The Veterans Affairs Department will not openly recompete a $102.6 million contract to manage a critical portion of its future integrated electronic health record (iEHR) system with the Defense Department. Instead, VA will award the contract to the second most qualified bidder, said VA Spokeswoman Jo Schuda. The firm has not been named. Last month, VA canceled the contract it had awarded to Fairfax, Va.-based ASM Research Inc. to manage a portion of the iEHR, called the enterprise service bus, which will allow various components of the future system to communicate with each other and with VA and DoD health…
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Robert Gates was back in Washington this evening with a display of the understated candor that was a trademark during his five years as secretary of defense. It was Gates, after all, who last year described members of Congress as a group “with oversized egos and undersized backbones”—a line he cheerfully repeated during tonight’s award ceremony hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration. Gates, on hand to receive the academy’s Elliot L. Richardson Prize for excellence in public service, spoke during a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with James Kitfield, senior correspondent at National Journal. Here are a few other excerpts: *…
Former Harris Corp. executive Barclay Butler has been appointed director of the DoD/VA Interagency Program Office (IPO), which oversees the agencies’ integrated electronic health record project and other joint initiatives. Barclay, who served as vice president of healthcare operations for Harris’ Falls Church, Va., office, started work at the joint office on Feb. 27, DoD announced Tuesday. David Wennergren, DoD’s assistant deputy chief management officer, had been serving as interim director since July. The director position required approval from VA and DoD secretaries. As director, Barclay is also the program executive for the iEHR and the health portion of the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) initiative, according to a…
The Veterans Affairs Department has canceled a $102.6 million contract to manage a critical portion of its future integrated electronic health record (iEHR) system with the Defense Department. The contract was awarded on Jan. 13 to Fairfax, Va.-based ASM Research Inc. to manage a portion of the iEHR, called the enterprise service bus, which will allow various components of the future system to communicate with each other and with VA and DoD health information stored in data centers. The contract was awarded under VA’s $12 billion Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology, or T4, program. VA Spokeswoman Jo Schuda confirmed that the contract…
The Army’s deputy chief information officer is proposing a new plan that would expand the Army’s mobility strategy beyond the BlackBerry and allow users to do government work on their personal devices. If the Army works aggressively through partnerships with the National Security Agency and industry, it could be ready to release a request for proposal for mobile technology within the next 12 months, said Army deputy CIO Mike Krieger, at a mobility event last week. The contract would provide a large number of soldiers, contractors and civilians with zero client mobile devices, or smartphones that have no operating systems…
Three years ago, the Defense Department set up a Civilian Expeditionary Workforce policy to help manage how it deploys civilians to war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Government Accountability Office said today that the CEW concept is still a long way from what the Pentagon envisioned. CEW was meant to create a cadre of Defense civilians with crucial skills that are willing, ready and trained to go to war and help support combat troops — quickly. CEW has had some success, GAO said, most notably by creating a database of thousands of resumes from volunteers and filling…
A Defense Department board led by Chief Information Officer Teri Takai will serve as the “single senior governance forum” to address information technology, IT acquisition and cyber issues across DoD. In a Feb. 12 memo, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter included a revised charter for the DoD CIO Executive Board, which he said would “re-focus and strengthen” the board to provide leadership and guidance on certain departmentwide issues. The memo, effective immediately, follows recommendations by the independent Defense Business Board urging DoD senior leadership to give Takai more clout. The charter gives the board authority to “decide on matters brought before it,…
The Department of the Navy has already taken steps to reduce information technology costs and cut its overall business IT budget by $2 billion over the next five years. Data center consolidation and greater scrutiny of IT purchases like mobile devices and software are expected to cut costs, said Chief Information Officer Terry Halvorsen in an interview. “That money has been taken out of those lines for accounting that would support buying those services,” Halvorsen said. “We’re beginning the execution in 2012,” but the savings run from 2013 to 2017. Following Halvorsen’s orders, both services have appointed a so-called Information Technology Expenditure Approval…
The military services and Defense Department agencies have until Jan. 15 to detail how they will reduce the number of commercial and government applications running in their data centers, under requirements of the 2012 Defense Authorization Act that President Obama signed last month. The law adds to pressure the department already faces under administration orders that DoD and other agencies close at least 1,200 data centers by 2015. DoD has committed to closing 61 of its more than 770 centers this year. Under the Defense Authorization Act, DoD must also develop a strategy to move its data and services from…
Two former federal watchdogs are now working for major defense contractors, the Project on Government Oversight reported this week. Former Defense Contract Audit Agency Director Michael Thibault joined DynCorp International as its vice president of government finance and compliance last month, POGO reports. Thibault spent the last two years as co-chairman of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which concluded that as much as $60 billion in federal contract spending was wasted or lost over the past decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. Also, Gordon Heddell, who resigned as the Pentagon’s Inspector General on Christmas Eve, was hired last month as…