VA IT shop a mess

The never-ending saga of the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs' IT shop continues. Last week, it was a story of outlandish bonuses to favorite employees, widespread nepotism and abuse of authority. Now the VA's inspector general has another report, and this too is quite disturbing. The IG reports that the department lacks the in-house capability to support, manage and execute complex information technology projects.

This lack of workforce capacity and its inability to even manage contracts, the IG said, was a prime reason for the near-collapse of the department's efforts to develop a replacement patient scheduling application--a project budgeted for $167 million over eight years.

Roger Baker, the VA's new chief information officer, is in the process of reforming the broken IT apparatus at the VA, but he has his hands full because of years of built-up problems. While embarrassing, the IG reports are helpful in shining a light on some long-festering problems, giving Baker the leeway to undertake a major reforms.

The replacement patient scheduling application project was turned to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command to provide engineering in November 2007 because the VA had no capacity of its own to handle the project. But when the IG asked the program manager for copies of the statements of work for those task orders, as well as copies of the contracts, he could not supply much of the documentation.

For more on the VA IT mess:
- see this nextgov.com article here