Latest news with #DepartmentOfVeteransAffairs
The Australian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Australian
‘Good for business': Boeing Defence Australia's recruitment secret
This article is sponsored by the Department of Veteran's Affairs. Boeing has the broadest portfolio in Australian aerospace, from manufacturing of commercial aircraft components to design and development of defence systems, modelling and simulation, and more. Of its 4500 employees in Australia, more than 1000 were formerly in the armed forces. 'We find veterans really excel at leading and making decisions, particularly in time-critical environments,' said Amy List, managing director of Boeing Defence Australia and a veteran of the Royal Australian Air Force. 'Military people have a really strong work ethic and strong discipline, and they show up and always bring their best. Veterans excel at adaptability and problem-solving skills. There's also that mindset of safety and compliance to the regulations, particularly in aviation: not everyone is suited to working in that environment, but our veterans have lived and breathed it for years, and they're perfect for the role.' As a trained aeronautical engineer, Ms List had a distinguished career in the RAAF, but she said her technical training is not her most important asset. 'The most important skillsets I acquired as a RAAF officer were the ones that had little to do with thrust or aerodynamics,' she said. 'It's about making decisions in uncertain environments. The military, across all levels, provides some really outstanding leadership training, and not only training on how to be a leader, they provide a lot of training in how to be a good teammate.' Ms List said veterans are very connected to the work they do and play a key role in supporting customers. 'While we might recruit them to come into a job that's directly relatable [to their past skills], hopefully their career path will open for them and they can go in different ways,' she said. Boeing Defence Australia is one of the Australian Defence Force's most important partners. From the F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter, P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and helicopters such as the CH-47 Chinook to cutting-edge development programs including the uncrewed MQ-28 Ghost Bat, the company is maintaining and developing weapons systems that need to be both complex and reliable. Ms List said the ability to contribute to a dynamic organisation is what sets ex-service people apart. 'While the specific technical skills, like being able to fix a Super Hornet or understanding the way the software works on a particular aircraft are valuable, I actually find it's those soft skills that really come to the fore when we're determining what it means to be a great employee here at Boeing,' Ms List said. That's why the company is making itself as attractive as possible as a post-service employer. Boeing Defence Australia is now recognised as an Employer of Choice, alongside more than 350 organisations that have joined the Department of Veteran Affairs' Veteran Employment Commitment. 'It formalises what we are agreeing to do to make sure that we're a great place for veterans to work; that we have those support mechanisms in place; that we're able to help them translate their military skills to the civilian environment,' Ms List said. Veterans and Boeing employees Dave Wilson, Jodi Reid and Lisa Sheridan at the Shine of Remembrance in Anzac Square, Brisbane. However, she said many ex-servicepeople often struggle to sell their abilities and experiences to employers. 'I think one of the key elements of serving in the military and being part of something that's bigger than yourself is an inherent humility and an understanding that you rarely achieve anything by yourself,' she said. 'They're always wanting to give the credit to someone else. 'One of the things we work on with veterans as we're helping them translate their skills, is to really make sure they own those key skills, the benefits they bring, and are able to go to job interviews and put their best foot forward.' Boeing also has a global Veterans Engagement Team with an Australian chapter. 'It's a central point for all our veteran activities. It helps give them support if they need it, and helps them network,' Ms List said. 'We have a lot of activities to make sure veterans can connect, and share some of those unique challenges they might face, particularly as they transition to civilian employment. 'One of the things that we look to do with our BVET group is to make sure they can come and work for us and immediately find that community of people who understand what they've gone through, and can help connect them to other people, and resources that might help.' Ultimately, Ms List said it is hard-headed business that drives Boeing to employ so many ex-service people. 'It's absolutely good for our business to have veterans in here.' Hiring a veteran is great for your organisation. Find out how to recruit and retain veteran employees at
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Veterans fume after VA partially blames them for overpayments it claws back
