New chief to tackle VA paper problems.(ARCHIVES)

Eric Shinseki, the newly appointed head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, wants to fundamentally change how the department handles paperwork.

During a House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing, he said caseworkers currently face a "Sisyphean task" in trying to comb through a backlog of files to assess veterans' claims.

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'If you were to walk into one of our rooms where adjudication or decisions are being made about disability for veterans, you would see individuals sitting at desks with stacks of paper that go up halfway to the ceiling. And as they finish one pile, another pile comes in," he said.

Sorting through all the paperwork requires 11,100 employees or as many as the number of troops in the 82nd Airborne, Shinseki said. He plans to hire 1,100 this year and maybe more if the department does not move to an electronic system.

"In my opinion, this is a brute-force solution. We need to quickly take this into an IT format that allows us to do timely, accurate, consistent decision-making on behalf of our veterans," Shinseki said. "My intent is to get to a paperless solution as quickly as possible."

He said moving to a paperless system also would allow the VA to better coordinate and keep track of personnel and medical records, some of which are already electronic.

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