Veterans’ Affairs Overhauling IT Contracting & Project Management
In the wake of some embarrassing scorecard ratings and expensive setbacks, the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs is implementing a new project management approach and a new enterprise project management office. Recruiting has already begun, and full implementation will occur during fiscal 2006. As a result of this effort, project requirements at one of the largest federal I.T. spenders will be more closely defined, system architecture will receive more attention, and a milestone process will enable managers to better compare progress against the original statement of work.
The department’s proposed fiscal 2006 IT budget is $2.1B, of which $1.9B is for major projects like HealtheVet ($311.3M) to replace the aging VISTA electronic health records system, common data standards for data sharing with the Defense Department, remediation of the CoreFLS financial and logistics systems ($70.1M), a “One VA” enterprise architecture plan that would act as an approval gate for all future IT deployments, et. al. Federal Computer Weekly: VA learns tech lessons
