...one claim per day by one VA worker in severely backlogged CA.
Since you are comparing processing centers you can easily come up with a case per workyear for each of them. That gives you the information you need, at first impression, to FIRE MANAGERS.
So, how do you do that ~ which is always a good question ~ but here it's very simple. Just put the lowest producing managers on administrative leave. You can no longer put them on eternal detail and move them from office to office because I won that particular Civil Service decision back in 1978 ~ but you can send them home.
Immediately you get two benefits ~ (1) your low production managers are no longer in the office to gum up the works, and (2) Their replacements, temporary though they might be, are wild eyed and bushy tailed at the chance to get the work done without the permanent boss looking over their shoulder.
Sure, you'll have one less person, but that's like hiring 10 just getting rid of a nonproducing boss. A bad boss in the government is a bad boss in more ways than people in the private sector can imagine.
Since learning to process VA appeals always requires a resort to complex rules you'll want to immediately identify the world's foremost experts in those rules ~ might even be somebody in VA headquarters knows about them ~ not likely since I think they use lawyers to write them ~ but whoever they are and wherever they are they need to be melded into an structure where they can provide assistance to their fellow employees and across organizational lines to other field centers, and even headquarters.
Identify them ~ bring them to a central point for a 2 day conference (less drinking that way) and send them home with some knowledge of who their peers are ~ with names, phone numbers, etc.
Have regular phone/computer conferences about once a week at first and taper off to once a month as the 'backlog' disappears.
It'll take about two years to work it all down.
Oh, yeah, and office files ~ put some folks to work immediately to take all files which contained APPROVED APPEALS and send them to a federal records center. That'll be most of the old paperwork. Free up the cabinets ~ since all this stuff is electronic these days, you really don't need paperwork on old stuff unless there's a chance it's going to RELIVE ~ and denials usually RELIVE more than once, so keep them around.