Our Path Forward

OIT did not make this progress in a vacuum. This year, we worked closely with our partners across the Department to deepen our understanding of Veteran needs, giving our talent, our time, and our resources to address the most pressing issues.

But this is just the beginning.

As VA strives to become our Veterans’ provider of choice, OIT is committed to providing the technological backbone that enables our colleagues to improve the care, benefits, and services our Veterans have earned.

As the largest civilian federal agency, VA should be the pinnacle of transparency, accountability, innovation, andteamwork. We want to be the premier example of how government should reward the investment of the taxpayer, enlist the trust and support of our oversight partners, and honor the sacrifice of those who serve. Building on the success of past initiatives such as MyVA helped us transform into a better business partner and guided the creation of VA’s ChooseVA initiative.

“Veterans and their families deserve the very best care and services available. We want them to choose VA not because they have no other choice, but because we are the best at what we do, how we do it, and because of the difference we make in the lives of Veterans and their families.”Secretary Shulkin

In 2017, Secretary Shulkin outlined five priorities that support a fundamental shift in how VA does business, modernizing our Department so that all Veterans choose us, not because they’re limited by options, but because we do it better than anyone else.

 

Technology underpins all five priorities, which is why we mapped OIT’s goals and priorities to the overarching federal and VA modernization strategies and developed a Comprehensive IT Plan to guide our modernization success through 2018 and beyond.

Modernizing our systems will create efficiencies that free up resources and funding that can be reinvested in programs that directly benefit the Veterans we serve. As we enter 2018, OIT is focused on five modernization priorities:

Through our transformation in 2016 and modernization in 2017, OIT has restructured into an organization that mirrors world-class IT peers who leverage shared systems, modern IT governance, and open data to deliver robust, data-driven, and efficient services. This coming year, as in the years before, we at OIT will continue to reach for our enduring goals of stabilizing and streamlining core processes and platforms, eliminating material weaknesses, and institutionalizing new capabilities that drive improved outcomes.

IT modernization in 2018 will build on that foundation to focus on innovating how we work to deliver intuitive and cost-effective technology solutions, and to support VA’s sacred mission: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan.”