FOR RELEASE: July 02, 2001

GAO reports backlog at National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) will not be resolved soon;
VA claims adjudication hampered by inefficiencies at NPRC says Evans

 NPRC urged to develop plan for improved response time 

Washington, DC – "The processing of veterans’ claims for benefits as well as requests of aging veterans for various medals are delayed by an outdated manual intensive filing system at the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC),” said Congressman Lane Evans of Illinois, Democratic Leader of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.  The NPRC, an independent agency, is part of the National Archives and Records Center.  Evans noted that many veterans think that the NPRC is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) or the Department of Defense and wrongly blame VA for the delays in obtaining records from NPRC. 

Evans today commented on a new General Accounting Office (GAO) study of the NPRC which he requested along with Senators Tom Harkin, Paul Wellstone, Tom Daschle and John D. Rockefeller IV.  The GAO report found that NPRC actions to respond more quickly to requests are unlikely to improve timeliness in the near-term and long-term prospects for improvement remain unclear.

NPRC controls over 55 million military personnel records and an additional 39 million auxiliary records stored in cardboard boxes 10 feet high.  Many Army and Air Force records were destroyed in a fire which occurred in 1973.  Since the records were not indexed and no master record was kept on files which had been loaned to the VA, the exact number of files which were destroyed is unknown. 

The filing system has not been changed in the last 50 years.  The records are not listed in a computerized form, there is no computerized index, and request processing is highly labor intensive.  Staff has only recently been provided telephones and access to computers.  Unclear requests were returned to veterans and families, only to be resubmitted repeatedly.  Almost all correspondence was handwritten on forms. 

Staff reductions and buyouts caused by an effort to “downsize” the NPRC in 1995 led to an almost three-fold increase in the backlog of pending requests.  Currently, the number of backlogged claims is at the highest level ever.  In a commendable effort to improve processing of VA claims, VA has out-stationed a number of VA employees to assist in retrieving records needed for the adjudication of VA claims.

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