“The Department of Veterans Affairs’ ongoing modernization programs facilitated a more rapid and comprehensive response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including in the speed of vaccine distribution.”
“Speaking at the GovernmentCIO Media & Research Enhancing Veterans Care event, VA leadership described how preexisting IT development as well as recent adaptations have allowed the agency to better provide emergency care. This provided a foundation for further refining VA capacities to better meet the challenges of the prior year.”
“’We know that no entity can provide services to their constituents without strong IT. So we, of course, anticipated that and have been spending a lot of time modernizing our infrastructure and building enterprise-wide platforms that we could scale to meet the needs of the VA, including investing in the cloud and looking into telehealth capabilities,’ said Dominic Cussatt, VA’s acting assistant secretary for IT and CIO.”
“The pandemic has also further demonstrated the need for robust digital services, leading the agency to dedicate additional funding and resources to expanding their availability.”
“’The pandemic has been interesting in that it’s really tested what we built out,’ Cussatt said. ‘It was also a real test of our partnerships with our vendor community to get end user devices and equipment that would broaden our bandwidth and broaden our capacity to provide very rich and robust telehealth encounters.’”
“Much of this has included efforts to expand connectivity and digital access to agency services, allowing veterans use of vital capacities even when their technology familiarity might be previously limited…”
“This investment in IT modernization and consolidated effort across VA has paid considerable dividends in vaccine distribution, allowing these newly deployed capacities and intra-agency partnerships to facilitate delivery…” Read the full article here.
Source: Modernizing the Digital Experience to Facilitate Veteran Vaccination – By Adam Patterson, March 19, 2021. GovernmentCIO.
