WASHINGTON – The Department of Veterans Affairs and Department of Defense, the two largest federal agencies, have failed to streamline veterans’ services and share records, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
Deputy directors of the two agencies are expected to testify Wednesday at a Senate Veterans’ Affairs committee hearing on improving information sharing through improved technology across the agencies.
The GAO report released last week criticized the VA and Defense Department for lacking specific plans, timeframes and fiscal prudence in the effort to streamline veterans’ services. They aren’t alone in lacking the fundamental “architecture” needed to improve IT systems, but the VA’s mission in particular is more visible than other government agencies and attracts more public scrutiny, said Valerie Melvin, GAO director of information management and human capital.
The GAO criticism echoes years of complaints about the VA’s complex, cumbersome and wasteful IT systems. As recently as last year, the department’s fiscal report acknowledged information technology safety as a “material weakness” facing the department.
At a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee hearing on the same topic last week, Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, slammed VA officials for shoddy information security practices and lack of a firm plan to improve services. “The American people are watching and expect the VA to take care of our veterans as promised,” Johnson said.
VA leaders don’t dispute that the agency struggles to coordinate IT issues across the 314,000 employees and 7,000 IT staffers.
Roger Baker, assistant secretary for information and technology with the VA, said the agency has more than 64,000 software programs that run on its 314,000 computers. “I doubt that products such as pinball wizard have a medical use,” Baker said.
Next week marks Baker’s second year of leading the VA’s IT department; he said the agency is beginning to make progress and has improved basics like customer service but still suffers from decades of mismanagement.
“I had to stop our failed IT programs that were wasting hundreds of millions of dollars,” Baker said of his first few months on the job.
Paul Sullivan, executive director with the nonprofit Veterans for Common Sense, said solving the IT woes is crucial because it all comes back to serving veterans. According to the GAO report, the VA and Defense are responsible for an estimated 15.6 million veterans.
“There are veterans whose claims have been languishing 20 to 30 years,” he said.
He said the lack of progress in streamlining electronic files shows an “appalling” lack of leadership.
“If the computer staff are spending days working on the computers and entering information instead of trying to decide whether the claim has merit, then the government has its priorities backwards,” Sullivan said.
Baker said the VA is learning lessons from the private sector, pointing to the use of open-source technology as a way to reduce an estimated $16 billion price tag to modernize the electronic records system.
But Sullivan worried that while open-source is an interesting notion, there needs to be assurances.
“It’s got to be simple for VA staff and veterans to use and it’s got to be strong enough for nobody to hack it,” he said.