The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously voted today to advance the President Biden’s nominee for Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Denis McDonough to a full-Senate confirmation vote. […]
While the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to impact healthcare delivery to veterans well into 2021, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its Veterans Health Administration (VHA) component are already taking into account requirements for telehealth services when the pandemic abates but its mental-health impacts persist. […]
Denis McDonough, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), plans to make cybersecurity “a key priority” if confirmed, along with IT modernization efforts and expansion of broadband services. […]
With the Biden administration taking office Jan. 20, the Federal CIO Council has named acting CIOs at five of the seven agencies where the position is helmed by political appointees who are obliged to step down at the end of presidential administrations. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) CIO office undertook quick efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that its infrastructure supported safe telework. The office was able to meet the needs of an organization playing a crucial role in keeping the country healthy, recounted VA CIO Jim Gfrerer along with other experts during a MeriTalk webinar on December 16. […]
The Veterans Administration (VA) is putting out a call for feedback from industry on its plan to standardize the agency’s Human Resources (HR) IT systems. The agency’s request for information (RFI), posted Dec. 11, asks for comment by Jan. 14, 2021. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced the completion of all IT initiatives for the implementation of the Forever GI Bill – also known as the Colmery Act – and the full deployment of associated software and systems, finishing the implementation of a policy initiative that initially put VA’s IT in the headlines for the wrong reasons. […]
President-elect Joe Biden announced today that his administration will be nominating Denis McDonough as Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), as well as naming a few others to key cabinet positions. “This dedicated and distinguished group of public servants will bring the highest level of experience, compassion, and integrity to bear, solving problems and expanding possibilities […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has released a “Customer Experience (CX) Cookbook” for Federal agencies that features key ingredients and recipes for embedding CX in Federal services and for cooking up CX best practices. […]
Jim Gfrerer, CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), said today that the agency is “constantly looking” to modernize several hundred technical functions and applications in order to improve on legacy technology environments. […]
A new report from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) examines how the VA’s IT initiatives have improved access to benefits and services. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced it will be using 3-D printing to design, print, and produce its own medical devices. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Veterans Health Administration – which boasts the largest integrated health system in the U.S. – is continuing to embrace 5G technology by exploring meaningful use cases to support veterans, an agency official said today. […]
Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic radically alter how Federal agencies meet their mission, but it also gave some agencies new responsibilities that are, quite literally, matters of life and death. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Oct. 24 officially launched its new electronic health record (EHR) system at VA facilities in the Pacific Northwest and Las Vegas. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that it completed transferring patient data for approximately 88,000 veterans to its new electronic health record (EHR) solution as the agency prepares for the system’s launch at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (VAMC) in Spokane, Wash. […]
The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (FEHRM) program office announced that the Departments of Defense (DoD), Veterans Affairs (VA), and Homeland Security’s U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) component have expanded their joint health information exchange (HIE) network after connecting with CommonWell Health Alliance. […]
The Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization (FEHRM) program office last month released to Congress its interoperability strategy which aims to optimize the interoperability of information systems that the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) use to support health care of active duty military and veterans. […]
New bipartisan legislation is aimed at addressing transparency issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers (VAMC). […]
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program is aiming for big progress in Fiscal Year 2021 on upgrading agency and Federal-level dashboard infrastructure and improving the quality of data coming from agency network sensors, along with continuing to get a better handle on how agencies employ cloud infrastructure and cloud security. […]
After multiple delays of the Department of Veterans Affairs Electronic Health Record Modernization program, a critical part of the project is set to “go live” later this month, VA officials told members of Congress on Sept. 30. […]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today reported results of its review of Federal agency efforts to reduce IT contracts duplication, and found that four of the seven agencies reviewed had fully or partially taken recommended steps to regularly identify potential contract duplication. […]
As a part of its record digitization efforts alongside the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) completed digitization of declassified deck logs from the Vietnam War. […]
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into autumn, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has continued its effort to support veterans in crisis by partnering with customer experience management provider Medallia to launch the Veterans Signals program. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is launching several real-time customer experience surveys on its websites to monitor feedback from veterans on their use of VA.gov, according to the agency’s September 2020 President’s Management Agenda (PMA) update. […]
A Government Accountability Office (GAO) official said on Sept. 16 that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is taking action on several major IT modernization and cybersecurity issues that GAO has flagged in recent years, but that the agency still has a lot of work to do to address many of them. […]
In the wake of a data breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that exposed the personal information of 46,000 veterans, Deputy CIO and Principal Assistant Secretary Dominic Cussatt highlighted data security and privacy to serve the veteran community as a key tenet of the agency’s transformation efforts. […]
Data offers extraordinary power – and no two organizations harness this power better than the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). These two groups rallied around a shared goal – to leverage technology to improve the lives of veterans and citizens alike. […]
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced today that an unauthorized actor entered its Financial Services Center database and accessed the personal information of 46,000 veterans. […]
The Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has automated some processes to streamline administering assistance to veterans, but according to Under Secretary for Benefits Paul Lawrence, the agency’s customer-centric approach to AI and robotic process automation (RPA) is what makes it so successful. […]