Weep America! – The VA Leadership is Becoming Worse! – Part 1

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has really outdone themselves this week.  I am used to being ashamed of what passes for leadership and administrators at the VA, but this week, they have surpassed themselves.  The Department of Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) filled my inbox with seven investigations results, and the reports of leadership failure should leave every American weeping and madder than wet chicken with a raging case of hemorrhoids!

• “A Hope Mills, North Carolina man, Daniel Bruce Ross, was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for conspiring to accept bribe payments in exchange for the performance of official acts while working as a federal government employee. Ross previously pled guilty to the charge.  He was also ordered to pay $21,520.00 in restitution.”

Accepting bribes, shameful misconduct, and while I certainly agree with the need for punishment, why does this sentence appear light?  Did the bribe recipient make a deal?  If so, as Paul Harvey would say, “Where is the rest of the story?”

The Department of Veterans Affairs – Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), had their quality assurance program inspected, and the results, oh these results… the VBA administrators should be fired!  There are no excuses sufficiently valid to hide this behavior!

• “To ensure claims decisions are accurate and consistent so veterans receive the benefits to which they are entitled, VBA established a multifaceted quality assurance program. The VA Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG) reviewed the quality assurance program and identified a systemic weakness in oversight and accountability… The VA-OIG found that while VBA’s quality assurance program routinely identified claims-processing deficiencies and communicated results to internal and external stakeholders, the Office of Field Operations did not ensure that regional office employees took adequate corrective actions to address the deficiencies identified” [emphasis mine].

Did you catch that, the leadership who set up the quality assurance program, built into the program a loophole to allow them to not act upon the deficiencies discovered.  Talk about designed incompetence, ineptitude, and outright fallacious behavior!  When a bad decision is made by the VBA, especially due to poor quality assurance, the veteran is out time, money, and resources to gather “new and material evidence” to ask the VBA to review their original decision!  Never are the VBA employees who cost the veteran, ever held accountable, responsible, or made to suffer in kind for their atrocious behavior, and I want my elected representatives to start asking why!

The failures of the quality assurance team are not new, 22 July 2020, the VA-OIG found:

1. 1. “…QRT specialists did not identify a significant number of claims-processing errors that should have been identified. Based on a statistical sample, the OIG estimated that 9,900 of the 28,400 quality reviews (35 percent) completed during the review period contained missed claims-processing errors that should have been identified. Quality reviews with identified errors are routed to another QRT specialist for peer review to help ensure the cited errors are The OIG determined that the current peer review process was not adequate to identify errors missed during the initial quality review. In addition, performance reviews of QRT specialists did not promote competency, resulting in missed claims-processing errors.”
   2. Worse, in direct violation of VBA procedures errors identified by QRT specialists, were overturned by regional office managers with 870 errors found where 430 were overturned (49.43%). Why were the regional managers not fired for violating policy?  The VA-OIG continued, stating:

“Reconsiderations are requested by employees when they disagree with a cited error. Errors affect employee quality for performance review purposes. The OIG found that VBA’s current procedure regarding requests for reconsideration did not promote objectivity or contribute to accuracy of decisions. In addition, incorrectly overturned errors resulted in inaccurate performance quality for employees.”  Can someone say, Quid Pro Quo?  Should not questions arise about cherry-picking results and holding people accountable?  What about the veterans affected by these quality errors?  Who fights for them when the VA-OIG reports these obscene details and failures in leadership?  Each incorrectly decisioned claim is going to hurt real people, where are the elected representatives?

1. 3. In reading this report, my favorite quote is made:

“The OIG estimated that during the review period 2,000 of 4,400 identified errors (45 percent) were not corrected in a timely manner and 810 of 4,400 identified errors (18 percent) were not corrected at all. In addition, there is no process to confirm that corrective action was taken on error corrections. To maximize the effectiveness of the QRT program, additional oversight, objectivity, and accountability should be established.”  Can you say, “DUH!”  Talk about designing incompetence into a procedure to ensure no responsibility ever hits you, the process can identify errors, but cannot ensure the errors were corrected.  What an asinine and inane bureaucratic trick!

The following has been a review of the VBA’s quality assurance program, investigated in 2020, for failures of such immense magnitude that the VA-OIG returned, less than a year later asking questions about the VBA’s quality assurance oversight, and the problems only worsened as a deeper dive was made into what governs the quality program at the VBA.  Further supporting that the leadership IS the problem in every branch of the Department of Veterans Affairs!

The following is a recap of findings by the VA-OIG regarding the continued mistreatment of VA Employees who report allegations of misconduct, retaliation, or poor performance of senior leaders, and other issues to the whistleblower program at the VA.  This topic is of particular interest to me, as when I called the VA-OIG regarding criminal misconduct by senior VA leaders, I was told since I was no longer an employee whistleblower protection do not apply and an investigation cannot proceed.  Since I had been reporting problems since 2018, I asked if those investigations would continue, and was told no, as I was no longer employed.  Hence, a loophole is built into the rules and policies, you have to somehow remain employed to be considered a whistleblower, but not just an employee.  You must be an employee who is not under probationary periods which can last from 1-5 years depending upon the position from date of hire.

The following are findings highlighted from the report on the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) and delivered to Congress:

• • Finding 1: The OAWP Misinterpreted Its Statutory Mandate, Resulting in Failures to Act Within Its Investigative Authority
    1. The lawyers were reading the policies and interpreting their intent too strictly and this was chilling whistleblowers at all levels of the VA.
  • Finding 2: The OAWP Did Not Consistently Conduct Procedurally Sound, Accurate, Thorough, and Unbiased Investigations and Related Activities
    1. The OAWP lacked comprehensive policies and procedures suitable for its personnel given that individuals’ reputations are at stake and whistleblowers’ identities must be protected.
    2. The OAWP did not have quality control measures. While some inadequacies were found by disciplinary officials and VA’s Office of General Counsel, this de facto oversight was not an effective or sustainable solution.
    3. The OAWP had failed to provide the staffing and training necessary to ensure it has the expertise, experience, and commitment that yield objective and thorough investigations.
    4. The OAWP had fallen short of its commitment to conduct “timely, thorough, and unbiased investigations” in all cases within its investigative jurisdiction.
  • Finding 3: VA Has Struggled with Implementing the Act’s Enhanced Authority to Hold Covered Executives Accountable
  • Finding 4: The OAWP Failed to Fully Protect Whistleblowers from Retaliation
  • Finding 5: VA Did Not Comply with Additional Requirements of the Act and Other Authorities
  • Finding 6: The OAWP Lacked Transparency in Its Information Management Practices

Is the problem clearer; the official investigative arm of the VA has the same leadership problems as the rest of the VA, and those leaders cannot, or will not, properly train staff to do their jobs!  How many employees have been unfairly dismissed by the VA because they reported to the OIG, like they are supposed to do, and retaliatory actions by senior leadership has cost them a job, their professional reputation, and the VA a chance to improve?

I can find no media discussion on this report to Congress where the elected officials took any action to hold anyone accountable.  The speech being reported is milk-toast solid and should have led to public remonstrations and it did not even cause a ripple in a toilet bowl.  Meaning that the legislation from 2017 and earlier is still being thwarted by the VA administration and administrators to the detriment of the VA and the employees discharged who did their job and reported on problems witnessed.

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
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