Inside the VA with CIO Roger Baker

Roger Baker, the new CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs, has a long and distinguished career in information technology, both inside the government and in the private sector. As the VA's Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology, he manages an organization with over 6,500 IT professionals and a budget of over $3 billion. From 1998 to 2001, he was the CIO at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he led efforts to convert old systems and processes to e-commerce, improve technology management and reduce costs. In the private sector, he worked at a number of companies serving in high technology positions. We asked him about the herculean task he is facing, his goals and what keeps him up at night.

FGIT: What can veterans expect from the VA?

RB: The VA secretary (Eric K. Shinseki) has laid out a veteran-centric agenda. What we are out to do is deal with major issues, the backlog of veteran's benefits, making certain we are tying the information between the VA and Defense Department, maximizing the value of the information.

When a person accrues a benefit, it's 30 days after being sworn in. We want to make sure we are getting information about their service, that it's easy to reach. As they ask for services, it's easy for us to find them. We'd like to get to a point where we are proactive. Imagine how veterans would feel if they get a letter from the VA that says, "We notice you are eligible for a service."

FGIT: What's the status of the 45 projects suspended after being evaluated as not meeting its goals by the VA's IT dashboard?

RB: It was a shot across the bow. We are working through them. We've established milestones for the first 22 projects.

It seems to me the VA never has been a culture of making the hard decisions. The hard decision is that 'Project X' will stop so 'Project Y' has resources to succeed.

We have one program that is clearly at the top of the 300 IT projects (at the VA). They were 10 to 12 folks short of having staff to be successful. Pulling people off other projects and putting them on the one project was the answer. It was my decision to force the hard choices...prioritize. My focus in this area is we have to get (the 45 projects) going again.

FGIT: What are your goals as VA CIO?

RB: Inside of IT, we have an extensive 2.0 pilot going. It started as 30 people. It's now at 600; in a month it will be 7,000. I've also started a blog. It is an internal discussion site. It supplies voting-based feedback--what people want to hear. What do you want the CIO to talk about next is the question.

FGIT: Do you have enough money in your budget?

RB: We have $3.3 billion in 2010 for IT at the VA. But I think we have a responsibility to demonstrate that when we receive money, it is effectively used. More money will not solve our problems. What will solve the problem is disciplined management over the next year or two.

FGIT: What's the status of the VA's electronic medical records (EMR) program?

RB: The VA has the premier medical record system in the country on 20 million patients. If you go to a VA hospital, you have a very hard time finding a piece of paper. It is the underpinning of why the VA health system is so good.

FGIT: How close are the VA and DoD to integrating EMR?

RB: We're working toward interoperability. When a service member leaves DoD, all his medical records are transferred into a system run by the VA. If they come to the VA, those records are immediately available to the VA. The VA records are visible to a DoD doctor, and the DoD records are available to the VA. But there are a lot of things in paper at the DoD. And we continue to wrestle with these issues.

FGIT: Are you worried about cyber attacks on the VA's computer systems?

RB: Our security for electronic records is very good. The VA has made major strides on information security. I don't go to sleep at night worried about our information security. It's not the thing that wakes me up at night. What wakes me up is how do we get those 45 projects up and rolling again?