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A FINAL WORD ON THE VETS' SURVEY -- The Vets' Commission does not

have a justifiable "Need to Know" veterans' personal information. And,

there are absolutely no guarantees that personal information will be

adequately protected. Do NOT take the VDBC survey.

 

  

 

After careful consideration, I must still advise all veterans NOT to participate in the survey being taken by the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission (VDBC).

Why?

 

1.  The VDBC has no "Need to Know" veterans' personal information.

2.  The VDBC cannot guarantee the safety of personal information.

3.  ORC Macro, the company contracted to implement the survey, cannot guarantee the safety of personal information.

 

Background on this here... http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf120106-1.htm

Veterans' Advocate Jim Strickland also advises against taking the survey.  That here...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf120106-11.htm

To be fair, here are the arguments given by the Commission (specifically by Ray Wilburn, Executive Director of the VDBC) as to why you should take the survey...
http://www.vawatchdog.org/nfDEC06/nf120206-1.htm

They are NOT good arguments.

And, Mr. Wilburn's assertion that "All individual-identifying information will be separated from your actual responses and then destroyed," is not exactly truthful.  If the VDBC only got answers, the answers would be meaningless.  Perhaps the veteran's name will be removed from the answers, but the veteran will, most likely, be identified by amount of disability and compensation, type of disability and other necessary personal and medical identifiers to help put the answers into context.  It's the only way the answers can have any statistical meaning.

Also, ORC Macro must be keeping daily backups of their huge databases, and that would include the complete information on the veteran taking the survey and the answers.  They would have to do this to reconstruct the data if lost, stolen or corrupted.

If you want to hand out your personal and medical information, print up 1,000 copies at Kinko's and pass them out at the Mall.

The VDBC's history of trying to study ways to cut veterans' benefits is already the stuff of legend.  They tried to study veterans who get VA compensation and SSDI with an eye to offsetting payments.  They tried to study lump-sum buyouts of VA compensation.  Our service organizations headed off both of those areas of study.

Let me, once again, quote the American Legion on the VDBC:  "A June 6, 2005 American Legion Bulletin notes members of congress including the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee (Steve Buyer, Indiana, 4th District) and other government officials, have publicly expressed their desire to use the VDBC as a vehicle to institute radical changes in the VA disability system that would negatively impact and restrict entitlement to benefits for a large number of veterans."

And, a simple reminder from the VDBC's charter.  They are charged to determine "whether a veteran's disability or death should be compensated."  Whether?  That's quite a question.  I thought it was a given that a veteran's disability or death should be compensated.  The VDBC thinks otherwise!

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Larry Scott