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The House will soon vote on a measure making it easier for the Veterans Affairs secretary to fire or demote senior career executives at the department, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a Capitol Hill briefing Thursday. The VA Management Accountability Act allows the VA secretary to remove or demote members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) based on their performance.
Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) is the author of new legislation that would make it easier for the Veterans Affairs Department to fire its senior executives. Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, says the agency is too shy about cutting loose middle managers who are performing poorly.
The VA Management Accountability Act would give VA Secretary Eric Shinseki broad authority to remove Senior Executives Service (SES) members "if the secretary determines the performance of the individual warrants such removal," according to the bill. In addition to outright removal, the bill would allow the VA secretary to bump SES members down to the General Schedule at any grade level the secretary deems appropriate according to the bill.
Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) wants answers from the Veterans Affairs Department after its latest privacy and cyber breach of the data of more than 5,000 veterans through its eBenefits portal. VA says it has fixed the software defect and its Data Breach Core Team is investigating what happened.
Most workers in the Veterans Benefits Administration will be sidelined in the next few weeks if a shutdown continues. Funding for employees at the National Cemetery Administration will run out in the next few days.
A recent briefing between the House Veterans Affairs Committee, VA IT executives and DHS ended with the lead majority staff member walking out before the meeting ended. The rising tensions between the House Veterans Affairs committee's majority and VA come as a report surfaced showing veterans are at a higher risk of identity theft than the average citizen.
House Veterans Affairs Committee Ranking Member Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) introduced a bill to establish quadrennial reviews and a five-year plan for VA's budget. The bill also would designate a chief strategy officer to oversee budgetary planning.
House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees inserted a provision in the fiscal 2014 Defense Authorization Bill requiring DoD and VA to have an interoperable health record system by 2017. Agency officials say they already are and will continue to share health care data, but having one integrated, interoperable health care management system is no longer necessary.
The Veterans Affairs Department made it a top priority earlier this year to handle all disability claims from veterans who've been waiting two years or longer. The department mostly succeeded in its two-month surge operation, but serious questions linger about the sustainability of the backlog elimination effort.
House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and ranking member Michael Michaud (D-Maine) sent Secretary Eric Shinseki a letter asking for an explanation on why VA didn't tell the committee about multiple nation state attacks. The lawmakers call for VA to offer credit monitoring services to tens of millions of veterans.
All veterans who have waited two years or more for a decision will have their cases decided by next month, the Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress. Half of the Veterans Benefits Administration's oldest cases already have been removed from the backlog.
VA officials still insist the 630,000 disability claims waiting to be processed will be eliminated by 2015. But so far, numbers are headed in the wrong direction and House Veterans Affairs Committee members are losing patience.
A House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the decision by the Defense and Veterans Affairs Departments to scale back plans for a joint integrated electronic-health records systems dredged up longstanding issues with the two departments' EHR efforts.
The Veterans' Affairs Committee is turning up its oversight heat after Veterans Affairs officials "stonewalled" their questions. Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said there are 66 outstanding questions on conference spending that the committee has been waiting for answers from VA since August. VA pushed back saying it has responded as quickly and as accurately as possible.