideration if they receive 290 cosponsors. H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act, which would repeal both WEP and GPO is up to 276 cosponsors, just 14 short of that mark. So we continue to push representatives to cosponsor the bill, and hope for some long-awaited progress on these issues.”

So where does your member of Congress stand on the issue? Is he or she on board or opposed to change? Or just not interested? Here’s a list of cosponsors to the WEP-GPO laws.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Daisy Thornton

Equatorial Guinea does not touch the equator.

Source: Wikipedia

The Transportation Security Administration is hiring a chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer to spearhead the work of an inclusion action committee, as some lawmakers express frustration with lack of diversity among the agency’s senior ranks.

TSA Administrator David Pekoske says the chief DEI officer will be a member of the senior executive service and join the agency within the next month. The agency’s Inclusion Action Committee recommended TSA create the new position.

Pekoske said the official will be charged with acting on other recommendations in the committee’s December 2021 report. TSA created the action committee in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.

“They put forth some excellent recommendations as to how we can address this from a very strategic level within the agency,” Pekoske said during a May 26 House Homeland Security transportation and maritime subcommittee hearing.

While the majority, about 55%, of TSA’s approximately 60,000 employees are persons of color, 53 out of 66 Federal Security Directors are white and 54 are men, according to Subcommittee Chairwoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-N.J.).

“I’m frustrated by the lack of TSA’s progress in diversifying its senior ranks,” she said.

Pekoske acknowledged that TSA’s senior management should reflect the diversity of TSA’s entry-level workforce. He committed to staying on top of diversity metrics, in particular at the supervisory and management levels.

“When you look at just the senior level, you really have to look down a couple to see how much diversity do you have in the in the middle management that will become your senior leaders in a few years,” Pekoske said. “And so I think it needs to be a very holistic approach across the agency.”

D&I ‘understaffed and under resourced’

Beyond the establishment of the chief DEI officer, the action committee’s 2021 report lays out multiple recommendations aimed at strengthening and sustaining TSA’s “inclusive culture,” and removing barriers to a diverse leadership.

The report urges adequate funding for TSA’s new Diversity and Inclusion Division, noting that the agency’s existing D&I program is “severely understaffed and under resourced.” That has led to “critical issues” in managing, measuring, supporting and sustaining diversity and inclusion initiatives, according to the report.

The report also identifies inconsistent disciplinary and attendance policies, respectively, as barriers to diverse leadership.

It additionally urges TSA to overhaul its promotion policies, including the adoption of a blind review process combined with the requirement to use a diverse interview panel.

“The IAC received consistent sentiment from colleagues at all levels within the agency that highlights the inconsistencies with the promotion system that has led many to believe, ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know,’” the report states. “This recommendation focuses on the application of several new requirements to reinforce a more transparent process.”

The report also recommends requiring “inclusive diversity leadership training” for all supervisory K band positions up through transportation security executive service roles. Additionally, it recommends diversity training for selecting officials “to mitigate biases and develop a tool/checklist guiding selecting officials through the selection process.”

During last week’s hearing, Pekoske said the December report is not the last word from the Inclusion Action Committee.

“That Inclusion Action Committee is not just a one-shot committee,” he said. “This is going to be a continuing committee within the agency, we just solicited for a new slate of members to come in. So we’ll change out the members on a rotating basis over the course of the years.”

TSA pay equity push

During the hearing, Pekoske also reiterated that achieving pay equity for TSA employees is his top priority.

The House passed the Rights for the TSA Workforce Act earlier this month. The legislation would bring TSA employees under the same personnel system as other federal employees under Title 5 of U.S. Code, including the General Schedule pay grade.

But the bill passed with virtually no Republican support, and it faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Lawmakers also have to separately approve the funding to grant TSA employees pay raises in fiscal 2023.

Pekoske said 81% of transportation security officers make less than equivalent employees at other agencies who are paid under the General Schedule. Meanwhile, 51% of the agency’s non-TSO workforce is paid less than their counterparts at other agencies.

The Biden administration is proposing to fund the pay increase by ending the diversion of passenger security fees to pay off the federal deficit. Instead, TSA would be able to keep an additional $1.5 billion in fees in FY-23

Pekoske said TSA delivered the legislative proposal for ending the diversion of the fees to Congress on May 2.

He noted the imperative to ensure TSA’s workforce stays stable and grows as travel is projected to return to pre-pandemic levels starting this summer.

