(The Center Square) – The Department of Veterans Affairs has started cancelling close to 600 “non-mission critical” or “duplicative” contracts valued at about $1.8 billion – and this is just the beginning, according to the department.
The cancellations are the result of the early stages of a “deliberative, multi-level review” by some of the people responsible for the contracts, VA senior leaders and contracting officials and will allow Veterans Affairs to redirect about $900 million back to veteran benefits and services, according to a news release from the department.
The 585 contracts the department has begun cancelling “represent less than 1% of the roughly 90,000 contracts VA currently has in place” and the department plans to perform a thorough review of all of them.
The department stated in its release that mission-critical contracts are exempt from reductions.
“The termination of these contracts will not negatively affect Veteran care, benefits or services, and will help VA better focus on its core mission: providing the best possible care and services to Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors,” the department said in the release.
The department focused on eliminating contracts for services that it believes it can perform, like “staff mentoring, leadership coaching, preparation of meeting agendas and meeting minutes as well as “duplicative contracts there were performing the exact same services.”
Since President Donald Trump took office over one month ago, Veterans Affairs has worked to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives from the department, including placing 60 DEI employees on administrative leave, reinstated an in-person work policy, dismissed more than 2,400 employees and processed 1 million disability claims in record time, according to the department.
“Despite receiving 15.6% more claims than last year, the department completed its one millionth FY25 claim Feb. 20 – faster than at any point in the department’s history,” according to the department.
Veterans Affairs also “continues to hire for more than 300,000 mission-critical positions that are exempt from the federal hiring freeze.”
Veterans Affairs employs more than 370,000 people and is the federal government’s “second-largest department after the U.S. Department of Defense.”
