“Department of Veterans Affairs reform legislation back in 2018 required the Veterans Health Administration to report regularly on its staffing and vacancy levels. VHA officials generally meet the requirement. Now the Office of Inspector General has found that VHA has made a lot of progress in the accuracy of its reporting but still has a ways to go. Federal Drive with Tom Temin got more now from Deputy Assistant Inspector General Leigh Ann Searight…”
“Tom Temin: Because where you look around at VA and VHA, they have multiple systems for lots of things. Is the multiple instances of personnel systems part of the issue here?
Leigh Ann Searight: No, actually, HR Smart is the single solution within VA. It is the enterprise HR solution. So they used to use a system called the paid system. And in 2016, June of 2016, they moved to HR Smart. Now there’s been, you know, maybe a slow movement to that, but they are fully under HR Smart. And they’re still working to clean that up and sort of change their HR staff’s processes from what they used to do under paid, which was more of a faces management, whereas HR smart is a spaces management system…”
“Tom Temin: Got it. So they have basically a data problem more than a systems logic problem, it sounds like.
Leigh Ann Searight: Exactly, exactly. So what we found was under the paid system, when you hired somebody, they would create that line item essentially for you. And under HR Smart, they’re still trying to do that process. And so that makes it you’re duplicating, essentially. So if I hired you, I put you in for that position, and then maybe you got a promotion. But instead of moving you and keeping the physician, they replicate that so it looks like you have two people instead of one…” Read the full interview here.
Source: VHA still needs more accurate reporting of staffing numbers – By Tom Temin, July 22, 2021. Federal News Network.
