Proposed deep cuts to VA’s tech budget rankle lawmakers
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, ranking member of a House subcommittee focused on Veterans Affairs technology, is concerned that the agency is planning to reduce its infrastructure readiness budget. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
The Biden administration’s FY25 budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs proposes steep cuts to the agency’s IT services, including a 99% reduction in VA’s development initiatives from FY24.
The White House’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs would impose significant cuts on VA’s information technology systems, leading to bipartisan concern from lawmakers about the department’s ability to modernize and maintain its services.
During a House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont. — who chairs the panel — called the FY25 request “the most unusual VA information technology budget that we have seen since this Subcommittee was created.”
While the Biden administration FY25 request would allocate over $369 billion to VA, it proposes $7.6 billion for the department’s IT systems and related operations, including $6.2 billion in base discretionary funding. Rosendale noted that this amounts to approximately a 3.3% overall decrease from the FY24 levels, including a 99% cut to development, an 81% cut to IT modernization, and a 41% reduction in funding for technology for the Veterans Benefits Administration.
Rosendale, who has built a reputation in Congress as a conservative firebrand, said “I’m all for reducing spending, but even I don’t make recommendations about a 99% cut in development.”
Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., the panel’s ranking member, expressed particular concern about a roughly 66% reduction in the budget for the department’s infrastructure readiness program, which she noted is “intended to address VA’s technical debt caused by chronic neglect of its IT infrastructure.”
“I'm afraid this budget request will only handicap the [infrastructure readiness program’s] efforts,” she said, noting that lawmakers have “heard horror stories of it taking upwards to 10 minutes for an employee to log into their computers.”
Kurt DelBene, VA’s chief information officer and assistant secretary for information and tech, acknowledged the challenges associated with the proposed budget and said VA is “going to have to make some trade-offs and we're going to have to figure out what we're going to reduce the funding in.”
“I think the only way we're going to get through and the way we will get through is through very strict prioritization of the work that we do,” he added.
Despite the proposed cuts to VA’s IT programs, Cherfilus-McCormick praised the FY25 budget for including a more than 20% increase to the department’s cybersecurity efforts. She noted, however, “that's still the lowest funding throughout the whole federal government for cybersecurity, and VA holds large amounts of personal information and personal identifiable information.”
Timothy Puetz, VA’s deputy chief information officer and chief financial officer, said the funding bump was “a small drop in the bucket of where we need to go with our cybersecurity,” but added that the government’s push for stricter cyber provisions across government is making VA embrace more rigorous security standards moving forward.
“As more requirements are coming in from the national cybersecurity strategy from the White House, and as we begin to identify how cybersecurity is also part of the way we need to modernize — so they go hand in hand — the intent is to continue to move cybersecurity to the direction it needs to go at the VA,” he said.