“If these long standing pay challenges are not fully addressed in fiscal year ’23, I am concerned that it would lead to even higher rates of attrition and significantly undercut our recruitment efforts,” he said. “We can’t let this happen because this is a time where we need to grow.”

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Like every other industry, the government has a continuing need for new talent.  For some new ideas on how the federal government can stay in the competition, Federal Drive with Tom Temin  turned to Bill Eggers, the executive director of Deloitte center for government insights.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Now, this newest study kind of looks at both how the world of work itself has changed, and therefore, it’s changed the rules of the game with respect to recruiting and retaining people. That’s the basic thesis here?

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. That workplace of today is very different even than the workplace of three years ago, as we read about on a daily basis in the news.

Tom Temin: All right, so first of all, how did you go about kind of coming up with your recommendations for the government in the first place?

Bill Eggers: Well, I think it’s first just to understand what the main issue is. In the war for talent, the government is finding itself outgunned right now. When you talk to public managers looking to hire professional technical talent, we just always hear the same story, you can’t hire them, you can’t keep them. And this is at a time when the public sector is facing a whole slew of complex challenges from climate change to cybercrime that require these very highly skilled workers. And while it’s always been difficult for government to sometimes attract that top talent, especially young tech savvy professionals today, it often feels close to impossible in this sort of job market that we’re in which I haven’t seen anything like this and decades and decades. You know, most people don’t realize it, but from January 2020 to January 22, government lost more than 600,000 workers more than manufacturing, wholesale trade and construction combined. And when you look at the federal workforce, only 8% is under the age of 30, compared to close to 25% in the private sector. And at the same time, we are starting to see a lot of retirement eligible employees are accelerating retirement plans, the highest percentage at the state and local level since the survey actually began in 2009. So government has a lot of headwinds facing right now as it’s trying to attract talent in this area where they dramatically need to increase the workforce component of those in the Gen Z and millennials.

Tom Temin: And heading your list of ways for the government to attract and retain talent is flexibility in where, when, how, people work. And that seems to be the government’s weakest spot, because it’s the most rigid in many ways, work environment of all.

Bill Eggers: When you look at job postings, when you look at all this survey data, it’s really clear that for Gen Z, millennials, flexibility across all dimensions is really table stakes, it’s the most important thing. They’re looking for jobs that work for them, which means better compensation, better work-life balance and an environment where they feel a sense of belonging. And if you have jobs that say that you’re going to have to come into the office five days a week, and there’s no flexibility there, the amount of job applications you’re going to get is dramatically, dramatically lower than other sort of positions that offer more flexibility. And a couple other major aspects of this generation of workers is that they’re increasingly prioritizing their physical and mental health well being and seeking employers who are going to do the same. 73% are seeking mental health coverage, 72% say health and wellness stipends are critical, and they also just want a job that makes a difference. So this notion of well being, flexibility, pay. And of course, there’s always purpose and impact, which has always attracted  people to government. But there’s these other factors now that in all this survey evidence show they are just as important, and government’s going to have to compete in those areas.

Tom Temin: It looks like government agency by agency is beginning to show that flexibility, at least with respect to where and when people work. In terms of the hours they choose to work or the location, almost by default, because they have no other choice, even with the employees.  And this is in the absence of any congressional mandate here or any even White House kind of overarching policy, except it seems to be, do what works best for you.

Bill Eggers: Yeah, and I think that is critical. And I will say that the questions we get the most often around this area are how do you make hybrid work actually work? It’s more difficult to do hybrid environment than an all remote or an all in-person, as we found when we tried to do hybrid meetings and so on. And you have to focus on all those elements, a culture of respect and inclusion, belonging, and also how do you do mentor in this sort of environment? How do you replace those water cooler conversations? How are you intentional about where work actually happens when you actually do need to bring people together? And I also think there’s a big piece of this just around opportunities. We’re seeing a very entrepreneurial generation that they want to seek opportunities to do entrepreneurial work at work. And one of the ways that governments can do this is encouraging workers to pursue diverse projects. So investing in resources like internal talent marketplaces. And these are forms where employees can look for rotations, projects, new roles within the organization to really provide this mechanism for engaging in projects that they’re passionate about. They’re gaining experiences in new roles. We see this at NASA, with their talent marketplace, the armed services now have talent marketplaces, as does the Department of Energy and the Canadian government has something called the free agent model. And those are all examples of offering people diverse kinds of experiences while working in government, which is actually one of the biggest benefits that governments can really sell to employees as an attractive place to work.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Bill Eggers, he’s executive director of Deloitte’s center for government insights. And many of those measures can be done at the discretion of federal managers and executives, if only they’ll choose to do that. But there’s one on the list here, individualized rewards and non-traditional benefits. And that gets into the area of title five, and so forth. And you just can’t hand out bonus checks willy nilly, maybe at the state and local level, but at the federal level, is there any pathway toward that kind of individualization?

