When we're talking about the backlog, we're talking about the backlog in the grievance system itself, which is the internal mechanism available—in this case to military members we're speaking about—within the department. It's not within our office per se.
We see some of the same situations you were just talking about, such that if we call with respect to a grievance, we will sometimes see a quicker response and quicker action on that.
We try to do that only when there are compelling circumstances. Just because you call us, our role is not to put you up at the top of the queue, because if we did that every time somebody called us, that would be unfair. Where we see there are compelling circumstances...and every situation is a little bit different. There are a variety of reasons for that. This is one of the reasons we will be doing a systemic investigation into recourse mechanisms next year.
We feel it is not simply a resource issue. We've seen that over the decades. Throwing resources at it gets it down for a short while, but it comes back. Why? That is the answer we want to delve deeply into.
I have some ideas—