Benefit of the Doubt

or Joseph Thompson, head of the Veterans Benefits Administration, bad news about VBA operations isn't really that bad-if it's accurate. But therein lies the rub-accuracy. Five years ago, the agency, which oversees the processing of veterans' benefits and pays out more than $18 billion annually, was charged with developing a method for improving claims processing.

Thompson took the helm three years ago, and, soon after, the agency was slapped with a Veterans Affairs Department inspector general's report that said the agency was providing incorrect data about benefits application processing times. Thompson immediately launched a campaign to improve accuracy, including in-house counseling and data review teams.

In 1999, the agency was hit again with a negative report, this time from the General Accounting Office. According to GAO, the VBA needed to separate employees who reviewed the information from those who benefited from reports of inflated numbers. Data management also hurt VBA's standing in the 2000 Federal Performance Report. Its Cs in information technology and financial management offset Bs in managing human resources and physical assets and in managing for results. As a result, the agency received a B-minus overall.

"That the information we were reporting was not as accurate as it could be [was an important issue for us]," Thompson says. "I feel very comfortable that what we report, with some minor problems, is accurate, although we don't always report pleasant facts."

VBA worked hard to change its image, calling for the use of case management to speed the claims process and reorganizing field offices into collaborative clusters. The agency created a data management office to focus specifically on improving the quality of VBA's data and reporting. Now, a better system is coming online, one that will track issues down to a specific veteran's claim. It will focus more closely on employees' day-to-day tasks. VBA also implemented a case-monitoring system, the Systematic Technical Accuracy Review (STAR), though it hasn't necessarily won over its employees.

"If you polled managers in the VA about the STAR system, they would say it's too tough, too stringent," Thompson says. "Of more direct concern to them is that STAR looks at the whole organization's quality and the systematic individual performance assessment will look at individual employees' performance." Thompson says agency officials sat down with officials from the American Federation of Government Employees to make sure "everybody would agree that [STAR is] fair."

Nora Egan, VA's undersecretary for management, agrees that STAR is a stringent program, "but what we try to do is look at it from a veteran's viewpoint, from the perspective of the people we serve, not just whether it is technically accurate," she says.

The agency now is beginning to tie information about operations performance to employees' evaluations, says Rick Nappi, VA's deputy undersecretary for operations, who oversees VBA's field offices. "We are linking that performance to rewards and the recognition system." Yet, in May, the agency was hit with another scathing GAO report, which said the changes made at VBA headquarters had yet to trickle down to the field offices. In fact, the agency often seems stuck in quicksand. At the end of fiscal 2000, claims backlogs were down, and the largest claims area, compensation and pension, was beginning to show marked improvements. But before VBA officials and employees could pat themselves on the back, the beginning of fiscal 2001 brought new legislation and new regulations that added a significant amount of work to the mix.

"We have added hundreds of thousands of new claims because the laws changed and the regulations changed," Thompson says. "I don't see the workweek going down. In fact, we expect this year to be probably the largest year in terms of work since the Persian Gulf War." VBA officials predict that by the end of fiscal 2001 claims will grow 40 percent with a consequent 70 percent slowdown in turnaround.

In order to meet increased demands, VBA hired more employees and intensified training. But keeping that workforce happy is another issue. "Our last major hiring effort was after Vietnam and our Vietnam-era hires are ready to retire," Thompson says. Between 40 percent and 45 percent of the agency's more than 12,000 employees will be eligible to retire during the next three years. But constantly changing laws and regulations make it hard to bring new hires aboard quickly.

Regional offices are getting a new claims processing system this year, which will increase the quality of work, but the quantity will again be affected. "You're always trading one off a little bit for the other," Thompson says. "We're trying to strike the right balance." Under the new system, veterans' claims are treated as cases and employees will have to take responsibility for them, giving veterans a point of contact, rather than passing them on through the system.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Last year, the agency secured a clean audit and scored above the government-wide average in the National Partnership for Reinventing Government's annual employee satisfaction survey. VBA expanded services with an online interactive benefits application form. A new project tracking system enables managers to check the status of projects such as the redesign of the rating system at any given moment.

"I think we have some clear focuses for our future," Thompson says. "We can walk away from the bricks and mortar. The only two things that we're left with are what this agency is all about . . . veterans and our employees."