Waste of the Day: Defunct Veterans’ Hotline

Contractors working at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ suicide-prevention hotline earned $11.2 million without answering a single phone call, according to a Sept. 1 report from the VA inspector general.

A suicide hotline that took no calls

Key facts: The Veterans Crisis Line is available 24 hours per day for veterans experiencing a mental health emergency. Trained government staff answer calls, provide support and send a medical team if there is an immediate risk of harm.

In 2019, a contractor was hired to establish a backup crisis line. If the main Veterans Crisis Line was unavailable because of a power outage or some other emergency, contractors at the backup center could answer calls.

The backup center hired new staff in 2022, but the government assumed they would not need security clearance to do their job. They were wrong; the contractors needed to record calls and document veterans’ identity and mental health issues. That requires authorization from the General Services Administration, which typically takes 12 to 18 months to obtain.

Without clearance, the contractors were left to essentially sit and twiddle their thumbs. They did not answer a single phone call from a veteran from July 2022 until the contract ended in June 2023.

But the contractor still got paid!

But a bureaucratic mess allowed the contractor to keep getting paid. Some employees said they did not realize the contractor was not doing any work. Others said they were waiting for a formal notice from a supervisor instructing them to cease payments. In March 2023, one employee even rated the contractor’s work as “satisfactory.”

Even with proper security clearance, the contractors might have failed to do their job properly. The company was required to staff the backup center with 92 employees, but there were less than 50 people actually assigned.

Before the contractor was hired, the VA started making its own in-house backup call center, raising questions about why the company was hired in the first place.

Summary: According to the audit, veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide compared to other Americans. Taxpayer resources must be used to provide them the resources they need, not to pay contractors without a purpose.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.