Whistleblowers are an indispensable resource for state entities like the v. A. s office of accountability and whistleblower protection and other organizations seeking to promote Good Government and accountability. The statutes governing the work allow us to support whistleblowers in three ways. First, providing a safe channel to make it difficult for wrongdoing. Second, protect from retaliation against whistleblowing. Third, we stand as a partner with other federal agencies in congress in upholding the merit system. One noteworthy aspect of our role is the high degree of whistleblower involvement in our process. We rely on information given by the whistleblower to determine which agency should engage. We make every effort to respond quickly to those concerns. Oscs Disclosure Unit decides whether an investigation is required within 45 days in virtually every case. If the allegations were not further inquiry at the special counsel will refer the case to the agency who must investigate and provide a report to our office. Osc then gives the whistleblower an opportunity to provide comments on the reports. After taking the whistleblowers input into account, the special counsel determines if the results are reasonable. Osc decides that determination if the report itself and the whistleblower comments are applicable to the president and congress. They can also file a complaint if they believe they have been subject to was a blower retaliation. Oscs handling in these cases differs from our disclosure work in that the prohibited side, the staff conduct investigations themselves. Osc has the authority to pursue correctional and disciplinary action in these situations when appropriate and we have a dispute Resolution Program which also facilitates meaningful relief for employees who file with us. As the chief of oscs investigation and prosecution division, in each of the two fiscal years now working on for habited personnel practice matters received a number of actions including disciplinary action. This combination of successful resolution sends a strong message that osc will conduct independent, objective inquiries to bolster whistleblower protections. While it is in parents that osc maintains its investigative independence, there is opportunity for cooperation with other agencies. A key element to oscs approach is our robust outreach and Training Program where we train federal employees on all facets of oscs mission. In the last fiscal year, osc conducted the highest number of trainings in the agencys history, increasing visibility among those who may need our protection. In addition, the osc holds regular missions with oawp and the veteran administrations health department. We discuss cases that merit highlevel attention as well as general issues that impact our work. Developing a good working relationship with the v. A. Through open lines of communication has been critical in working towards our share goal of promoting better government through transparency and accountability. We remain steadfast in our commitment to help the v. A. And this committee provide the best possible service to veterans ensuring any reported wrongdoing is taken into appropriate consideration. V. A. Employees are among the greatest patriots in federal service as they have devoted their professional lives serving veterans, and many are veterans themselves. It is imperative they feel supported in doing their jobs without fear of reprisal. I am here to describe how our work contributes to that important goal. In q again for holding this hearing and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you again for holding this hearing and i look forward to answering any questions you may have. Thank you. You are now recognized for five minutes to provide your testimony. Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the work looking at the v. A. Whistleblower retaliation. Federal employee whistleblowers protect the government from fraud, waste and abuse and reporting wrongdoing. They may risk reprisal from their agency for these disclosures. The v. A. Whistleblowers can choose to submit complaints of retaliation internally through oawp as well as externally through the osc and the merit system protection appeals process. We investigated misconduct against Senior Agency officials and the independent osc is responsible for investigating the retaliation and other practices across the federal government. My statement is based on the report as well as the preliminary observations from the ongoing work to address one whistleblower retaliation investigation. The investigations of whistleblower retaliation and three how they resolve the cases using Settlement Agreement. First the number of retaliation received has increased since fiscal year 2020 with a number of other types increased. Specifically, receiving almost 580 whistleblower retaliation cases in 2020 and 740 in 2023. More than 25 increase. We continue to analyze the work and the data in our ongoing work. A second, cases arising from the employees make up about a third of the workload from fiscal year 2018 to 2022. Over two thirds of the cases involved allegations of whistleblower retaliation. However unlike the increase in oawp cases, the total number of the whistleblower retaliation cases at oac generally decreased from about 900 to 515 over the last five years. The percentage of retaliation cases with favorable action for the complaints is increased from 3 to 10 , which according to osc officials also contributed to longer case time. If warranted, the osc recommends corrective action or facilitates a Settlement Agreement between the parties. Osc cases can have multiple allegations which each have a of a different closing disposition. However, osc closes most cases due to insufficient evidence. Less than 1 due to a Settlement Agreement that brings me to the third point. Settlements can be initiated at any juncture and within the applicable office serves as a settlement official and decides on whether to proceed with negotiations. Once