Veterans Affairs CIO sees another year of no growth in IT spending

The chief information officer for the Veterans Affairs Department told a Senate panel on Wednesday that he doesn't anticipate asking for an increase in his fiscal 2012 information technology budget.

Without an increase, the department's IT budget, $3.3 billion for fiscal 2011 in spending bills the House and Senate VA committees approved, would have little to no growth for the third consecutive year. But CIO Roger Baker did not provide details on the flat spending in response to senators' questions, saying it was not his role to forecast President Obama's budget.

Baker updated the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on a range of VA IT programs and projects that he would like to work on with the Defense Department to develop a single electronic health record system that would serve both departments.

In response to a question by Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, Baker said there was a possibility Defense could sign on to the new version of VA's Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture system, but he did not elaborate.

Defense kicked off a project to modernize its AHLTA electronic health record system with a commercial product in August.

In his prepared testimony, Baker said he wanted to create an open source model for VISTA, "bringing back the innovation that made VISTA the best electronic health record system in the country."

In August, VA said it was evaluating an open source model that a technology industry advisory groupproposed in May.

Tom Munnecke, who helped develop VISTA as a programmer in 1978 and later was chief scientist at SAIC, endorsed the open source concept in his prepared testimony. He said VA needed to work with new technology such as smart phones and Web-based systems. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., endorsed the opinion by holding up his iPhone, and pointed out three of the witnesses came to the hearing with their own phones.

Baker also updated the committee on the final stages of development of the 9/11 GI claims processing system. He said software designed to automatically transfer payment information to the Treasury Department, scheduled for delivery at the end of October, will not be installed until Dec. 31.

Pressed by Akaka to rate the chances of meeting the Dec. 31 deadline on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the highest, Baker replied, "I would give it at least a nine."

Baker said since he took office, VA has managed to get many of its troubled IT development projects under control, But he added VA is woefully short of project managers and finds it hard to attract them when competing with private firms that can pay substantially more. VA could use another 100 IT project managers, he said.