The records we ask VA to release.

The log

• Response receivedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23668-F

  Compensation claims workload and backlog statistics

  CLOSED, PUBLICLY AVAILABLE REFERRAL, AUDIT VERDICT: CONTAINED. VBACO email dated August 19, 2026 announced a publicly available determination but omitted the letter; we replied August 20 requesting it, and the FOIA officer resent it with the letter attached on August 21. The two day delivery gap is preserved in the email record. IAD dated August 19, 2026 (VBACO FOIA Officer): the requested workload records are publicly available on VBA's Detailed Claims Data page, home of the Monday Morning Workload Report, and the request was closed without further processing. Same day coverage audit completed August 22, 2026 (referral_audit_26-23668-F.md): the cited page is current (updated August 17, 2026) and carries weekly MMWR Excel workbooks covering the entire request period, FY 2023 through present, with archives reaching 2004. The workbook reports every requested element at regional office level: claims pending, pending over 125 days, completed claims month and fiscal year to date, average days to complete, and average days pending. Two caveats recorded for fairness: the cadence is weekly snapshots rather than the requested monthly breakout, so monthly series require stitching roughly 190 weekly files with month boundaries falling mid week, and VA publishes no single consolidated FY 2023 to present extract. Neither defeats the referral; the records are genuinely there, so this citation was proper and no appeal will be filed. The 90 day appeal window from the August 19 letter would close November 17, 2026, noted for completeness only. Extension history: VA extension letter dated July 28, 2026 (10 business days, to August 24); VBACO aggregation and delay letter dated August 18, 2026 grouped 26-23668-F, 26-23672-F, 26-23673-F, 26-23674-F, and 26-23675-F for fee assessment; VBACO confirmed the news media fee category on the batch.

  Initial agency decision letter, publicly available referral, August 19, 2026 (PDF) Powers: Claims Backlog Tracker
• PublishedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23669-F

  PACT Act claims outcomes

  Full grant received July 17, 2026: monthly counts of PACT Act claims received, completed, granted, and denied from August 10, 2022 through July 16, 2026. VBA stated it does not track claims by presumptive condition category or exposure cohort, so that portion could not be provided. The complete dataset and analysis are published in our PACT Act Claims Report. VA's disposition was a full grant; the unproduced breakdowns reflect data VBA states it does not maintain.

  Powers: PACT Act Claims Report
• Response receivedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23670-F

  Contract examination vendor credentials and training

  Full grant received August 11, 2026: 1,118 pages covering examiner credentialing requirements and the complete training curriculum (contract attachments and all certification courses). The release responds fully to the credentialing and training items; the aggregate quality assurance results item is not present in the released pages, and we are pursuing those records through an administrative appeal (filed with VA Office of General Counsel, August 12, 2026) and a targeted follow-up request (submitted August 12, 2026). Report in preparation. VA's disposition was a full grant; our completeness assessment differs on the aggregate QA results item, which was not produced and is under administrative appeal. Appeal update, September 2, 2026: the VA Office of General Counsel confirmed receipt of the administrative appeal and docketed it as OGC case 182299. OGC processes appeals first in, first out, assigns each to a FOIA attorney, and estimates the process may take several months or more before a written final determination. The acknowledgment letter is published in the Records Room.

  Powers: C&P Exam Prep
• Response receivedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23671-F

  Rating decision quality and accuracy review data

  Full grant received August 11, 2026: issue-based rating accuracy and error category counts for every regional office across four 12-month review windows (FY 2023 through May 2026), plus separate accuracy figures for the three Decision Review Operations Centers. Report in preparation.

  Powers: The VA Claims Quarterly
• Response receivedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23676-F

  Dependency and Indemnity Compensation claims statistics

  FULL GRANT. IAD letter dated August 18, 2026 (VBACO, Pension and Fiduciary Service search); records delivered via PAL August 19 and retrieved August 21. One Excel workbook, five sheets, nothing withheld: DIC claims received by FY (75,137 / 73,099 / 77,318 / 63,544 through 7/11), new recipients and award grants (45,070 / 46,153 / 55,700 / 42,485 through 6/30; this beneficiary series is also public in VA's Annual Benefits Report), denials (10,633 / 12,952 / 23,212 / 16,299), average days to complete by received FY (102.2 / 135.15 / 132.9 / 65.4), and granted claims split 38 USC 1310 vs 1318 by FY (cutoff clarified in writing by VBA on August 25, 2026: through July 11, 2026). Validation complete plus outside review adopted (see foia_26-23676-F_analysis.md): denials more than doubled from FY23 to FY25 (up 118.3 percent) on receipts up only 2.9 percent, and the denial share on the comparable claims basis (denials vs 1310+1318 granted claims) climbed from 23.1 to 32.4 percent; about one in four categorized grants comes through the 1318 pathway (25.8 to 27.9 percent, a split VA publishes nowhere). Caveats: the recipients measure and the granted claims measure use different units and do not reconcile (gap 5,612 to 9,728 per year; clarification questions drafted for VBACO); FY26 cutoffs differ across sheets and one is undocumented; FY26 average days is right censored and must not be read as a speedup. Clarification questions sent to the VBACO FOIA Officer August 20 and 21, 2026 (measure definitions, the June 30 cutoff, and the undocumented 1318 v 1310 FY26 cutoff). Response August 21: FOIA does not require the agency to answer questions or analyze data, but the officer volunteered to forward the questions to the data team. Any answer is voluntary; the published report's caveats already carry the ambiguity, so no publication change is needed either way. DEFINITIONS CLARIFIED ON THE RECORD: we emailed VBACO FOIA on August 20-21, 2026 and received a written response from the FOIA office (relaying the data team) on August 25, 2026 confirming (1) the DIC Grants sheet counts new recipients, equivalent to new DIC award beneficiaries for the fiscal year, (2) the 1310/1318 categories do NOT cover all granted DIC claims, (3) the grants sheet ends June 30, 2026 because its source reports end-of-month counts, and (4) the 1318 v 1310 tab runs through July 11, 2026. Still open: which grant categories fall outside the 1310/1318 pair (data dictionary follow-up request pending).