Christopher Praino signed a waiver relinquishing his disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs after he was ordered to active duty in fall 2019. In a letter, the VA confirmed it would terminate his roughly $965 monthly payments because, by law, he could not receive both VA benefits and active-duty pay at the same time. But the agency did not fully halt the payments. Instead, it sent various monthly amounts over the next three years, ranging from $0 to over $2,000, Praino's records show. 'The VA never stopped,' he said, 'after response after response, call after call, walk-in after walk-in.' In 2023, despite Praino's repeated efforts to rectify the inconsistent installments that should have ended years ago, the VA informed him in a letter that he owed nearly $68,000. That year, the government began automatically clawing some of the money out of his military paychecks, which he uses to support five children and his wife, leaving him in dire financial straits. 'No words can tell you the emotional, mental and physical heartache I have every day dealing with this,' he said. 'It's eating away at me.' In a recent congressional oversight hearing focused on why the VA regularly overpays veterans and then asks for the money back, agency officials partially blamed veterans for the exorbitant errors, telling lawmakers that some veterans have been failing to report eligibility changes that would have lowered their monthly disability compensation or pension payments. But Praino and two other veterans told NBC News they did notify the VA in a timely manner. Yet, records show the agency continued overpaying them for months, sometimes years, before asking for the money back. The long-delayed adjustments, which can cause veterans to incur life-changing debts, may indicate another operational shortfall at the VA weeks after officials testified that the agency doles out about $1 billion in overpayments each year due to administrative errors and other factors. The VA overpaid about $5.1 billion in disability compensation and pension payments from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2024, according to Rep. Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. The issue is recurring and getting worse, Luttrell told NBC News, even as the Trump administration has cut billions of dollars in grants and slashed thousands of federal jobs in an attempt to trim what it sees as waste and inefficiency in federal spending. 'It's not the veterans' fault,' Luttrell said. 'It's the system that is failing.' In a statement, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz said the agency, under new leadership, is 'working hard to fix longstanding problems, such as billions of dollars per year in overpayments.' Luttrell said the overpayment issue is complex, largely stemming from tiers of human error and an outdated computer system that he said does not adequately allow information to be shared between local and national VA offices. 'You have to get the software to talk to each other. You have to get the veterans to communicate. You have to get the actors inside the VA to move accordingly, and then you have to make sure the system is lined out as it needs to be,' he said. 'That is such a complex problem set to solve.' In 2015, after his divorce was finalized, veteran Brent Aber said he went to his local VA's office in Akron, Ohio, to remove his ex-wife as a dependent. 'I thought, OK, all is done,' he said. Aber said it felt like he was officially closing a difficult chapter in his life. But eight years later, another nightmare emerged when the national VA's Debt Management Center sent him a letter, notifying him that he had to pay back more than $17,700. Aber, who served in both the Navy and Army for a dozen years, said he called the VA to find out how he accrued this debt. He said he was told that different VA computer systems do not communicate with one another, meaning the dependent removal may have never been registered nationally, and his monthly payments had not decreased as they should have. Kasperowicz, the VA spokesperson, disputed claims made by Aber and Luttrell about the computer systems, saying the VA has had a centralized claims system since 2013 that 'ensures updated information is reflected' for each veteran. Upon follow-up, Luttrell could not be reached for comment on the VA's dispute. Kasperowicz did not offer an explanation as to what happened in Aber's case and said the VA has no record of his dependent change request from 2015. Aber said he spent more than a year fighting the recoupment and claimed financial hardship. But in May, the VA began withholding nearly $500 from his monthly compensation payments until the debt is cleared. To make up for the loss, Aber, who lost both of his legs in a training accident and is now mostly bedridden, said he stopped using a house cleaning service and is mostly eating cheaper, microwavable food. 'I provided all the paperwork at the time of the divorce, but that didn't seem to matter,' he said. The 50-year-old said the VA's recoupment hurts more as he fights for medical care. He said he has been struggling with severe pain and swelling since he underwent revision surgery on his limbs about two years ago with the hopes of getting fitted again for prosthetics. While Aber said his primary care doctor referred him to an orthopedic surgeon with expertise in double amputations, he said the VA denied the referral. Kasperowicz said the "entirety of the VA Northeast Ohio Healthcare System orthopedic section" and other health care providers have evaluated Aber and "all have agreed that there are no additional surgical options that would provide him pain relief or improved function." "The medical consensus is to continue amputee clinic, physical therapy, pain management and behavioral health treatments to address the complexity of his condition," Kasperowicz said. Aber said the double battle he has been waging against the VA has left him feeling frustrated and betrayed. 