The Department of Veterans Affairs announced that 45 Information Technology projects which are either behind schedule or over budget will be halted. The agency is going to review the 45 projects and determine whether these projects should be continued. Secretary Shinseki has ordered a review of the all the department’s 300 IT projects.
A new project plan will now need to meet the requirements of the Program Management Accountability System (PMAS) to be created by the project manager and approved by the VA’s Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology.
The PMAS requires projects to establish milestones to deliver new functionality to its customers. Failure to meet deadlines indicates a problem within the project. Under PMAS, a third missed customer delivery milestones is cause for the project to be halted and re-planned.
A partial list of the IT projects temporarily halted:
• Pharmacy R-Engineering Pre.5 and Pre 1.0
• Health Data Repository (HDR) II and Health Data Repository (HDR) Data Warehouse
• Home Telehealth Development and Home Telehealth Infrastructure Enhancements
• Barcode Expansion
• Clinical Data Service, Clinical Flow Sheet, and Clinical/Health Data Repositories Phase II
• BCMA Inpatient Medication Request for SFG IRA
• Radiology HL7 Interface Update
• Ward Drug Dispensing Equipment Interface
• Lab Data Sharing & Interoperability
• National Teleradiology Program
PMAS in conjunction with the analytical tools available through the IT Dashboard is going to assure the early identification and the correction of problematic IT projects. The IT Dashboard at www.usaspending.gov is a one-stop clearinghouse of information to track federal information technology initiatives.
For more information, contact Katie Roberts at Katie.roberts@va.gov or call (202) 461-4982.
