Veterans Affairs Suspends 45 Tech Projects Following OMB Scrutiny

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is turning up the heat on IT projects that are lagging behind schedule or have gone over budget. The VA issued a statement late last week saying it will audit 45 current projects to see whether they're worth keeping -- a move that follows the recent release of the Office of Management and Budget's IT dashboard, which allows government agencies and the public to track the flow of federal IT spending.

VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki ordered a review of the VA's 300 or so current IT projects, and has thus far red-flagged 45 that warrant closer examination and will be "temporarily halted."

Each of the projects will have to pass muster under the VA's new Program Management Accountability System (PMAS), which requires the project manager to create a plan for implementation and for the VA's assistant secretary of Information and Technology to approve that plan before the project is resumed.

"VA has a responsibility to the American people, who are investing millions of dollars in technology projects, to deliver quality results that adhere to a budget and are delivered on time," Shinseki said in a statement from the VA. "They need to have confidence that the dollars they are spending are being effectively used to improve the lives of our veterans."

The VA listed all 45 projects under review on its Web site, and they included everything from an administrative data repository to a number of health care IT-driven projects.

The projects have a combined value of about $200 million, and at least one -- a patient scheduling system that hasn't been installed at a single VA hospital as of yet -- is nearly a year-and-a-half behind schedule and 110 percent over budget.

"Our goal is to increase our success rate for our systems development projects," said Roger W. Baker, the VA's assistant secretary for Information and Technology, in a statement. "We will use every tool at our disposal to bring about greater accountability and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely. PMAS and the IT Dashboard will be critical indicators of whether our IT projects are on schedule and on budget, and if they are not, we will take swift action to cut down on waste and redundancy."

The IT Dashboard is one of several pushes from new federal CIO Vivek Kundra to carry out the Obama administration's goal of openness and transparency in how the federal government spends money on technology.

The dashboard shows that about 63 percent of 41 projects defined as major by the VA carry "significant concerns" from Kundra's office.

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