Well, we did a report back in 2014 that looked at mental health applications for veterans. In that report, we recommended that the department look at what is causing the delays and then implement measures to address them. I'm not sure they have tackled that first part, which is identifying what is causing the delays. Some of it is having a better case management system. There are so many out there; there are so many ways of managing this data to be able to track how long a file sits in a certain area.
We have one exhibit in which we talk about how they've started to track it now, which is new. They didn't track it in the past. They can now track how long a file sits once it's been decided that it's complete, before it gets assigned to an adjudicator. That's important to know. If that's a bottleneck or there's a delay there, then you can implement measures to fix that.
It's about tracking a file in a consistent way, but also about tracking it in a quality way. Some of the data quality issues we saw were that a file was put in there and the date of entry looked like it was 10 years ago. When we challenged, they said, oh no, that was a typo that has to be fixed. Some of it is human quality, but some of it is having the right system to track an application through the steps.