Martinsburg VAMC Mistake Releases Hundreds of Employee Social Security Numbers
September 6, 2007
Click to watch NBC Channel 25 News report (a short and unavoidable ad plays at the beginning of the news report)
Members of Local R4-78 at the Martinsburg (West Virginia) VA Medical Center are struggling to understand how and why envelopes revealing their Social Security numbers and other personal information “got lost” both within the medical center and the U.S. Postal Service. It’s the latest snafu in a string of leadership failures that has left the employees of the understaffed and troubled VAMC wondering, in their words, “what’s next.”
“You would think that they’d be a little more careful after what happened to all the veterans and their Social Security numbers,” said Susan Anderson, a national vice president and president of Local R4-78.
Ms. Anderson was referring to a VA scandal last year in which the Social Security numbers of 26.5 million veterans were stolen from a VA employee after he took the information home without authorization.
In this most recent incident, the human resources department of the Martinsburg VAMC mailed upwards of 700 “SF 50’s”—forms used by the federal government to notify individuals of personnel actions—in un-addressed window envelopes. The forms were folded and inserted into the envelopes in such a way that the employee’s name, Social Security number, and nature of the personnel action were visible through the envelope’s window.
According to a management official writing on behalf of Acting Medical Center Director Pedro Garcia, some of the 700 envelopes were “batched” for internal mail delivery. An unknown number, however, “were accidentally mailed via USPS and returned for ‘Insufficient address.’”
While the Martinsburg VAMC has tried to calm employees by assuring them that they are “taking all precautions to ensure all envelopes are accounted for,” Ms. Anderson says employees aren’t buying it.
“Management doesn’t even know how many envelopes they sent out. They think it’s about 700, but they really don’t know. How can they account for all the envelopes when they don’t even know how many went out,” she said.