Yes. I'll start.
Yes, certainly. Just the volume of work definitely impacts that. Also, the promise that our administrative burden will be lowered by this contract, I believe, is false, because in the one Q and A we got, back in August, it specifically stated that the contractor is not even able to do letters, which is what they initially sold us on to try to get our buy-in on this contract. They said, “You will be doing less letter writing in terms of the resources you're putting in for veterans.” In fact, that's not the case, because the contractor does not have the delegated authority of case managers.
That's just one part of the puzzle: volume, letters and things like that. There are lots of things that the department could be doing to lessen our administrative burden with administrative assistance, but they have chosen not to do that.
Thank you.