  Initial agency decision letter, full grant, August 18, 2026 (PDF) Released records: DIC claims statistics FY2023 to FY2026 (Excel) Written clarification from VBA on measure definitions and cutoffs, August 25, 2026 (PDF) Powers: Survivors Hub
• Response receivedFiled July 11, 2026#26-23677-F

  C&P examination volume and timeliness by vendor

  Full grant received August 11, 2026 from VBA Central Office: monthly exam requests, completions, and average days to complete for all four contract exam vendors, October 2022 through June 2026, in native spreadsheet format. VBA also stated that exam no-show rates, rescheduling rates, and insufficient examination counts are not captured data points by vendor. Report in preparation.

  Powers: C&P Exam Checklist
• Response receivedFiled August 8, 2026#26-25140-F

  Updated AI-assisted claims workflow statistics, Aug 2025 to present

  Records received August 18, 2026: initial agency decision granting the request, with veteran claim and file numbers redacted under Exemption 6. The release (R2026_62698) contains 258,103 claim-level automation-completed pension, DIC, survivor pension, and burial claims closed August 2025 through July 2026, plus 6,796 Higher-Level Review and Supplemental challenges and 143 Board appeals on that pipeline. We recomputed and validated every figure against the claim-level rows before use. The accuracy and validation report items in the request were not addressed in the decision; a clarification request is with VBACO.

  Powers: Two in Three: Survivor Pension Outcomes
• PublishedFiled August 12, 2026#26-00076-FOIA

  Underlying review data for OIG maternity care report 24-00818-208

  Filed via FOIA.gov to the VA Office of Inspector General on August 12, 2026, confirmation ID 3097066. Requests aggregated, de-identified EHR review results (sample of 400, final 294) from OIG report 24-00818-208 (Review of VHA Maternity Care Coordination and Women Veterans' Experience, August 10, 2026), the survey instrument and aggregated results, the facility and VISN list, and measure specifications. Small-cell suppression under 10 offered proactively. Media requester classification and fee waiver requested. Acknowledged August 13, 2026 by the VA OIG Data, Privacy and AI Office (50CI) and assigned case number 26-00076-FOIA; the request is in processing. Records received September 2, 2026: VA OIG released the aggregated postpartum EHR review results (CY24 deliveries sample), the veteran experience survey aggregate results, the survey instrument screenshots, and a definitions and notes document from OIG report 24-00818-208.

  VA OIG acknowledgement letter, August 13, 2026 (PDF) VA OIG response letter, September 2026 (PDF) Postpartum EHR review aggregate results, CY24 deliveries sample (XLSX) Veteran experience survey aggregate results (PDF) Survey instrument screenshots (PDF) Definitions and notes (PDF) Powers:

• 14 requests are also pending with the Veterans Benefits Administration. To keep our reporting exclusive while responses are in the queue, we do not describe a request until its records arrive. Each one is then detailed here, with the response documents published in full.

The deadline scoreboard

FOIA gives VA 20 business days to issue a determination (5 U.S.C. 552(a)(6)(A)(i)), extendable by 10 more for unusual circumstances. This board counts every request we have filed against that clock. Counts exclude weekends but not federal holidays, so they can overstate elapsed statutory days slightly; extended deadlines are shown where VA invoked them. Requests we have not yet described publicly are counted in the totals without their subjects.

Oldest pending request: 65 business days and counting. Median time to a response so far: 22 business days.

As of October 9, 2026. The table shows publicly described requests; the totals above include every request filed.

The speed benchmark

VA reports its own FOIA processing times each year, and the underlying data is public on FOIA.gov. The figures below put the working-day clock on our answered VBA requests next to the processing times VA published for the VBA component in its two most recent Annual FOIA Reports.

Read fairly, this is a good result for VBA. Our requests ask for aggregate statistical records that require real search and review work, yet every answered request came back in 28 working days or less: faster than VBA's FY 2024 average on either track, and close to its FY 2025 simple-track average. Two caveats keep the comparison honest. VBA's published medians sit under one working day because its workload is dominated by requests it can close immediately, often by referring the requester to material that is already public, so medians and averages tell very different stories. And VA's annual report clock starts when a perfected request is received, while ours starts the day we file, which can make our counts run slightly long. All values are working days. Source: Department of Veterans Affairs Annual FOIA Report data, VBA component, retrieved August 25, 2026.

The referral scorecard

Instead of releasing records, an agency can close a request by stating the information is already publicly available and pointing to its own website. That referral is only proper when the cited source actually contains the requested records. Each time VA answers one of our requests this way, we review the cited source against every element of the request and score the result here.

• Contained the recordsReferred August 19, 2026#26-23668-F

  Compensation claims workload and backlog statistics

  VA cited: VBA Monday Morning Workload Report, benefits.va.gov/REPORTS/detailed_claims_data.asp

  Audited the day the letter arrived. The cited page is current and its weekly Excel workbooks cover the full request period with every requested element at regional office level: pending, pending over 125 days, completed, and average days to complete. Caveat: weekly snapshots, not the monthly breakout requested; monthly series require stitching roughly 190 files. The records are there, so the referral stands.