Bill Eggers: Absolutely. The key thing is that there are lots of different ways of going about this. It’s not just a one size fits all sort of thing. You know, by allowing employees to choose their rewards, you can boost satisfaction. So one employee, for example, might value a childcare stipend or voucher points to use for grocery delivery, while another might prefer a retail card or others might be really interested in making sure that they have very good mental health coverage and encouraging conversations on the topic. So you can foster trust in that way. But there are, you know, a lot of examples where governments are beginning to do this. The issue governments have is that the private sector is moving really, really rapidly towards offering kind of unprecedented benefits in a lot of these areas, and certainly around well being, and so forth. And so that’s an area, I think that it’s important for government, as an employer who’s also trying to model good behavior for the private sector, to be more at the cutting edge and less a laggard in this area going forward. And you know, the thing we haven’t talked about so far is just the whole pay issue, which is, it’s very apparent that pay matters and compensation right now, by Gen Z is the most important factor behind their employment choices, decisions to switch jobs. And so we’re going to need more of what we’ve seen at the Department of Homeland Security with their cyber talent management system, which is more flexible ways of having competitive pay and time pay increases to mission impact instead of just tenure or recognition payments. Unlike the general schedule, the DHS cyber system doesn’t beat your automatic pay increases, it offers a lot more of this sort of flexibility and for especially these highly technical sort of areas, that’s going to be really, really critical for government to be able to recruit people out of grad school or from other sorts of positions, which are really, really crucial right now for government to meet its mission impact.

Tom Temin: That’s right. There are a lot of flexibilities in the system now. In terms of hiring, I think the number varies. 125 job flexibilities and you see these reports from time to time that agency managers only use a handful of them. But there’s probably tools that are just simply sitting in a bucket. If someone wanted to exercise them, they could pull them out and loosen them up and probably try it.

Bill Eggers: No, absolutely. I think that’s what you will hear often from OPM and OMB is that agencies have a lot more flexibility in this area than they’re actually looking. You know, and on the good side of things the OPM’s recent strategic plan pledged to make the federal government a model employer and transform OPM into a leader in human capital management. And that plan included a bunch of hiring objectives in terms of increases in military spouses, 10 percent increase in early career employees. And over the long term, OPM is really focused on a government-wide policy and coordination with the CHCOs throughout the federal government, so that they can make a lot of this happen. But I think it is going to require managers who are hiring people in the human capital shops, really understanding all of those flexibilities and understanding that it’s absolutely going to be critical to use all the flexibilities they have and and then additional flexibilities they might need to ask for them. At the state and local level, there’s actually fewer flexibilities oftentimes than you see at the federal level. And so that might actually require legislation at the state level or city council level to give more of this sort of flexibility, which has become table stakes in today’s workplace.

Tom Temin: Bill Eggers is executive director of Deloitte center for government insights.

Nobody seems to know which bill or bills have been pending before Congress the longest. Are elected officials still reviewing legislation introduced by President Andrew Jackson’s allies? Or foes? Hard to know. But there are several contenders for the dubious honor. Two involve long-pending bills that keep getting introduced year after year. The other is brand new, and vitally important to FERS retirees, especially in times of high inflation, like now. So what are these old and new, highly emotional bills about?

If you asked many retired federal, state and local government workers or current feds, the best guess might be long-pending bills to repeal or modify the Government Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision. Known as noble reform actions to some, or the Evil Twins to many more. Depending on which side you’re on, GPO and WEP either rightly save taxpayers a lot of money or, more commonly, they rob tens of thousands of retirees or their spouses from Social Security benefits they earned and paid for, before, during or after they left government service.

