Ascomdepot68

Fax # 1-844-531-7818 Newnan GA

According to a letter I received today:

"As of March 3, 2014 future request with some exceptions for FOIA/PA actions received at the Atlanta Regional Office AFTER March 3, 2014 are forwarded to ST. Louis Records Management Center for scanning and processing on disc.You will be notified by that office to your request if your request is in this category."

Exact spelling and grammar of letter.

Apparently applies to all RO's. I had a hint this was what they were doing since May 2014 when my Congressman's aide was told by the
Congressional liaison at the Atlanta RO "we don't do that here anymore" and a C file disc was sent from RMC at St Louis.

I am not sure if the actual documents are mailed to RMC from the RO for putting on disc or if the documents are copied from electronic records at RMC.

I do know that that they still managed to lose 65 documents and there are still several other Veteran's documents co mingled with my records on the disc.

More efficient? Who knows. More likely to take more time and involve more handling which increases errors? Yes.
I do know that only letter and legal sized documents were on records received. Crucial maps sized 2'X3' and 2'X2' were missing.

Also another FOIA/PA "claim" popped up on eBenefits for me today. And low and behold this time they did list an expected date of
completion as 120-187 days out. FOIA supposed to be done in no longer than 30 days! No real time limit on PA items. I have an
idea though that this might be a VCAA matter. The VA is placing some requests of assorted types under the "FOIA/PA" as they
say they don't have a "button" for everything so they just use that.

Another thing I have to discuss with Secretary McDonald

First time I saw the following on eBenefits this morning. Opening a new can of worms!

"If a new claim is submitted while an existing claim is pending, any new information will be consolidated with the pending claim. The new claim will then be marked as Complete and moved to Historical Claims with no further action required."

Finally have the fax number and street address with stop of Office of Communications and Case Management. If anyone wants it PM me, I'm not on here a lot but will respond.

Took a FOIA request, which they "lost" for 80+ days, appealed to OIG, they transfered it to another office and got the info. THe letter they sent gave fax number as one of the
ones I had called before. Fax failed. Tried calling telephone number provided, IT WAS A FAX LINE!. Oh well, complete the mission! As a parallel I was faxing the inquiry letter
to 1 Senator and 2 Congressman. VA fed the Senator "_ _ _ _", Jeff Miller office spoke of "congresional courtesy" and one never heard from yet.

Doesn't do much to make the veteran feel he is being assisted

At the same time got info for Under Secretary of Field Operations (their boss) in case I need it.