Asked to be chairman of the subcommittee, and im grateful to chairman row for the opportunity. I want to explain that although i look forward to working with ms. Elizabeth esty from connecticut as our new Ranking Member, under Committee Rules ms. Julia brownley is still the subcommittees acting Ranking Member. My understanding is that the full committee will schedule a business meeting to familiarize the subcommittee, im sorry, formalized the subcommittee assignment at our new subcommittee Ranking Members soon. Since we have not got that, i need to see if we have also come and would also want to make sure that we know that we have been joined by the Ranking Member, mr. Tim walsh, and we thank him for being here. I want to ask anonymous consent for the Ranking Member walsh for representative esty and salon be allowed to set at the dais and escalation. I also want to ask unanimous consent that ms. Esty be prepared or permitted to serve as Ranking Member for this hearing, pending her ratification for the full committee. Hearing no objections, so ordered. By way of a short introduction, this is my second term in congress, and on the subcommittee. I am a father of three and a grandfather of 11. And before coming to congress i worked in Small Business come in a trucking business, and my wife and i own a beauty salon. I was a firefighter and a state representative for over 20 years in illinois. Im also honored to say that i am, that my family has a tradition of service. I am not only marine, im a marine and a father and a marine. I am enlisted and hes an officer, so it makes for a unique conversation about our home. The House Veterans Affairs committee is known for working in a bipartisan manner to ensure that the department of Veterans Affairs provides are former military members with the best service possible. Our nations heroes deserve no less. This subcommittee specific addresses how to best provide for the needs of veterans who have medical conditions relating to their services. We also Work Together to ensure that veterans who have passed away are treated with dignity and respect. I look for to continuing this tradition and was working with ms. Esty and the members of the subcommittee on issues that are critically important to the veterans and our nation as a whole. That said, the first meeting oversight hearing of the 115 congress will focus on our National Work you, or the in w q. Has impacted the departments ability to process disability claims. Before the nwq the process was to process a claim at the Regional Office and the state with the veteran lived. The challenge was that some Regional Offices have large backlogs and other veterans and veterans in those states were often left in limbo. Even if the Regional Offices and other states would have been able to process the claims have to because of not being so busy. The nwq is supposed to increase effectiveness, efficiency by automatically assigning the claim to the Regional Office with the most capacity. On its face this is a common sense idea, the nwq allows the deed to distribute its workload evenly across the nation to reduce waiting times for veterans who file claims for benefits. However, the are some concerns about whether the nwq is actually performing as it should. Unfortunately the va claims backlogs have increased from about 76,000, backlogs claims on may 2 in 2016 before the nwq was fully implemented, to now almost, as a federal fourth, 101,000. 101,000. One has to question is whether the disbursement, the distribution works throughout the nwq is, in fact, more effective. Rather than assigning a claim to specific employee to work the entire claim, the nwq breaks up the claim into individual task such as scheduling a disability exam after one claim process to reduce the file and completes an action. The nwq will likely assign another claim processor for the next step. Second claim process of that also has to become familiar with the file to determine whether additional action is needed for the va to make a decision. It does not make sense to me on having multiple claim processors completely redo the same file can possibly save time. We will hear from our second panel as well, and it is comprised of the Veterans Service organizations, the ds owes used to receive an advance copies come used to receive an advance copy of the rating decisions before it was sent to the veteran. This practice gave the dso warty eight hours to review a proposed decision and raise objections before the decision was finalized. But now the nwq has been deployed. Via so complained they no longer have a chance to review the decision and try and resolve errors before any incorrect decision is sent to the veteran. I hope the va will explain what steps its taking to work with the vsos to ensure the va decision are accurate. Im also looking forward to learning more about how the va intends to monitor employees protection and quality standards now that the nwq has been implemented. I also the va will tell us more about the department, what department is to do to tackle the current backlog of appeals and nonreading claims, and how it plans to leverage nwq to do so. Again, i want to thank the witnesses for being here today, and without a want to call on Ranking Member ms. Esty, for her opening statement. Thank you very much, mr. Cha. And i appreciate your warm welcome, and im delighted to be joining the committee. Im happy to be a today as the Ranking Member designate at the subcommittee, and im looking forward to working with all of you to ensure that the veterans that we are honored to represent are receiving all the quality of care and the Rapid Service that they and the families deserve. A bit about my background. Im in my third term in congress. I am the daughter of a navy man, granddaughter of an, daughterinlaw of an air force and have a niece and nephew who are army. So weve