Noteboom The Law Firm

The VA Has 5 Months To Award $500 Million In IT Contracts

In a fairly uncommon turn of events, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is being forced to spend a lot of money. More specifically, they must award $500 million in new information technology (IT) contracts over the next 5 months. Completing this task will allow the VA to play their part in helping VA Sec. Eric Shinseki meet his established goals within 16 chief programs.

The VA has $800 million to spend on the 16 initiatives by the end of this fiscal year. To date, they have only awarded $300 million. Sec. Shinseki has given the 16 initiatives a 5-year deadline in which he would like to see them completed.

Those programs aim to serve multiple veterans' needs, which include:

• eliminating veteran homelessness;
• eliminating the Veterans Benefits Management System' extreme backlog of veterans disability claims; and
• creating and implementing a Virtual Lifetime Electronic Health Record (EHR) system for veterans.

The VA is up against a wall and will find it very difficult to manage the extremely high number of contracts it will see over the next 5 months. The only way to successfully navigate through the time constraints will be to shorten the amount of time spent between the VA's request for proposals (RFP) to accepting bids to awarding contracts. Bids will likely be due within 7 days from the initial RFP. 

Despite shortened time lines, all established protocols must be followed.

If you are a disabled veteran who has been denied disability compensation or have not yet applied for benefits from the VA, a South Florida disability attorney from LaVan & Neidenberg is ready to help. To learn if you are entitled to certain programs and benefits contact our veterans disability rights firm today - 1-888-234-5758.