negotiations begin, the general counsel provides the settlement or official with Legal Counsel while complaint ands can offer legal or nonlegal representation or represent themselves. Following an agreement the settlement officials and officers monitor its implementation. The process largely mirrors that for employment discrimination allegations. However, according to v. A. Officials, the department doesnt have specific guidance for the settlements due to the absence of the statutory or the regulatory mandate. In contrast, they have Settlement Agreements in response to the eec requirement. Regarding data around the Settlement Agreement, oawp began tracking them in 2021. However it doesnt have a mechanism to monitor how long it takes to negotiate a settlement. We plan to follow up about these aspects of the process and that is part of our ongoing work. As of september, the v. A. Has settled 71 whistleblower retaliation cases since they began tracking them. Most of the settlements included the monetary award of between 2000 to 500,000 and totaled around 5. 2 million. Additionally the settlements may also have provided for Salary Adjustments for back pay. More than two thirds of the settlements were filed with the merit system protection board suggesting many had gone through the appeals process. The remainder of the cases were filed with the oawp, and the courts with only one settlement addressing a complaint filed with oawp. Most settlements addressed complaints involving the largest of administrations, but the complaints come from across the v. A. s office. 59 of the addressed two or more cases involve the office of information and technology and the central office. This completes my statement and i look forward to answering your questions. Thank you. Rep. Kiggans we will now move to questions and i will yield myself five minutes first. Mr. Costa, what can you tell us about the volume of the retaliation cases initiated and how does that compare to oscs caseload and other federal agencies . In your remarks or answering questions, can you also tease out more about why we need you mentioned osc is doing more seniorlevel cases, but is there a finite need for both of these . It seems they are duplicative in a lot of responsibilities. Dir. Costa thank you. About two thirds of the caseload is from the v. A. V. A. Is the second largest federal agency, so it is not terribly surprising it would be a significant portion. The number of total cases for the years, the v. A. Whistleblower cases for the three years we have in common for osc and oawp is around 1,225 cases a year split between the two agencies, so that number has gone up for oawp as the number has gone down for osc. But the numbers have remained relatively stable during that timeframe. The total numbers. But the total number of osc cases involving v. A. Whistleblowers over the last five years was 3700, over a fiveyear span, and as i mentioned, most of those cases involve most ppp cases involved a v. A. Whistleblower and retaliation allegations. And regarding the duplicative nature, there certainly is a duplicate of nature to these two agencies. We have not looked into whether or not that duplication is warranted or not. It gives v. A. Personnel multiple options to pursue their cases. And there are some subtle differences that we are still looking into as part of our ongoing work as to when it might be more advantageous to go one round one route versus another. In addition, you also have the oig and others where whistleblowers could also raise their concerns. Rep. Kiggans thank you. Mr. Gipe, could you also address the issue of why we need the two separate offices . Sec. Gipe absolutely. First of all, this is what Congress Needed when they wanted more options, so that was a wise thing. I think if you look at the past two years and we talk about the rough start at the beginning and you spoke about trust in your opening statement. And you can see that we are growing that trust and the good work we are doing is growing that trust. I think it is a good option to have more options, but it is also a good option for our employees who wants to come to us if you look at our stats because because we have increased the recommendations that have been taken and increased decreased the time it has taken to do investigations. We are working faster and better. Also osc tends to focus on corrective action and we have until now focused more on accountability, so that is another important part. The last thing i will say is osc looks at ppps retaliation and we also look at Senior Leader misconduct and poor performance and retaliation by a supervisor, so our mandates are a bit larger. That is only one side of our health. We have another side that does a lot of things so we add a lot of value. Rep. Kiggans thank you. Mr. Calhoun, can you explain why a whistleblower would want to contact oawp rather than oig . Dir. Calhoun thank you for the question. We have different authorities. Its broader when it comes to protecting whistleblowers within the v. A. For example, they received their authority from the various acts. None of that gives them the authority to investigate general misconduct. The burden that whistleblowers carry to prove their case is quite high. The next panel will be addressing that is theyve done historically. But we have the ability to use the policies to make sure that even if they dont reach that threshold of the retaliation case, the Senior Leaders are not violating policies and going after whistleblowers. Rep. Kiggans thank you and my time is up so i will yield to Ranking Member mervyn for five minutes. Rep. Mrvan thank you. The testimony touches on the Settlement Agreement process. Weve heard concerns from individuals that the v. A. Was not meeting the terms of the Settlement Agreements, leaving employees with few resources. To what extent did gao come across this issue during this review and could they look at this issue in their plan to follow up thank you, congressman. We are in the middle of our