An IG audit found the VA tool used to determine police staffing levels had serious gaps

Terry Gerton The VA IG has released a report recently about a staffing tool that supports the police staff, but I think when people think about VA and staffing challenges, they are not thinking police, they’re thinking doctors and nurses and VA medical facilities. Just give us a quick background on what VA deals with when it comes to police presence and physical security.

Cheryl Mason So, the VA with the doctors and nurses and medical staff, of course, are extremely important. But, you know, when you’re going to a facility, you also want to make sure that you’re safe. You want your employees to be safe. And so, VA does have a police force. And so that is there to protect the veterans and their family members who come to campuses for treatment to ensure that they feel safe and to also ensure that our employees are safe. We do have challenges from time to time, you know, on campuses, on VA campuses, you know, whether it’s crime or whether it is actions, that, you know, we need that deterrence of the VA police course, and so that’s why they’re there.

Terry Gerton Thank you for that. And your office looked at a staffing decision tool that was supposed to help medical centers figure out how many police or what their police staffing model should be. What was the problem that you were trying to examine and solve?

Cheryl Mason Well, I think that primarily the big problem was the tool was meant really to eliminate the guess work and give the police chiefs of the various facilities a standard way to assess the security needs and set staffing levels for each of the facilities to provide for enough protection. When you have facilities in urban areas versus very rural, it’s going to be a wide range. And so, a standard staffing level of like 30 officers is just not, that might work for something, but not for another, right? But because VA had been very, very much, the police were the under the jurisdiction of each of the VA medical centers, there was not a centralized basically control for the police force. And so how they determined what the need was from site to site, even though the sites may be similar in size, was very different. And, you know, and there wasn’t really data. And that was what the tool was supposed to bring forth is like an evidence-based, data-based technology. Like, okay, if it’s this, then we probably need this many people here. And if we don’t, then what’s the reason why? Or do we need more? Does that make sense?

Terry Gerton It does, and your audit found that this tool wasn’t fully validated or consistently used. What broke down in getting it from development to actual deployment?

Cheryl Mason Basically, just group disagreements, plain old relationships between the developers and the end users. Primarily, it was whether it was right, whether it complete, whether it had the information. Between 2019, I think this is in our audit report, between 2019 and 2023, there was data collection testing and presentations, but when they got the draft version, they couldn’t agree. The stakeholders who were involved in it just couldn’t couldn’t, agree how it was supposed to work. And so it really came down to just not agreeing how and what it was, how it, was supposed to work and so basically they just stopped working on it.

Terry Gerton Cheryl Mason is the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs. So one of the themes that your report brings out then is governance, who’s got which roles and responsibilities, who is empowered to make decisions. Who was supposed to own this effort?

Cheryl Mason Well, that was the challenge at the time. It was dispersed throughout the VHA facilities. And even though there was police chiefs on the facilities and we did have an office of security, they really didn’t own it. And it wasn’t until they recently established the assistant secretary back in that office of security and protection that they put ownership back there now. That’s who should have owned it. That’s who can manage and control it. And I think you saw that probably in the secretary’s announcement the day before yesterday, I believe, about that they’re working to fix the tool, to have the governance and the responsibility sit with one person who’s in charge of that. And that was our recommendation because it was just dispersed across the country.

Terry Gerton Governance has been a documented issue in other VA IT systems. Are there agency-wide lessons that you hope are getting distributed around this?

Cheryl Mason Yes, actually, and, you know, that was interesting. I was at a meeting this morning and this topic came up and that was the very conversation is as a result of many of our OIG reports, really in the past, I would say, year, there has been more responsiveness to areas of governance and oversight that hadn’t been looked at before and implementing not only our recommendations, but also trying figure out, okay, what else do we have to do? Let’s get ahead of it. Let’s make sure we’re thinking about it. And so, you know, when you don’t have anyone — if nobody has accountability, or if everyone has accountability then no one has accountability. And so I think that’s kind of what happened here. So I think it is a lesson learned in not only this area, but across the department.

Terry Gerton You also mentioned sort of an organizational solution, establishment of the Office of Operation Security and Preparedness as a standalone organization. It has its own assistant secretary and now responsibility for this tool. How do you think that will change development of the tool going forward?

Cheryl Mason Well, I know in our discussions with them, they’ve been really leaning forward. You know, when I got here, this report had kind of been sitting around. They were trying to figure out what to do with it because they felt it was a good report, but they weren’t sure what to do. So when speaking with the department, we said, well, you know, does this make sense? And, and that was when they basically brought that the assistant secretary and OSP back. So there was an assistant secretary that existed in that role prior to, I think, ’16. And so they brought it back in. So I think putting that central responsibility and accountability in one place, but also, the engagement we’ve had with them, they’re definitely leaning forward. They want our engagement on this and they want to make sure that — what we see, because we see it not only in the police staffing, but we see that when we go to different facilities, right? And so they want us to work with them on this. So I think we’re already seeing the fruits of that in the secretary’s announcement and some other changes that have gone about.

Terry Gerton VA police staffing has been a concern for a long time. You know, shortages at many facilities, incidents that pop up. So as you’re thinking about this new organization and as you are re-looking at this program, is there a sense that it will be reshaped now that you know what you know as a result of this report?

Cheryl Mason I do. I do think it will be reshaped. Our report really discussed potential vulnerabilities with the tool, right? And the hiccup was in the development process. But as we looked at that, other things came about. And so the concerns from the end users were really brought more into play. And so, the concern here was it wasn’t built in such a way initially where it could be used operationally. And they have made some changes to it now being in that place. And so I think it will better position the department, as we’re seeing, to utilize where the recruitment needs to occur, and how they go about that and the ways, you know, what they need where. And then, you know, look at that from a operational position from headquarters, but also get the input from the local areas, because it has to be the communication back and forth.

Terry Gerton The report itself makes four recommendations. How are you feeling about the VA’s response to those recommendations and activity that’s moving them in the right direction?

Cheryl Mason You know, we’re monitoring. That’s what we monitor, that’s what we do. I think that, you know, the secretary’s announcement is a good step forward in this, and I think that will go a long way. I mean, we definitely weren’t expecting it to happen as quickly as it did, which is good. I think that shows commitment. And also the ongoing communication with the OIG and OSP is very good in this realm, because additionally, as you probably are aware, the VA OIG special agents work very closely with VA police because we have authority on the campuses for certain crimes and activities that we’re doing. And so really for us, we have an investment here. And so we want to ensure, like we do with all of our VA reports, but definitely because we’re working hand in hand with them. So I think we are seeing movement in the right direction. Definitely, it’s been responsive, the department is responsive at all the levels from, you know, the local police chiefs all the way up to the secretary.

Terry Gerton And now that the program is moving back to being on track, is there a timeline that you’re looking at, interim steps to kind of make sure we don’t revisit this in a few more years and find it in the same state?

Cheryl Mason We usually, you know, generally after a report comes out, we really check on it about at the 90 days point unless they come back to us and tell us, hey, we’ve done this, can you close this part of the recommendation? And the department is doing more of that, which has not been a routine past practice. So, you now, we’ll do the 90 day check, but like I said, with our ongoing engagement, I think we’ll probably have more of a sense. And so if we start to see things go off the rails a little bit, we’ll have those stronger conversations with them. Because again, this was an audit report, but our agents are very much engaged. And the protection of our veterans to go get services is paramount of importance to us and to the department.