But if mention of GPO and WEP make you see red, you are probably aware that efforts to “reform” the reforms have been going on for decades. Probably longer than most Americans have been around. Groups representing retirees and workers have been working on repealing them for years. And because the number of affected retirees and spouses decreases each year, time is not on their side. Primarily because the complexity of the two bills and the fact that the number of people/voters impacted shrinks each year. If politicians wait long enough, some must be thinking, the problem will go away. Literally! Here’s what a lobbyist who worked for decades on GPO/WEP repeal said when we asked about the odds for change:

“You mean other than dead-on-arrival? Repeal of WEP and GPO have been issues for far too long and so “ain’t gonna happen” is best to describe them. I retired more than a decade ago, and those two bugaboos were on the legislative agenda for years before that. And the then-slim chances are even slimmer now that the population of those affected by WEP and GPO is shrinking as fewer and fewer non-Social Security-covered feds are retiring, if any. That greatly diminishes the constituency who might pressure members for passage.

And, unless and until Congress replaces the general Consumer Price Index with the reweighted CPI-E (CPI for the Elderly) for Social Security, it’s not going to happen for any CSRS of FERS retirees, if — and that’s a big if — then. Don’t hold your breath. And it certainly would never happen in a time of high inflation like now.

Here’s to the day when pigs fly.”

Sadly, some pro-reformers will see that as an attack on efforts to reform, not a realistic assessment from a been-there-done-that lobbyist who deals in facts.

The newest candidate for longest-running reform is the brand new Equal COLA Act. It would give current and future FERS retirees the same cost of living adjustment Social Security and CSRS retirees get each January. Under the current system they get less in times of high inflation. Over time that can eat into the purchasing power of their benefit.

Ken Thomas, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees said the current “diet COLA’ for FERS is an “inherently unfair policy.” He said the equal COLA plan “would allow federal retirees to maintain the value of what they have rightfully earned through careers in public service.”

In a congressional election year, all things are possible. Also things tend to get busy fast, especially when you’ve got a pandemic, hot war and rising inflation to deal — or at least live — with. So is this another also-ran year for the Evil Twins. And maybe just the start of a long slog for the equal COLA plan for FERS folks?

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Pistachios are prone to spontaneous combustion.

Source: Gizmodo

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, staffing the nation’s healthcare facilities has been a challenge pretty much across the board. But the military’s hospitals and clinics faced special circumstances. Military clinicians whose day jobs were at military treatment facilities could be pulled away for other COVID-19 missions with little or no notice. The Defense Department office of inspector general looked into this. 26 out of 30 facilities said staffing problems were their biggest challenge. Andre Brown is Program Director for Military Healthcare and Operations at the DoD IG’s office. He talked about their findings with Federal News Network’s Jared Serbu.

Interview transcript:

Andre Brown: In some cases, these challenges had preexisted to the pandemic. However, the pandemic exacerbated those problems. The officials that we spoke to reported that they did not receive additional staffing during the pandemic. And while you know, they also had to conduct the COVID-19 response requirements such as testing vaccinations and contact tracing. They also had to do those missions with existing medical personnel which took away from other daily functions. And then also, you know, they stated that recruiting and hiring during the pandemic was extremely difficult. They, you know, attributed that difficulty, mostly to non-competitive salaries, especially for nurses and specialty care. And that was due to a long drawn out hiring process.

Jared Serbu: What did MTF officials tell you about how, if at all, that these shortages actually impacted the delivery of care?

Andre Brown: So, when we spoke to the MTF officials, they often talked about the staffing and manpower shortages, combined with long work hours, right, which was, you know, commensurate with the private sector, obviously resulted in severe burnout and fatigue. They also talked about that, you know, patient safety incidents had increased, and that the lack of staff or overworked staff could potentially compromise the quality of care to patients on the burnout and fatigue. And, you know, in some cases caused some staff to quit, which further exacerbated the shortages. And then the requirement to perform that additional MTF COVID mission with testing, your vaccinations, contract tracing resulted in reduced health care services, and in some instances, delayed health care, preventive care to your regular patients.

And then there was a couple other areas, such as reduced staff training, the ability for the workers to maintain the proficiency of the skills which you know, affects the overall care of your patient. And then also patient referral to the civilian network, the MTFs were inundated with appointments. And so if patients wanted to be seen, they had the option to be able to go to the civilian network. But because everyone was trying to get appointments, they were often not be able to be seen in their local area. So they may have to drive one to three hours away from their local area.

