Department of Veterans Affairs
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News and buzz in the acquisition and IT communities that you may have missed this week.
August 16, 2013 -
A recent briefing between the House Veterans Affairs Committee, VA IT executives and DHS ended with the lead majority staff member walking out before the meeting ended. The rising tensions between the House Veterans Affairs committee's majority and VA come as a report surfaced showing veterans are at a higher risk of identity theft than the average citizen.
August 07, 2013 -
House Small Business and Veterans Affairs committee members plan to introduce a bill Thursday to make the service-disabled veteran-owned small business program less cumbersome, confusing and more transparent.
July 31, 2013 -
Blake Hall, co-founder of ID.me, will discuss how his company's electronic identification process, is helping veterans get the benefits they have earned. July 30, 2013
July 30, 2013 -
Ron Young, executive director of the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve program and Phillip Selleh, program manager for the VA Accelerator, will discuss how their organizations are helping veterans when they return to or enter the civilian workforce. July 26, 2013
July 26, 2013 -
House Veterans Affairs Committee Ranking Member Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine) introduced a bill to establish quadrennial reviews and a five-year plan for VA's budget. The bill also would designate a chief strategy officer to oversee budgetary planning.
July 17, 2013 -
House Armed Services and Veterans Affairs committees inserted a provision in the fiscal 2014 Defense Authorization Bill requiring DoD and VA to have an interoperable health record system by 2017. Agency officials say they already are and will continue to share health care data, but having one integrated, interoperable health care management system is no longer necessary.
July 11, 2013 -
The General Services Administration is preparing the Network Services 2020 program that would move the government to a standardized telecommunications network infrastructure. Other agencies, such as VA and ATF, are building on their experiences with the cloud to create an agile network infrastructure.
June 21, 2013 -
The Veterans Affairs Department is creating an acquisition cadre to work on complex projects. Glenn Haggstrom, VA's principal executive director of the Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction, said the goal is to match experts with the needs across the department.
June 20, 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 -
The Veterans Affairs Department has been compromised by at least eight different nation state organizations that stole data from its systems, House lawmakers and other experts say. VA officials say there always are risks, but their computer security is better than ever before.
June 05, 2013 -
Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel requested Grams come back to the IRS for a third stint and leave his current role as the executive-in-charge in the Office of Management and chief financial officer at the Veterans Affairs Department.
June 03, 2013 -
The Veterans Affairs Department denies claims that systems or data are in danger. But Jerry Davis, the former deputy assistant secretary for information security in VA's Office of Information and Technology, asserts in documents that he was bullied into signing security certifications that were deficient as a condition of his departure from VA for a new job at NASA.
June 03, 2013 -
All veterans who have waited two years or more for a decision will have their cases decided by next month, the Department of Veterans Affairs told Congress. Half of the Veterans Benefits Administration's oldest cases already have been removed from the backlog.
May 24, 2013