'I feel like I've been completely done wrong,' he said. In Bonaire, Georgia, veteran John Mullens reported a dependent change in February after his 18-year-old son became eligible for a separate VA educational benefit that provides monthly payments to cover the cost of school. By law, veterans cannot receive both benefits at the same time, which Mullens knew from his own research. NBC News reviewed records from his VA portal, showing he filed a request to remove a dependent on Feb. 18. The claim was assigned to a reviewer on Feb. 19, the portal shows. And there were no other updates until May when Mullens received a letter from the VA, alerting him to the duplicate payments, which the VA said resulted in about $340 in overpayments each month. 'They did nothing with the information and continued to overpay me,' Mullens, 55, said. 'The processes are broken.' Kasperowicz said it currently takes an average of about 21 days for the VA to remove a dependent and an average of about 91 days to add one. Of the nearly $1.4 billion overpaid in fiscal year 2021, Kasperowicz said about $913 million was related to dependent changes. The VA does not track data showing how many veterans in overpayment cases actually did report changes on time, Kasperowicz said. The overpayments sometimes span many years. In 2023, the VA temporarily suspended the collection of pension debts for thousands of low-income wartime veterans and their survivors after the agency identified an issue with its income verification that led to overpayments between 2011 and 2022. On May 14, Luttrell and other members of the House subcommittee pressed VA officials to explain how the agency planned to fix the problem. Nina Tann, executive director of the VA's compensation service, testified that the agency, which serves about 9.1 million people, has a 'heightened risk' of making improper payments due to the large number of beneficiaries and the high-dollar amounts it doles out. Tann said the agency has taken steps to prevent, detect and correct the issue, including being better about notifying veterans that they need to report changes. Tann also said the VA fixed an administrative error in January that had been causing duplicate payments for about 15,000 veterans with dependents in fiscal year 2024. The agency did not force those veterans to repay the money, she said. Kasperowicz said the VA does not seek to recoup overpayments when administrative errors, including issues related to the VA's online filing platform, are to blame. But Praino, who owes almost $68,000 after re-enlisting, said it has been challenging to prove the VA made an administrative error. 'They will not admit any mistake,' said Praino, 42, an Army sergeant first class, who has been serving in the National Guard full time since 2019. The VA did not immediately comment on Praino's case. The VA transferred Praino's debt to the Treasury Department, which notified Praino in a December 2023 letter that it is required to withhold up to 15% of his federal wages. The Treasury Department began automatically garnishing about $800 from his monthly paychecks in 2023, according to documents provided by Praino. Praino, who is based in Georgia, now takes home about $3,800 a month, which he said barely covers the rent. With car payments, student loans and other expenses and bills, Praino said he has been racking up his credit card with essential purchases like food for his family. Praino said he has post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and traumatic brain injury after first serving in the Navy from 2001 to 2003 and then in the Army. 'When you add a financial crisis to the mix, and you're continuing to serve, which is always a high-stress environment 24/7, my emotional state, my mental state, it is a wreck,' he said. This article was originally published on
WIRED
6 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
WIRED Talked to a Fired DOGE Staffer About Who Was Really in Charge
May 29, 2025 8:07 PM Sahil Lavingia, who says he was fired from DOGE after speaking out about his experiences there, told WIRED about how he communicated with the group, who appears to be in charge, and what might be coming next. