Veterans Affairs
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The Blue Button Initiative started at VA as a way for veterans to more easily access their health care data. But, with the help of Presidential Innovation Fellows, the initiative is now enabling American people across the country to access their personal health records in a human-readable format. Federal News Radio examines the project's greatest successes and where it's headed next as part of our special report, Solving Our Nation's Toughest Challenges: The Presidential Innovation Fellows.
April 02, 2014 -
The Veterans Affairs Department reduced the number of pending disability claims by 267,000 over the last year. Veterans are also waiting 119 days less than they did a year ago for their claims to be processed.
April 01, 2014 -
The Veterans Affairs Department promises to be "digital by default." The new initiative seeks to provide better and faster service to veterans. The department is hiring experts from outside the government to build the technology to streamline offerings. Marina Martin, VA's chief technology officer, tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin and Emily Kopp the effort goes beyond simply tackling the persistent backlog of disability claims.
April 01, 2014 -
Cash, drugs and science experiments are all part of VA's fiscal 2015 budget request.
March 17, 2014 -
The departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security account for 94 percent of the growth in the number of civilian employees within the federal workforce, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
January 30, 2014 -
Kenneth Siehr of the Department of Veterans Affairs wins this year's SAVE Award. His cost-cutting proposal involving mail-order prescriptions to veterans also saves time.
December 26, 2013 -
With the launch of VA Open Data, members of the public and applications developers will be able to access non-sensitive, non-personal information from the Veterans Affairs Department.
December 24, 2013 -
Documents obtained by Federal News Radio show VA's financial audit found material weaknesses, including the failure to remove terminated employees from accessing the network, and the lack of a formal process for monitoring, preventing installation and removing unauthorized application software on agency systems. House Veterans Affairs lawmakers continue to press VA to make changes to their cybersecurity posture more quickly. VA officials say they have a multi-layered defense to include outside network monitoring by external partners, active scanning of Web applications and source code, and protection of servers, workstations, network and gateways, among other security efforts.
December 19, 2013 -
The Department of Veterans Affairs says it has made significant strides in targeting its most complicated disability claims toward its most seasoned claims processing staff, but IG audits still find errors in nearly a third of compensation claims processed for Traumatic Brain Injury.
December 06, 2013 -
With the partial government shutdown behind them, members of Congress are working on several bills that impact the federal workforce, including a resolution that supports ending the federal pay freeze and a bill that tackles the claims backlog at Veterans Affairs.
October 29, 2013 -
At a recent health IT demonstration, the Veterans Affairs Department showcased nine different technologies that it hopes will change how it delivers health care. The agency is testing medical mobile apps on iPads with 1,000 severely injured veterans.
August 02, 2013 -
Under intense congressional and media pressure, VA has moved aggressively to eliminate its backlog of new claims for disability benefits. But veterans who appeal VA's decisions are still waiting years, on average.
June 19, 2013 -
House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) and ranking member Michael Michaud (D-Maine) sent Secretary Eric Shinseki a letter asking for an explanation on why VA didn't tell the committee about multiple nation state attacks. The lawmakers call for VA to offer credit monitoring services to tens of millions of veterans.
June 14, 2013 -
Kathleen Turco is leaving GSA after 11 years, including the last three as the associate administrator of governmentwide policy. She will become the CFO at the Veterans Health Administration.
May 31, 2013 -
Attendees at the 2013 Coalition for Government Procurement's Spring Conference will engage in a government-industry "Mythbusters" dialogue with acquisition leadership from the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, General Services Administration and others about key procurement issues that impact members' government business.
April 16, 2013