got to get, we need marine peer where work at getting a marine in the next generation. My district, Fifth District of connecticut is proud on to over 40,000 veterans, and long service tradition. In my office it is always issue number one, two or three for constituent services. Weve made it a core part of her mission or i hire veterans and tyler in my im committed to ensuring that i do when you country is served in turn all of us who enjoy the freedoms that they secure. I want to thank mr. Murphy and the deputies from va for repairing today to help us understand how the National WorkQueues Program is functioning, now that it has been rolled out in all 56 Regional Offices. In speaking with connecticut veterans its my impression that claims backlog in our region has been reduced significantly and i want to congratulate you on that progress. However, i also want to understand some of the issues and delays bid to remain and i look forward to working with you to improve the claims process Going Forward. To the vso witnesses are today into the thousands of the its a sponsored Services Representatives in every part of the country, you are providing reassuring and dedicated assistance to veterans as they navigate the disability process and pensions process. I thank you for your commitment to veterans and to make sure it gets done right. I know we are all here the same purpose. We want to enjoy the benefits and speed and accuracy of automation. But we need to ensure that that personal touch is insured and that our veterans are treated with that care. The vso semper vita got so im looking for to hearing you today, how we get the best of both worlds, the hightech and the high touch. I know thats our objective, and we are not there yet. I think were in agreement, but i do know everyone is committed to getting us what we need to be. I will be looking forward to the testimony and working together collaboratively to get us here, i see women joined joined by the current ranking, my good friend, colleague and classmate julia brownley. And my work buddy from the gym. I see mr. Coffman has also arrived. Thank you, ms. Esty. I asked all members weigh the opening remarks as per this committees custom. Now i would like to welcome our first two, first the two panels to thank you for taking the time to be here today. I first witness is mr. Thomas murphy was the acting under secretary for benefits. Piggies accompany this morning by mr. Willie clark, the duty, deputy undersecretary for Field Operations and mr. Ronald burke, the assistant deputy under secretary for Field Operations. I want to remind the witnesses that your completed written statement will be entered into the hearing record. Mr. Murphy, you are now recognized for five minutes. Good morning chairman bowes, Ranking Member esty and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the implementation and progress related to the a National Work queues. The into the kid is a workload prioritization and distribution tool designed to match claims assigned capabilities with the capacity regardless of geographical boundaries. This tool provides the means necessary to ensure veterans receive a more timely decision on the disability claim. The nwq uses sophisticated system capabilities to uniformly prioritize va the eighth electc claim inventory and allow for the collection of enhanced data on processing efficiencies, as for Quality Improvement and issues impacting processing capabilities. This new and fiber allows va the flexibility to move claims to locations around the country that have the capacity to take the next action on the claim while maintaining the flexibility at each facility to assign work to the right person. One of the principal fundamentals of nwq is to ensure veterans are served equally regardless of where they live. Our review of claims from 2015 shows that many come in many instances the timeliness was a visual impacted based solely on the state in which a better lived. Some recent decision in 106 days while others took more than 213 days, nearly double time. This brings up inside the efficiency of the base claims model each Regional Office receives claims based on geography rather than what the capacity is to complete work. When nwq was rolled out the average pending for compensation claims was 94 days. This was reduced to 8 to 85 dayy the end of fiscal year 17, a 10 reduction. Upon receipt of a convenient default or evidence. The inventory of claims awaiting initial review was reduced from approximately 56,000, dating thousand as of the end of january 2017. The average number of days for first debarment action is dropped from almost 25 days to less than 10 in 2017. Following the initial Development Actions va prepares a rating decision to identify each disability, its severity and its relationship to military service. The out of time claims are awaiting a rating decision has dropped from about 29 days to 16 days. Once a rating decision is complete va prepares and notification for the veteran. Its dropped from eight days to four and authorization time from four days to less than two. Va continues to work towards reducing the number of claims been over 125 days. While he acknowledged some claims will take more than that we had made improvements over the past fiscal years. In 2015 va completed 45 of its claims within 125 days. As of january 2017. As of january 2017, 66 were completed within 125 days standard. Nwq is a component in one feature that built into the nwq allows va to measure the amount of rework in he a system which s never been possible before. It allows any va employee in the process to stop the light to correct the deficiency. A process similar to that used in industry to ensure high quality. Because of this we are now able to measure process defects based on feedback from our employees. As a result approximately 6500 claims reviewed in 2017 