Veterans Administration


Mobile technology has joined cybersecurity, controlling costs, human capital and central agency policy on the list of top concerns that keep federal chief information officers awake at night, according to a newly-released survey of federal chief information officers released today by the trade group TechAmerica.

Based on in-depth interviews with more than 40 federal CIOs and their deputies, the latest annual survey finds that cybersecurity ranks as the Number 1 concern for CIOs this year, even as budget constraints now dictate how CIOs are moving forward to meet agency IT demands. Keep reading →

Millions of federal employees, retirees and their families will soon be able to benefit from a software tool developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs that allows individuals to download their personal health data from the websites of their health plans.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said it has asked all health insurance carriers who participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) to add the tool, known as the “Blue Button” and its functions to personal health record systems on their websites. OPM made the request Dec. 19, 2011, but announced the move publicly Jan. 18. 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 →

If you have been at a recent Washington Capitals hockey game when the opponent scores a goal, you know the crowd routinely shouts out “Who cares!”

Last week, Steven VanRoekel, Federal CIO, released the long awaited OMB plan for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP; which reminds me to be thankful for pronounceable acronyms. The purpose of FedRAMP per the implementing OMB memorandum, is to “provide a cost-effective, risk-based approach for the adoption and use of cloud services”. Keep reading →