VA


This is one in a series of profiles on the 2012 Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal finalists. The awards, presented by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, recognize outstanding federal employees whose important, behind-the-scenes work is advancing the health, safety and well-being of Americans and are among the most prestigious honors given to civil servants. This profile features a finalist for the Career Achievement Medal, Patricia Hayes, chief consultant, Chief Consultant, Women Veterans Health Strategic Health Care Group at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.

After more than two decades as an outspoken advocate for improving health care for female veterans, Patricia Hayes is now leading an ambitious Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initiative to make the male-dominated medical system more responsive to the growing number of women who have served in the military. Keep reading →

When Roger Baker, the chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, looks at the challenge of managing mobile technology, he sees more than the task of moving data securely to the tablets and smartphones used by the department’s nearly 280,000 doctors and employees.

Sounding more like a brand manager than a CIO, Baker said that the bigger challenge is managing the department’s mobile applications – and more specifically, the experience veterans and employees encounter when they use them. Keep reading →


As chief technology officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Peter Levin is responsible for the cybersecurity of the largest medical system in the United States and the second largest federal agency.

His job involves helping to facilitate and secure the flow of personal health information among the VA employees at hundreds of hospitals, clinics and offices nationwide, and making that information available electronically to the 21.9 million veterans and their families who depend on the VA for their medical care. Medical professionals and veterans are increasingly seeking to access that information via mobile devices, which raises new concerns about privacy. Keep reading →

Earlier today, The White House updated the IT Dashboard, sharing publicly for the first time detailed IT investment information in support of the President’s FY 2013 Budget.
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This article was originally published earlier today in a blog posted on The White House Office of Management and Budget Website by Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel.
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The Administration first launched the IT Dashboard back in 2009 as part of our effort to create a more transparent and open government. By publicly posting data on more than 700 IT investments across the Federal government, we armed agencies with the tools needed to reduce duplication in IT spending, strengthen the accountability of agency CIOs, and provide more accurate and detailed information on projects and activities. We also gave Americans an unprecedented window into how their tax dollars were being spent. Keep reading →


A GAO report to Congress has identified several areas where the government duplicates efforts, creating unnecessary costs and inefficiencies, but also reflects an improvement over last year.

The 2012 Duplicative Program Report, recently released by the Government Accountability Office, identified 51 areas “where programs may be able to achieve greater efficiencies or become more effective in providing government services.” Keep reading →

As chief technology officer of the Veterans Affairs Department, Dr. Peter Levin isn’t tasked with making sure that routers are maintained or seeing that the network stays up. Far from it. You could say he’s more of a technology conceptualist.

Rather than “chief technology officer”–a position at VA to which he was appointed in 2009–he might have been more appropriately titled “chief innovation officer.” Keep reading →


This is the second of a three-part series examining government services addressing key challenges among military veterans amid high unemployment, a woeful economic outlook and an anticipated influx of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan in the next few years.

When Nick Colgin came back from treating gunshot wounded soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan, he set out to find a job doing what he had done well enough to save lives in the war-torn country. Keep reading →


This is the first of a three-part series examining government services addressing key challenges among military veterans amid high unemployment, a woeful economic outlook and an anticipated influx of veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan in the next few years.

The nation’s military veterans have long been lauded America’s heroes, deserving the utmost respect, admiration and support from fellow citizens. Keep reading →


Veterans, Medicare recipients and military health care beneficiaries today can download digital files of their available personal health data on a computer, smartphone or flash drive, providing them with instant access to critical information and promoting personal management of their own health care.

This groundbreaking development is possible because of additions to three government websites, all now containing a “Blue Button” icon that allows individual users to login, view, print and save copies of their available personal health information, some of which is extracted from organizational health records. More than 250,000 people had downloaded their health information through the fledgling Blue Button initiative by the spring of 2011, but there is a potential for millions of people to use the system. Keep reading →


When Dr. Matthew Friedman began his career working with veterans nearly 40 years ago, not a single person had been diagnosed with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. In fact, the term had yet to be invented.

Today, as the executive director for the National Center for PTSD at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Friedman is widely known as a pioneer in the field of traumatic studies. His career has been devoted to identifying the causes of and treatments for PTSD and advocating for those whose psychological well-being has been harmed by stresses of war and other jarring experiences. Keep reading →

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