Lost and Strayed: VA BlackBerrys

One of the features of the monthly report on data breaches that the Veterans Affairs Department sends to Congress is a line that highlights how many VA BlackBerry gadgets went astray.

In February, department personnel lost 30 BlackBerrys. Since the 2011 fiscal year began last October, they've lost 156, more than half of them -- 79 -- in the first two months of this calendar year. The department has a total of 17,262 BlackBerrys.

I asked VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker if he had considered implementing some sort of disincentive to ensure that VA employees keep better track of these gizmos. He said he considered the two weeks or so it took to replace them disincentive enough and added that VA quickly re-issued new ones because he considered them productivity tools.

I know comparisons can be invidious, but young soldiers participating in the Army smartphone project at Ft. Bliss, Texas, take much better care of their productivity tools than VA employees.

The Brigade Modernization Command at Ft. Bliss has issued smartphones to 1,000 soldiers since last September, and Col. Maris Tanner, who runs the smartphone project, told me not one gizmo has been lost because the soldiers "really care for their phones."

Baker said the troops deserve kudos.