Report Summary

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed VA’s compliance with requirements to report staffing and vacancy data on its public-facing website and the clarity of related explanations. VA is mandated to publicly release this information each quarter under the Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Outside Networks (MISSION) Act of 2018 to promote transparency in personnel management. The MISSION Act also requires the OIG to review VA’s data-reporting website and make recommendations for improvement. After discussions with the review team, VA took action to correct its time-to-hire calculation starting with the June 2022 quarterly report to include every required step of the hiring process. VA also explained OIG-identified discrepancies in its June 2022 report after the review team discussed them with responsible officials. Consequently, the OIG did not make further recommendations on these issues. The review team found that VA could strengthen its explanation of vacant positions to show that the data were rounded and included part-time positions. VA agreed and included that information beginning with the April 2022 staffing and vacancy report. Additionally, the team observed that VA could increase the value of its reported information by summarizing and identifying trends in the expanded time-to-hire data, as done with the vacancy, onboarding, and gains and losses information published under the MISSION Act. In response, VA added summary tab information beginning in June 2022 that interpreted the new time to hire data requirements.

The OIG made two recommendations: (1) request legislative relief from Congress on data it is unable to report or (2) ensure data limitations are clearly explained that preclude VA from reporting all elements of time-to-hire data under the Veterans Health Care and Benefits Improvement Act.