In what is being remarked on as a new ploy to reduce the VA backlog, many government agencies are looking at the VA’s latest legerdemain as a new tool for reducing their inbasket overload.

Unable to explain why, after several dire predictions of doom, the VA is now touting the shutdown as being instrumental in reducing the claims backlog via various excuses- all the while ignoring the 900,000 Vets on the living room sofa. The graph to the right has two lines-one in blue and the other in red. They comprise two different numbers of Vets- backlogged and pending. If you add the two, you have a better idea of the problem. Viewed separately, they are far more innocuous and the numbers are semi-digestible if you work at the VA. If you were a major insurance corporation CEO, you’d be apoplectic and consider firing the loudmouthed Gecko with the fake Australian accent.

Let’s all retrieve our analog abacus’ and do some real counting without employing the foxes in the henhouse. The hard reality is that when you close the front door and forbid any claimants to enter, your intake is bound to diminish.  Add to it during that period, for five long days the raters continued to process claims until some government weenie realized they could furlough the lot and create even more pain for another class of Americans. Added to the closed Veterans Memorials, this was bound to arouse anger among us. Never let a perfectly good catastrophe go to waste.

VA uses computer models. The models are comprised of “Our current projections, based on computer modeling, are …”. If the models showed a gradual decrease due to raters working overtime blindly stamping “DENIED” on forms left and right, any perceived subsidence in the projected model would be fair game for anyone in the VA PR office to attribute to their finnesse. In this case, dire predictions of a new “lump in the python” not only did not manifest but, to the contrary, receded. Speechless at the conflusticating evidence, they had to gin up some measured response such as the timeworn “Our employees were so dedicated, they refused to leave their desks for the duration and peed in old milk cartons so that Vets would get what’s coming to them.”

Computer models at the VA are problematic for any number of reasons. VA has their own stable of computer geeks. Call the them the Veek squad. They have much in common. Most have or had parents who worked there so nepotism is still alive and well regardless of what you think about merit. Their training seems to derive from  Time Life Computers-An Introduction. Some actually have a degree from a trade school proving they passed the mandatory tests after their six weeks of training. As for a twelve year background with IBM/Xerox on the resume? VA can’t afford that type. They generally opt for the ones who were caught plagiarizing in college and can be snapped up for a song. Such is VA’s OIT. Of course, absence of any computer software knowledge is not a bar to employment which is painfully obvious. Simply look at the VA’s belated attempts to get the VBMS off the ground. It makes an albatross appear born to flight.

In a more nuanced examination, the actual reasons are glaringly apparent but VA is loathe to draw attention to them. If you cork the funnel, nothing comes in. In the interim, the remaining input in the pipeline subsides. Only at the VA can this set of parameters yield a fantastic result akin to alchemy and turning lead into gold. But then again, only at the VA do you have employees spraying grey, lead bricks gold-colored and proclaiming them as such.

Goldbricking is an art form. Over several score years we have watched the VA backlog as it mimicked the NYSE Dow Jones average. Up and up. In that period, more employees were hired, more money was appropriated and more innovations and programs to arrest the backlog were instituted to no avail. Along comes a government shutdown and voilá! Problem solved. Do nothing and the problem abates of it’s own accord.

How VA intends to spin this will bear watching. Thank you (Pop) Smoke for apprising us of this fortuitous news. What I take away from it is that Veterans need to quit filing claims and the backlog will simply resolve itself. Inertia will succeed where all else before failed. Who woulda thunk it?