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES With Elon Musk and other leaders of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) purportedly on their way out, WIRED spoke with a fired DOGE staffer about his experience, how the group communicates, who appears to be in charge—and what might be coming next. Earlier this week, Sahil Lavingia published a blog post on his personal website detailing his 55-day stint within DOGE. Lavingia, who WIRED first identified as a member of DOGE at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), is the CEO of Gumroad, a platform that helps creatives sell their work. In his post, Lavingia describes the kinds of projects he worked on at the VA, and his overall impressions of working with DOGE. Lavingia described the DOGE operations as 'disorganized,' with little information sharing across different teams. This could all change soon, as Musk has spent the last few weeks saying that he is going to be largely leaving his DOGE duties behind. Two of his closest lieutenants, Steve Davis and Nicole Hollander, appear to be departing as well. Davis, who has worked with Musk for years, including at X and as the CEO of the Boring Company, has been integral to the day-to-day operations of DOGE. Without Davis at the helm, Lavingia says, it's unclear who will lead DOGE—and in what direction. 'Steven was the only person who was across everything,' Lavingia tells WIRED. Musk, Davis, and Hollander did not reply to WIRED's requests for comment. Lavingia told WIRED that Davis appeared to be the person directing most of the DOGE activities at different agencies, and was in direct contact with all the DOGE members at various points. Generally, in Lavingia's experience, that correspondence happened using the encrypted messaging app Signal. Experts and lawmakers have previously warned that using Signal for official government communications could violate laws that require government employees to maintain records of all communications. Earlier this year, then-national security advisor Mike Waltz accidentally added the editor of the Atlantic to a Signal group chat where Waltz and other senior officials in the Trump administration discussed imminent and sensitive military actions in Yemen. Davis, Lavingia says, would message priorities to whomever was the DOGE team lead at a given agency. At the VA, Lavingia tells WIRED, Davis instructed the DOGE team to prioritize reviewing contracts for cancellation. Davis would message Lavingia periodically to check in about how his work was going, but would rarely reply to Lavingia's responses, he says. According to Lavingia, in late March, Davis was present at a meeting with Musk, called an 'E meeting.' Many of the DOGE workers he encountered at that meeting, Lavigna says, appeared mostly focused on executing tasks that Davis had assigned to them. Two other Musk loyalists, Anthony Armstrong and Baris Akis, were present at the 'E meeting.' These three men— Armstrong, Akis, and Davis—appeared to be the people in charge, Lavingia claims. 'Steven is basically like a chief of staff or body man when Elon was there,' he says. Akis, the co-founder and president of venture capital firm Human Capital, is a long-time Musk associate. He is not a US citizen. In February, the Atlantic reported that Trump advisers had prevented Musk from hiring Akis into DOGE because he was born in Turkey, but has a green card. U.S. legal regulations, the Atlantic noted, generally do not allow for non-Americans to be employed by the government. Lavingia says, however, that Akis was the person who helped bring him into DOGE, messaging let him know that he would be assigned to work at the VA and connecting him with the DOGE team lead for the agency. Akis did not respond to WIRED's request for comment and WIRED was not able to review messages between Lavingia and Akis. The Atlantic noted in their February report that Akis also did not respond to their request for comment. In a live recording with the All-In Podcast earlier this month, Antonio Gracias, another Musk ally and a known DOGE affiliate, appeared to confirm Akis's presence, and said that 'Baris and Emily do the recruiting' for DOGE. (Lavingia could not confirm who the mention of 'Emily' referred to in the podcast.) Armstrong, who helped advise Musk on his purchase of Twitter, has mostly focused his efforts at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), one of the first departments taken over by DOGE. Davis has long been an important part of Musk's inner circle. When Musk took over Twitter in 2022, Davis and his partner, Hollander, slept in the company's offices with their newborn child as they helped Musk fire thousands of people and shrink the company's footprint. Hollander also joined Davis in the DOGE effort, working at the General Service Administration (GSA). Even before Trump took office, Davis led the recruitment efforts for DOGE, then based out of SpaceX's DC offices. He recruited one young engineer who is now running a 'DOGE orthogonal' AI startup, according to previous WIRED reporting. Davis was also instrumental in pressing for access to sensitive data at the Social Security Administration (SSA) for one of the group's young engineers, Akash Bobba. Musk and Davis were what is known as special government employees (SGEs), who are able to work in government for a limited period of time up to 130 days. In his blog post, Lavingia writes that DOGE was a way for the Trump administration to distance itself from otherwise unpopular decisions. 'In reality, DOGE had no direct authority. The real decisions came from the agency heads appointed by President Trump, who were wise to let DOGE act as the 'fall guy' for unpopular decisions,' he wrote on his website earlier this week. Without Musk and Davis, Lavingia says he has 'no idea' what direction DOGE will take. And as for the young engineers who followed Musk and Davis into government: 'I assume they'll leave soon too.'
