VA wants more secretaries

The Veterans Affairs Department wants more changes in the way it manages information technology.

The department's fiscal 2011 request includes a legislative request to create five new deputy assistant secretary positions within the office of information and technology, each overseeing a business line:

• Strategy, Architecture and Design,
• Product Development and Delivery,
• Enterprise Program Management Office,
• IT Performance Management, and
• IT Operations and Engineering.

The request for the new positions stems from an IBM study, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki said in prepared testimony March 10 before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.  

The new positions are "not about creating a new layer of bureaucracy," Shinseki said. The proposal "is about streamlining and aligning our organization in ways that will better align our priorities with the most responsible use of funds entrusted to this Department," he said.

The department's CIO shop currently has two deputy assistant secretary positions, Shinseki said. The VA underwent considerable centralization of its IT function in 2006, following a massive data loss of veterans' personal information when a VA employee's laptop was stolen from his suburban Washington, D.C. home.

The VA chief information officer is one of the few people within the federal government to enjoy direct control over the entirety of department operations. The VA requests $3.3 billion for IT in fiscal 2011.

For more:
- check out Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki's testimony
- see the department's fiscal 2011 budget request (.pdf)

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