Jared Serbu: I want to focus a little bit on the military provider side of this, I think, as most of our listeners know, in an MTF setting, it’s kind of a blend of military providers, civilian providers, contract providers. A lot of the military folks got pulled out to go do other COVID missions. And I think the restructuring of the MTF system has kind of created this unique situation where the MTF administrators don’t actually control their entire workforce, their military folks can get pulled out kind of at any time, which seems like that makes it extra important for the military departments to coordinate with the MTF to make sure that they actually have the people that they need, or at least conduct some kind of balancing to decide where these folks are needed most. How much of that coordination happened in this case? And does DoD need to do better on that front?

Andre Brown: Yes, this is an area where we were we identified that, you know, there needs to be some improvement and where we made recommendations to the department to improve. We didn’t necessarily designate a degree of you know, whether it was good or bad. But we, you know, talking to the MTF, officials, obviously they indicated where there was a severe lack of coordination between the services and the DHA about personnel who were diverted from the MTF. Obviously, you know, they stayed in some cases they weren’t fully kept in the loop about the mission. You know, they weren’t told until the last minute that these personnel would be going somewhere else which left, you know, the MTF in a very bad position. So we were making recommendations to improve that coordination between service personnel, DHA and MTFs to allow the MTFs to plan for shortage of personnel due to deployments in the future. And then also the coordination for receiving backfills to replace deployed personnel. That was an area of improvement as well, because in some cases, the MTF they applied for backfills. And in some cases they were denied. In other cases, they applied for a certain number. For example, in one case, they sent a request for eight personnel they only received, you know, one of the eight, so they didn’t receive the number they requested. So obviously puts the MTF in a bad position.

Jared Serbu: And I think part of the ingredient here is the military services had already, for a few years now, I think, planned on reducing the overall number of military medical billets. And I think the plan there was to replace those with civilian providers. But from what you’ve said earlier, it sounds like they’ve been challenged on that front just hiring those folks to to fill the slots. Is that part of this?

Andre Brown: Correct. So in 2021, the DoD issued a plan for the delivery deduction in response to Section 719 of the NDAA 2020, which included the plans to hire for civilian and contract personnel for those exact positions. However, it’s currently on pause, because Congress wants to relook at that. So Section 732 NDAA 2020 requires a further assessment of that plan. You know, obviously, during this particular report evaluation, we had MTF officials who expressed their concern about military billet reductions, a lot of the times those billets that, you know, the military member had vacated ability, you know, someone was not, or the billet was left unfilled, or else, you know, no one had come in behind them to replace them or they weren’t able to replace it with a civilian personnel. So, you know, it still left the the MTF short, but we are monitoring progress of the billet reduction plan, but we did not have an update at this point.

Jared Serbu: Got it. Just down to our last couple of minutes here, and maybe you can spend that time talking about some of the recommendations that you made to the department. You’ve touched on a couple of them already. But fill us in a little bit more on what the IG recommended and how the department has responded.

Andre Brown: We made a couple of recommendations to the Defense Health Agency and then to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. So the defense health agency, we made recommendations to address the staffing challenges streamlining the hiring process, to fill the civilian staffing positions, to look at salaries for nurses, obviously in the private sector, they’re hiring at a higher rate. And so being able to look and see if we can hire at those salaries so we can bring in higher quality nurses. Assessing the ability of the MTFs to receive augmentation from for staff from the reserve components during pandemics. We also wanted them to look at manpower requirements for COVID-19 and identify medical personnel requirements during the MTFs for future pandemics. And with the ASD for Health Affairs, the big things for personnel obviously was staff burnout and such. We wanted them to look at or develop actually, a DoD policy for maximum hours worked, maximum shifts, the coverage of duties for staff working in MTFs to reduce the impact on the staff. And then lastly, the ASD Health Affairs were in charge of the Military Health System COVID-19 AER. Nothing has been done on that at this point. So we made a recommendation to either direct or create a new or existing working group to look at this and monitor the milestones. The AER was conducted from April 2020 to January 2021, which resulted in 23 Key lessons learn and 79 recommendations. We determined that 13 of the 23 lessons learned could address MTF challenges in this report.

Jared Serbu: And sorry, one last quick follow up. Did your work this time around get into at all whether DoD has the hiring and salary authorities it needs to actually bring those clinicians in at higher pay rates or is that another project for another day?

Andre Brown: Yeah, that’s another project. We identified the issue but that was, we did not go into the details of that in this report.