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STATEMENT
OF HONORABLE STEVE BUYER SUBCOMMITTEE
ON OVERSIGHT AND
INVESTIGATIONS HEARING
IV ON INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MARCH
13, 2002 Today the subcommittee will hold its fourth hearing to receive an update on the Department of Veterans Affairs information technology programs and the progress it has made in fulfilling the requirements of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 to develop an enterprise architecture plan. Since our previous IT hearing last April, Secretary Principi has taken several decisive steps to move towards a One-VA. First, he chose Dr. John Gauss to be his CIO for the Office of Information and Technology. Dr. Gauss has taken on a formidable task. We thank him for accepting this challenge and he has the subcommittee’s full support. Secretary Principi assembled the VA Enterprise Architecture Innovation Team to rapidly develop a plan. The team issued a report in August 2001 providing a strategy to ensure that VA operates under a fully integrated system – a One-VA system. This 90-day report stated: “The mission of VA’s Enterprise Architecture is to develop and implement an evolutionary, high-performance One-VA information technology architecture aligned with our program/business goals that enables enterprise-wide data integration. VA’s Enterprise Architecture will enable us to provide an accessible source of consistent, reliable, accurate, useful, and secure information and knowledge to veterans and their families, our workforce, and stakeholders to support effective delivery of services and benefits, enabling effective decision-making and understanding of our capabilities and accomplishments. The Enterprise Architecture will support VA’s overall strategic goals.” These are laudable goals. However, we’d like to know how the VA plans on making it accessible, reliable and secure. In particular, we hope to hear how you plan to execute the plan – specifically, what is your business plan and what are the definite milestone dates. President Bush has made IT one of his top priorities and his budget reflects his strong commitment to overhauling or outright replacing our current technology on a government-wide basis. VA will receive 1.357 billion IT dollars for fiscal year 2003 -- a whopping fifteen percent increase over last year’s funding level. I guess that brings us to the point of this hearing – we want to know if the VA is investing their IT money wisely. VA now has a CIO in place and finally has an architecture plan that we have been requesting for five years. However, a plan is only good if it can be executed. We need to know what obstacles you foresee and how you plan to work through the VA’s organization land mines, the cultural bias, the turf battles, and the inherent inertia. Furthermore, how does it address storage protection of VA’s information systems. We would like to hear how the VA dealt with vulnerabilities identified in our previous hearing. I understand Dr. Gauss has only been in charge of this operation since last August; however, Congress has pumped almost one billion dollars per year into VA’s IT programs for the past decade – with very little to show for it. Today, we hope to hear what progress has been made with the VA's integrated systems architecture plan, VBA’s VETSNET claims processing program, cyber security, VHA’s Decision Support Systems, and the Government Computer-Based Patient Records Program. Having a plan of action is vitally important. Implementing the plan and making it a reality will require a tremendous amount of vigilance on the part of the Secretary, the CIO and senior managers. We all recognize that VA has its challenges, but they are not insurmountable. The VA is a complex, multi-faceted organization and those in charge of its IT operation will be required to stay focused and undeterred. We believe the VA can meet these challenges. What we hope to learn today is what the timelines are in terms of achieving a fully integrated One-VA system – are we talking about a couple of years or a couple of decades! Back to Witness List |