In a Dec. 2022 interview with GovCIO Media & Research, the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Deputy Chief Information Officer and Chief People Officer Nathan Tierney said VA is focusing on offering incentives such as remote work and special pay rates for technology talent to incentivize people to join the agency’s tech team and compete with private industry.

“Over 62% of our IT workforce is working remotely. We are going to continue to expand as we modernize our workforce,” Tierney said. “Data, AI and other advanced techniques that you see in the private sector, we need to bring into the public sector if we’re going to achieve the vision of being a world class IT organization.” …

VA is developing a roadmap to get to zero trust, which enables the agency to take a holistic approach to its cyber posture. VA also requested a $107 million increase to its fiscal year 2023 cybersecurity budget to provide more funding to its information security program, focusing on implementing zero trust principles.

VA CIO Kurt DelBene said he is focusing on a zero trust framework to develop a set of measures of security and inform decision-making moving forward… Read the full article here.