Typical Iris Response To Questions

[vern2]

This is my response to recent VA IRIS email sent to me. It is replete with errors that IRIS and VA has made. Went to IRIS website and noticed that my claim, originally filed in July 2012, is now showing closed with no appeal, no nothing.! WTF.

I received this response from IRIS and have questions about it.
Response from IRIS:

Our records currently show your appeal is a traditional appeal.
We received your Notice of Disagreement (NOD) on October 7, 2014.
NOT CORRECT! THIS SHOULD BE OCTOBER 7, 2013.

Your appeal will be reviewed under the traditional appeals process. Right now, your appeal is awaiting that review. If we need additional information, we will contact you. If we don’t need any additional information, a decision will be made and you will receive written notification.
The processing of Notice of Disagreements average about 377 days.
NOTE: IT HAS BEEN OVER 377 DAYS SINCE I FILED NOD AND REQUESTED DE NOVO REVIEW.

The length of time it takes to process your NOD depends on the specifics of your case and the VA’s pending workload.
A review of your documents indicates you submitted a notice of disagreement (NOD) to the St. Petersburg Regional Office (RO) indicating you wanted to appeal the decision in your September 22, 2013 notification letter and requesting a de nova review or Decision Review Officer for your appeal. We show you also submitted supporting documents with your NOD.
NOTE: SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION WAS SUBMITTED STARTING IN JANUARY 2014.

We are reassigning your inquiry to the St. Petersburg Regional Office (RO) to request they update your appeal records to show you requested the de nova review and contact you to advise you when this has been done.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN " REASSIGNING"? MY CASE WAS AND STILL SHOULD BE WITH THE ST. PETERSBURG VARO. IF NOT WHERE WAS IT?

PLEASE Respond to my questions. Thanks!

What a crock! changed my NOD date by one year and then "reassigned" my case to St. Petersburg and ignored the fact that been over 377 days since my NOD.

Hate dealing with any aspect of the VA as incompetence is the accepted norm with this agency.

[vern2]

Thanks for the replies, still waiting on IRIS Response to the last post. My IRIS team is same as VARO -St. Petersburg. They can not communicate in house, so their response to our queries is worse.

Someone suggested I contact Bob McDonald at VA.gov? Who is this person, as I thought he was an attorney.

[rootbeer22]

Chuck75

Excellent post on your part and a very good analysis. As an example, interestingly, over 650 million dollars was spent on the new VBMS system to digitise Veteran's Claims. It made a great deal of sense to develop a new system that would be esier and more efficient for VBA Raters to use in their claims work? I read several IG Reports and they were not pretty? Originally, it started out at over 200 million dollars and went up from there. Just as you've said, these "fixes" have enourmous costs. The basic problem time and time again is that despite a lot of well known, "Lessons Learned", the same programmatic problems happen over and over again. So, later when OIG Inspectors asked VBA raters, "are you better off now with the new system and can you process claims faster". The answer was "no", the system can't handle the data and the screens lock up or the system goes down a lot? So, I agree with you...I think there are systemic and cultutral issues that have to be addressed first before the system will get better. I think VA needs to find a way to hire the best and the brightest and I think the New VA Secretary would agree...otherwise...we'll have the same outcome over and over again unless it changes...there's no question that a lot of people are working hard for us and I sincerely believe that they care about us...but maybe they have become "too comfotable"...and that's part of the the issue?

Edited November 26, 2014 by rootbeer22

[Chuck75]

If the VA has/had not been consistent with the old "paper" system, how in the world can anybody be expected to write code that has any semblance to what is really needed.

The VA itself did not know! Except that they were not happy then, and are not happy now. It might seem that they wanted to be able to somehow enter data, and have the programming decide the claim, preferably to the Gov/VA's benefit, and generate lots of cost savings!

One of the biggest problems I saw in DOD implementations had to do with who actually preformed the needed tasks (and how) vs those who never did, but were in positions tasked to define what the code would do. It was frustrating, in that a system might store the data via SQL, but another supposedly compatible system would not query the needed existing data for various reasons. Then just when things are calming down, someone comes up with a new "must have", or we didn't want it to work that way!

Then there is the matter of "scale". This usually involves a trial/proof of concept on something fairly similar to common pc's, then get's ramped up to handle the amount of data and users needed for full scale use. The number of things that can go wrong are legendary!

Then just to complicate matters, a fancy GUI get's added/folded in, and adds another level of system loading.

I remember one almost fiasco involving programming some rather important military avionics. The development specification called for software development in a high level language. The programmers worked for months, and started running into real problems. It turned out that the mil spec compiler generated a large amount of never used

extraneous code, and that ruined the response time. Eventually, the last ditch effort involved the hardware engineers and taking the compiler outputs hand editing them, to salvage what was usable, then generating needed machine code patches, and integrating the whole thing on the fly. Since then a significant improvement in such an effort requires use of diagnostic software that looks at the code, identifies the non executable code branches, etc, thus allowing a much less time consuming debug effort.

[rootbeer22]

Chuck:

I could not agree with you more....I've been involved with DOD projects as you describe..and somewhere along the way, the "users" or the people that acutally use these new technologies, processes or procedures are not fully considered during the development stages? Later and after substantial time and money is spent, then an installation team shows up, loads the programs, does some limited training..then tells the "user community" to "have at it" and make it work? Of course by then...the data streams are so large that the overall system can't handle the magnitude of the enourmous data and the system slows to a crawl. Then when it does not work as advertised, then the contractor says, "well, we need more funding to make it work like it should have in the first place"? I think part of the problem is that the same ole contractors who fail over and over again..continue to get the big lucrative contracts when smaller, "more hungry" companies should get a shot. Who knows, maybe at some point the VBMS will work as advertised and the claims folks will be able to speed the claims process up and reduce the claims backlog? Overall, it was a very noble concept & idea and I applaud the leaders whom tried to do the right things for Vets. But it all comes down to the VBA raters and if the new VBMS system actually works for them to really reduce the backlog?

Edited December 1, 2014 by rootbeer22