Reps. Darrell Issa and Gerry Connolly say federal IT mismanagement has not only cost taxpayers billions, but has a dire effect on the economy.
The two congressmen with a history of butting heads agree sweeping federal IT reforms and giving CIOs budget authority would fix the problem. They talked about why on a stage in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Keep reading →
The Department of Veterans Affairs will stand up a series of internal and external mobile apps in January to deliver veterans programs and help employees do a better job of delivering benefits.
Up to 100,000 employees handling patients’ clinical information and veteran’s benefits eventually will be able to access the mobile apps to manage records while moving around units and facilities, VA CIO Roger Baker said, easing and streamlining processes and eliminating delays that have often characterized the VA’s handling of benefits. In addition, mobile apps for veterans will offer easy access to benefits and claim status. Keep reading →
Like many federal leaders today, Donald Kachman spends a lot of time thinking about security for the growing number of mobile devices in his agency.
And he’s coming up with solutions. 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 →
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 →
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 →
The Department of Veterans Affairs will lock employees out of its networks if they fail to take the required yearly cybersecurity and privacy training on time – 365 days after their last refresher course.
VA CIO Roger Baker announced the policy last week to button down security and privacy on the VA’s internal and external internet sites that have been hit by security breaches and privacy violations – both internal and external – on a regular basis. An employee who doesn’t meet the yearly deadline will be blocked out on Day 366. 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 →
The Department of Veterans Affairs is swiftly moving ahead developing secure mobile tools for its workforce as Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel is calling for broader adoption of mobile technology in the federal government.
Stephen W. Warren, the principal deputy assistant secretary for Information and Technology and CIO Roger Baker’s deputy, said Thursday there are a variety of mobile pilot projects underway to better use mobile technology to deliver services to veterans. Keep reading →
The Department of Veterans Affairs is directing every chief information officer in the field to stop buying personal desktop printers, the first step to retiring these high-cost tools across the agency and replacing them with big multiuse printers.
VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda said Nov. 29 that some regional and facility CIOs have informally gotten word of the policy shift although the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) has not yet issued a directive. The policy change came after OIT studied pilots at two facilities which have shown the value of buying and using desktop printers was less than using multiuse printers. The only exception is if an office can make a compelling case to buy one. Keep reading →