VA moving to different kind of Web 2.0

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

The Department of Veterans Affairs runs the largest civilian network with more than 250,000 users.

The network must meet a host of different needs from basic administrative functions to healthcare to ensuring veterans can access records and benefits.

All of these needs, especially healthcare, over time will require more bandwidth and more advanced functions than VA’s current network can handle.

That is why VA joined the Internet2 consortium.

Internet2 is an organization of government, universities and companies that collaborate on research and development of advanced networking technologies. The organization includes more than 45 government agencies, 200 universities and 70 companies.

“This is critical to our efforts to continually improvement our support services to veterans,” says Steve Pirzchalski, VA’s director of enterprise network services.

“The value of VA’s network is enhanced by connecting to this research network because it will help us support our advanced capabilities that are required.”

Pirzchalski says the advanced capabilities include the use of telepresence, virtualization and visualization.

He says telepresence gives medical experts the ability to take part in diagnosis without having to be there.

Internet2’s higher bandwidth and higher definition video teleconferencing makes these functions work better, Pirzchalski says.

Visualization is the ability to create two and three dimensional graphics online, while virtualization is sharing computing resources such as storage among all users.

Pirzchalski says the first connection to Internet2 is in Reston, Va., at the Mid-Atlantic Crossroads, one of the VA’s existing secured Internet gateway locations.

Another benefit of Internet2 is VA can test and develop IP version 6 applications.

He also says Internet2 provides a starting point to get infrastructure and functionality to remote or rural locations to improve their use of medical technology.

VA is paying a monthly fee to belong to Internet2.

Pirzchalski adds that the decision to join came, in part, because so many VA doctors were using this network through universities already that the department wanted to make it easier for them to access it.

“We are trying to do this in a thoughtful way by using our architecture plan and looking at how our external connections are managed,” he says.

“We have a large network in place and we are trying to think forward as we go into this next decade.”

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On the Web:

Internet2 – Internet2 Web site

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