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
DOGE worker reveals why he was fired less than two months into the job as department implodes under Elon Musk exodus
A former DOGE employee claims he was fired from Elon Musk 's cost-cutting department just one day after his simple claim that 'the government works' was published in an interview. Sahil Lavingia posted to his blog Wednesday that he had been fired after speaking to Fast Company about his work at DOGE and what he has discovered about the federal government. Lavingia claimed that he found fewer inefficiencies than he expected while working as a senior advisor to the chief of staff. 'I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions,' said Lavingia, an engineer and the CEO of tech startup Gumroad. 'But honestly, it's kind of fine - because the government works. It's not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.' Lavingia had worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs, extracting employee data and working to implement artificial intelligence over the course of 55 days before he was given the boot. During that time, he said, he became increasingly frustrated by the lack of knowledge sharing within DOGE and what he called a lack of a team culture. In one instance, he recounted how Elon Musk asked all DOGE employees how they could improve the public's perception of the agency amid fiery protests - at which Lavingia suggested he open-source his work and Musk agreed. 'The reality was setting in: DOGE was more like having McKinsey [management consulting] volunteers embedded in agencies rather than the revolutionary force I'd imagined,' he wrote. 'It was Elon (in the White House), Steven Davis (coordinating) and everyone else scattered across agencies.' He noted that he had decided to join DOGE to make a difference in the federal government - and did have some limited successes. To help review contracts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Lavingia said he used a large language model to flag some for potential cancelation. He also said he built tools to help the VA with its layoff efforts and worked to speed up the agency's use of artificial intelligence - and improve the internal ChatGPT tool on the VA's website. However, he claimed he 'was never able to get approval to ship anything to production that would actually improve American lives - while also saving money for the American taxpayer' even though he had developed several prototypes. Many of the longtime employees at the department were distrustful of him and the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts, as they worried about Lavingia's lack of understanding of the agency and its normal procedures, WIRED previously reported. At the same time, though, Lavingia said he was surprised to see what the department was already working on. 'In meetings with the Office of the [Chief Technology Officer], I discovered ambitious ongoing software projects like reducing veterans' benefits claims from 1333 days to under a week,' he shared. 'I also learned that several of VA's cod repos were already open-source, and the world's first electronic health record system, VistA, was built by VA employees over 40 years ago.' Reflecting back on his time at the Department of Government Efficiency, Lavingia said he 'learned a lot and got to write some code for the federal government. 'For that, I'm grateful,' the Gumroad CEO wrote. 'But I'm also disappointed. I didn't make any progress on improving the UX of veterans' filing disability claims or automating/speeding up claims processing like I had hoped to when I started.' Lavingia's essay came the same day Musk abruptly announced he was leaving his position as the head of DOGE - ahead of his scheduled departure. The Tesla boss had spent the last few weeks slowly phasing out of politics amid whispers of tensions with top Trump officials. The situation came to a head on Tuesday night when Musk laid into Trump's 'big beautiful bill' and admitted he was disappointed with the treatment his DOGE team had received. 'It undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk bluntly told CBS of the $3.8trillion spending bill. Musk - who spoke to multiple outlets about the White House betrayal - went on to decry the treatment he and his baby-faced DOGE henchmen had received. 'DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,' he told the Washington Post. 