When the board finally considers the appeal, it can agree with the vet, dismiss the appeal or as happens in almost half the cases return the claim to the field office for further development. This appeal and remand cycle can recur. The deficiencies of an assembly-line system are no secret. Time is wasted in moving items from one station or desk to the next, and keeping track of their locations takes effort. Typically communication is poor, and some of the items being processed claims, in this case fall between the cracks.
Accountability gives way to finger-pointing.
Employees are stuck doing repetitive work. VBA reengineering will do away with much of the sequential processing model, replacing it with multipurpose field-office teams. A single field-office employee with the new title of veterans service representative will initiate, gather evidence for and evaluate a claim and report back to the veteran. A senior employee, the decision review officer, will handle cases where the veteran and the service rep cannot agree. But there will be fewer such cases because veterans will have had an accurate decision fully explained to them by knowledgeable and compassionate VBA employees, says a VBA reengineering report, Blueprint for Change.