review so we have not delved deeply into that issue. We have copies of the Settlement Agreements that i mentioned, and we are starting to comb through those. We are hoping to talk to va officials who participated in that process and complaints who participated in that process to see where the pain points might be in the process but we have not been able to do that work. We are looking forward to do that in the coming months. You are aware of the issue i am talking about. I know the oawp begin monitoring Settlement Agreements and 2022. To what extent does this ensure the va is upholding its end of the agreement . Thank you. Currently, that is a future state we would like to obtain. Right now we are tracking Settlement Agreements and whether the basic terms such as restoration of pay have been fulfilled. We have a question as to Statutory Authority to go further than that, so we are not tracking whether the settlement is fully implemented yet or not. Is there an entity that is tracking that to see that it is fully implemented . Each agreement has a provision where the complainant can reach out if they feel the Settlement Agreement is not being fulfilled. Typically the complaints, they would reach out to the office but there is no other office designated to tracking enforcement of the Settlement Agreements. One last followup. Your office in the future state will have what role in your vision . In our vision we would track enforcement of the Settlement Agreements and a complainant could reach out if they feel the Settlement Agreement has not been fulfilled according to the terms of the agreement. The four corners sent a letter requesting the 714 authorities va has used to take disciplinary action since 2017. The response was it did not have this information broken down by authority, and his confidence and Historical Records was low. What work is oawp doing that might give us that her data moving forward . Give us a better data moving forward . The secretary decided to stop using it because it had been chipped away. We are still taking action, the va is taking action under title v rather than 714. However, for our part of what we do, the 714 hold is important to protect whistleblowers. Even though we are not using 714 we have done internal policy to make sure we are achieving the same goals to protect whistleblowers. I will let ted answer specifically about numbers but we do not track numbers. We are no longer requesting 714 holds, so we could get numbers for you if you are looking for specifics on 714 holds in the past. Absolutely. Yield back. The chair yields five minutes for questions. Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone for allowing me on this subcommittee. This is an issue near and dear to my heart. I represent a district with five Major Military installations and nearly 40,000 veterans, and i think everyone in this room shares my opinion that they are entitled to the fulfillment of the promises we made to them when they volunteered their service to our country. We are on the same team that way. One facility i represent is our Veterans Affairs hospital, an excellent facility, however in recent years, whistleblowers have emerged to allege there are employees creating a hostile work environment. This is something we want to avoid because we want to attract the best and brightest to care for our veterans. If we allow a facility to establish a repetition that is not a good place to work, we will not get the best care for our veterans. An it ministry of board was convened to investigate this that did a thorough job, they interviewed 36 witnesses, over 4000 pages of documents. They recommended the employee be removed at the v. A. So far the system has functioned as intended. Unfortunately nothing was done. Those whistleblowers came to my office earlier this year in understandable frustration about the fact they follow the rules and raise concerns. A board convened a recommendation not followed by local administrative staff. We looked into it and the chairman was great about partnering. Interviewed the whistleblowers with me. This is the third time this employee had been investigated. He had been recommended for termination multiple times but nothing was done. I met with the director and i was told the v. A. Does not have the legal tools and authority to follow through on that recommendation. I was astonished. In 2017 Congress Passed the v. A. Accountability and whistleblower protection act. It was the express purpose to give the va the tools to deal with stuff like this. We are attempting to deal with tools to deal with this. A bill that would give the va more authority in this respect. I want to talk about why the situation exists and what we can do to fix it. What would you say, does the v. A. Have the tools to discipline and terminate employees . Thank you for the question. I do not know the full circumstances. I think the individual is outside our authority so i have limited knowledge. In previous testimony, they believe they have the tools to take action but i do not have enough information to discuss the specific matter you are referring to. If you could followup, that would be much appreciated. If you do not have the tools you need, we want to make sure we equip you with the tools you need to make sure situations like this do not develop and facilities. The whistleblowers i spoke with are understandably frustrated with the situation. They expressed something more alarming, a hopelessness that they had brought the situation to everyones attention and nothing was done. When whistleblower raises their hand and says something is wrong and the investigation is conducted, the claim is substantiated and nothing is done, they are fearful that enhances the chance of retaliatory action against the whistleblower. If i were in their shoes, i would be afraid of that. What can be done to reassure whistleblowers that retaliatory actions will not take place if they come to oawp with a complaint . I would follow up a little bit, if wrongdoing does take