VA Farmed Out Claims System Work To Controversial Navy Organization

The Veterans Affairs Department has paid the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic $105 million to help develop its next-generation disability claims processing system since 2010, despite two internal watchdog reports in 2009 that blasted previous work done by the Charleston, S.C.-based organization for VA.

This amounts to roughly 21 percent of the total $491 million budget for the Veterans Benefit Management System planned for nationwide deployment this year.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki views VBMS as the key to eliminating the claims backlog by 2015. The department ended the year with 900,121 backlogged claims, 608,365 of which -- 68 percent -- had been stuck in the system more than 125 days.