Veterans Affairs officials acknowledged a major technical issue in August that affects over thousands American veterans. Due to a flaw in the federal filing systems, more than 32,000 veteran disability claims have been delayed, some of those for up to five years.

The problem with the software was originally discovered in February. However, the Department of Veterans Affairs only recently began to address it. The problem in the software came from the online filing system accepting the claims, which held them rather than passing them along to individuals who handle the claims.

In our modern society, it is no surprise that technology is becoming more and more utilized in every facet of our day to day lives. But we expect things to perform at a bare minimum of what they were programmed to do. The VA healthcare system has been dealing with issues like this for years due to its antiquated filing systems. The organization is currently in the middle of a major overhaul of those systems and is placing a major emphasis on digitizing and streamlining the process. The idea of this is great on paper, but technology doesn’t always perform how it has been programmed to do, no matter how many million dollars go into creating the software.

It is also important to note that not every claim has been affected during this time. Since 2018, there have been over 7 million claims put into the VA claims system. Comparatively, 32,000 is a small number. However, that is 32,000 people, many of whom have been permanently injured in some way due to their time in the service. And many have been waiting, hoping to hear any news.

Since 2018, these cases have sat waiting in a server, and many Veterans, me included, have waited to hear any news about their claims. Each time, they have been given an acknowledgement that their claim was in the system but could not be given any timeframe to expect news. Now, starting next month, each of the affected 32,000 disabled veterans will be receiving letters in the mail explaining that they were affected by this and what the next steps will be.

VA officials call this “an embarrassing oversight” and promise that back pay will be rewarded once their files are handled.

It is my opinion, that “embarrassing oversight” does not begin to describe this incident. Maybe it is because I am one of those 7 million veterans who have filed claims since 2018. I hope that I was not one of the 32,000 who were lost on a server somewhere. But, to call this an “embarrassing oversight” is borderline insulting. We served our country. We did what we were asked to do. When we came to the VA healthcare system for help, we were lost on a server.

No amount of “oops” makes this okay.