and then return to an early stage for correction. Systematically tracking these enable us to tailor training can increase accountability in the claims process. With an endeavor this large va spent a lot of time and resources on and measured change management approach to nwq implementation. Our efforts include breaking various stakeholders, training employees, publications of a transit playbook and a myriad of calls and briefings with each Regional Office. Via utilizing new data to revise direct employee Level Performance metrics and great standard reports used to improve workload management and effectively manage resources. Additionally va is bring together more than 1100 supervisors and managers for continued training on tools and best practices. While va is acclimating to this new Work Environment which at the feedback we received to heart and implement a message to increase local work assigned to Regional Offices. While we acknowledge that more work to be done its important to recognize these efforts have and continue to generate positive and significant results for veterans. This concludes my statement. I would be pleased to answer any question you or members of the committee may have. Thank you, mr. Murphy. I would like to yield myself five minutes for questions if i may. On may 2, 2016 before the nwq was fully implemented, the almost 76,000 backlog claims. Yet last week there were more than 100,000 backlog claims. The increase is about 33 over nine months. Is it the das assertion the nwq is improving effectiveness and efficiency in processing claims . Yes, sir it is. The reason is we have for the first time have the ability to look at the right mix claimant is it worked. Today the work where sending out where sending out every claim that is available to th be workd in the backlog every single day and then working back as early as claims that are less than 90 days are being pushed out to Regional Offices. We are leveraging the ability to see the exact work a case that needs to be done and sing it out to Regional Office. But from what we can see of our numbers, what specific factors are contributing to that increase that we see over the ninemonth period . Thats a concern naturally that all of us i wanted to see in the process as quick as possible but what would the agency say the reason for that arent . Im going to ask mr. Clark to run that. He runs our fuel operations. Okay. Good morning and thank you, mr. Chairman. It certainly is my pleasure to respond this morning. The first thing i would like to say is our receipts have gone up since last year one of the things that we know that as we get more efficient, more veterans are aware of benefits that are available to them, they come in and they submit more claims. Additionally, we are taking a more balanced approach to the work that we are doing. One of the things that weve done in the past and we did great work in getting the backlog down in past years, we focused probably too much on the backlog. And we have this old saying in vba that if you only work the backlog then all you work is on the backlog. We have approved nr if you stick with improved in answering phones. We had a block call rate of 60 , almost six to present a couple of years ago. And now were at 0 blocked calls. Nonrating. Those types of claims, dependency claims, we have claims, we are working those claims. So what we are doing is taking a more balanced approach, but we do understand, we do keep an eye on our backlog to make sure that we dont have our veterans waiting too long spirit that would be the concern and another part of my question is, what plans do you have, though we should work off the backlog, i agree with you on that. That alone, but thats still a major factor that we can use to say okay, how quick are we getting these processes through. And when you see the build up its concerning to us and im sure its concerning to everyone involved when you see that continue to follow. So what do we see after that we can do to speed the process up . Okay, yes, sir. Ill take that one, sir. About six months ago i took a look at what we are spending our money in terms of overtime dollars in the number of people that we had and the number of vacancies we cater to. As a result i went out to our top 25 performing offices and increase their authorized in strength. Look at my authorized in strength today, the hiring freeze we put on, we had to 50 people about authorized headcount. The reason for that is that a very high cost overtime dollars and convert in fulltime labor. Those people started in the process. It takes about a year to get at the us are up to stand and redo it. It takes up to two years. My point is this. Six logical answer that action and if you months doing better processing and you will see more raiders place within the next six months spirit the other concerned that ipad right quick, bonefish is a quick because my because my time is running out but the concern we have rather than one person did dealing with a particular claim and having it head on over and over and over again, but often can cause a lot of confusion and my concern them do that same concern that may be one person is a focusing on one claim and a past the multiple hands, do you see a problem with that . Let me ask ron to talk about this one. I had the concern but the changes we made over the last several years, its much smaller than it was. Mr. Chairman, thank you for that question, and semper fi. To talk about that topic specifically, we learn, this is still a relatively new initiative that we are still learning from. We absolutely wanted to make sure that our claims the sima, our claims dissipation was matched to her capacity was. As we get more data from the nwq system wer where learning bettr ways to optimize abyss. As such one of the things we will be doing in our next release is actually maximizing the amount