“Count them all: the Department of Veterans is juggling a mile-long list of seemingly massive technology modernization projects.”
“It’s knee-deep in the modernization of its human resources systems, an ongoing financial management business transformation and an overhaul of its medical logistics supply chain…”
“An increasingly long to-do list from Congress is driving much of VA’s push to modernize, but so is nearly $1 billion in technical debt across the department, Dominic Cussatt, VA’s deputy chief information officer and principal deputy assistant secretary for information and technology, said last week at AFCEA’s Bethesda’s annual Health IT Summit…”
“That is not about cost savings; that’s about capabilities delivery,” he said. “Every system we have [for example] is dependent on a single-sign-on. Before we migrated to the cloud, we were at 70% availability. That is horrendous.”
“The move to an enterprise cloud is part of a broader push to standardize IT programs and procedures across the department…”
“A new IT scorecard, which Gfrerer said VA is nearly finished developing, will help the department better track the department’s multi-faceted digital transformation strategy…” Read the full article here.
Source: $1B in technical debt driving VA’s massive IT modernization efforts – By Nicole Ogrysko, January 21, 2020. Federal News Network.