'Something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.' Several other high-ranking officials have since followed Musk's lead, with Katie Miller - who had served as an adviser to President Trump and the spokeswoman for the Department of Government Efficiency - reportedly joining Musk in the private sector. She is now reportedly helping Musk set up media interviews unrelated to his government work as he officially quit his position as the head of DOGE, an insider told CNN. The White House also confirmed on Wednesday that Steve Davis left his role as the number two man at DOGE, where he handled the day-to-day operations including hiring and firing. He reportedly took his cues from Musk about which agencies to cut, and worked to ensure those were carried out by DOGE staffers, those familiar with the internal workings of DOGE told the Wall Street Journal. But Davis had also reportedly been planning to focus more on modernizing the government's aging computer systems. A third DOGE leader, Brad Smith, is said to have also returned to the private sector. During his time at DOGE, Smith - a healthcare executive - had been stationed at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Independent
28-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Trump is finally getting his military parade the Pentagon blocked last time
President Donald Trump is finally getting the military parade he has wanted since his first stint in the White House. The Pentagon previously opposed the notion of having a parade because officials wanted to distance the military from politics. On June 14, Trump's 79th birthday and the Army's 250th anniversary, 28 Abrams tanks, 28 armored personnel carriers, more than 100 other vehicles, 6,700 soldiers, 50 helicopters, a B-25 bomber from World War II, two mules, and a dog will hit the streets and the skies of the nation's capital. The estimated cost is $25 million to $45 million. The upper number may even rise, however, as the army has committed to fixing any city streets damaged by the parade. The cost of the cleanup work and police services is not yet included in the estimate, The New York Times noted. The Pentagon's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 is $1.01 trillion, coming as the Trump administration is making severe cuts to public services, including education, health, and disaster aid. In addition, thousands of military veterans are slated to lose government jobs in agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs due to demanded cuts by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. While Army spokesperson Steve Warren told The Times that $45 million is 'a lot of money,' he added: 'But I think that amount of money is dwarfed by 250 years of service and sacrifice by America's Army.' When the Army turned 200 in 1975, no parade was held amid the Vietnam War and Kent State shootings. Smaller commemorations were organized at Army bases around the U.S. However, the U.S. was set to celebrate its bicentennial the following year. Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told reporters last week that Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, could be an ideal location for similar celebrations on a smaller scale, 'where the Old Guard could march with some veterans,' referencing the Army's oldest active duty infantry unit, the 3rd infantry regiment. 'But this is Trump,' Reed told the press at the Defense Writers Group, according to The Times. 'It's consistent with so much of what he's doing.' Trump has wanted a military parade since he watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris during his first term (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) The parade will pass by Trump's viewing platform on Constitution Avenue on the evening of Saturday, June 14, part of a big celebration on the National Mall. The marching troops will be housed in two government buildings, reportedly sleeping on military cots and bringing their own sleeping bags. The Army has been planning elements of the celebration for more than two years. However, those plans were focused on festivals, a postal stamp, a number of fun runs, and military bands. The military parade didn't enter the plans until this year, Army officials said, according to The Times. While there are no plans to sing 'Happy Birthday' to Trump or to the Army, one element includes members of the Army's parachute team, the Golden Knights, landing and handing the president a flag. The last large American military parade took place following the end of the Gulf War. Trump watched the Bastille Day parade in Paris during his first year in the White House in 2017. He came back to the U.S. wanting his own parade, but the Pentagon at the time didn't agree. Guy Snodgrass, a former speechwriter to then-defense secretary Jim Mattis, wrote in the book Holding the Line that Mattis said he would 'rather swallow acid.'
