Noteboom The Law Firm

VA Taking Hard Line Stance on Funding IT Projects

June 22, 2010 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a history of spending far too much money on IT projects that do not meet deadlines and ultimately end up failing. The VA IT department has responded to these failures by taking a hard line stance on projects meeting deadlines.

Roger Baker is the VA's Chief Information Officer and is given daily updates on the 100 currently engaged IT projects. Every project can miss three deadlines before it automatically terminates. The thinking behind the hard line is if a project does not have what it takes to make the deadlines, it does not deserve to have more money thrown behind it and is dissolved.

Often by the time a project has missed three deadlines, there is already a significant amount of money invested into the project and officials are hesitant to pull the plug given the money already invested. Many of the projects have problems because of extended procurement sequences. By the time contracts are signed and put into motion, the technology that is the subject of the contract has changed.

Because the contracts take so long to be implemented, the VA will be more selective and vigilant about the projects they consider initiating. Many times IT projects are funded as soon as Congress issues their appropriations, whether the projects are deserving of the funding or not. The result is the VA with less than 100 active IT projects as opposed to the 300 they had a year ago at this time.

As federal budgets are cut, being more selective in how money is spent is imperative. Being able to establish definite cut off limits will benefit everyone involved since everyone works under the same standards right from the beginning.