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OIT Transformation

We needed to embrace change and adopt “in the best interest of the Veteran” as more than just an email signature.

An introduction from Executive-in-Charge Scott Blackburn

Read the Introduction

In July 2015, we began a Transformation.

A self-assessment of our current state — which drew from employee interviews, external reviews, and meetings with oversight bodies — revealed significant internal challenges. It presented an opportunity to reimagine our place at the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), to envision an information technology (IT) organization that fundamentally changed the way our Veterans interact with VA, and to empower our business partners to provide the industry-leading access, care, services, and benefits our Veterans have earned.

We needed to harness the momentum the VA-wide MyVA transformation offered. We needed to become the world-class technology organization that our partners required and our Veterans deserved. We needed to embrace change and adopt “in the best interest of the Veteran” as more than just an email signature. Beginning in 2016, we refocused not only on why we served, but how. Over the course of that year, we changed the way the Office of Information and Technology operates.

We transformed our structure and organization to better align with industry best practices, allowing us to support our business partners across VA in serving veterans.

We streamlined our service delivery through the establishment of IT Operations and Services (ITOPS). We improved our compliance through changes to our cybersecurity strategy, allowing us to comply with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standards and better protect Veteran information with the establishment of the Quality, Privacy and Risk (QPR) division.

Our new Strategic Sourcing function leveraged the best of both our VA staff’s expertise and the innovation of our external partners to deliver the absolute best solutions to our Veterans. It improved our speed to market, ensured our compliance with IT acquisition legislation, and fostered the most responsible allocation of taxpayer resources.

We established portfolios to build technology aligned to our business partners’ needs. Each portfolio now has an IT account manager who partners with businesses to understand their challenges and develop effective IT solutions. We also established the Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) as a control tower for IT development that provides an enterprise-wide view of all ongoing projects within the portfolios, manages cyber-risks, and ties project performance to outcomes that directly improve the Veteran experience.

As Veterans’ needs evolve, VA must shift to meet them — and even anticipate them. We established a Digital Services (DSVA) team at VA to do just that. In the past year, DSVA spent 240 hours speaking directly to Veterans one-on-one to understand their needs and how they want to interact with VA, so we can develop the products and services they will want to use.

Through our transformation and clearer understanding of the evolving needs of our Veterans, we worked seamlessly with our business partners across the Department to determine the best way to address challenges and deploy technological solutions that enable our VA colleagues to provide the services, care, and benefits our Veterans have earned.

We did more than just restructure. We set new goals and imagined a new approach.

Core Values

core values

OIT embraced four core values that dictate how we do business. Our DNA comprises transparency, accountability, innovation, and teamwork.

  • TRANSPARENCY: We share our successes and our failures. We tell it like it is, instead of qualifying or glossing over the truth.
  • ACCOUNTABILITY: We own the issues within our environment and our organization, and we hold ourselves accountable to take steps to improve them while transparently sharing our progress along the way.
  • INNOVATION: We ask, “Why not?” and “What if?” We look at our environment and our Veterans’ needs and find opportunities to change things for the better.
  • TEAMWORK: We work for the success of the team, not the glory of the moment. We focus on outcomes. We ask ourselves, “Is this in the best interest of the Veteran?”

Strategic Goals

strategic goals

These guiding values underpin OIT’s three strategic goals:

  • Stabilize and streamline core processes and platforms
  • Eliminate material weaknesses.
  • Institutionalize new capabilities that drive improved outcomes.

These three goals were born from outcomes already mandated, those in progress, those we knew we needed, and those required to modernize into the Federal Government’s premier technology organization.

TRANSFORMING OUR ORGANIZATION

OIT established new functions that put us on the path toward achieving our three goals.

Account Managment Office

Digital Services

Enterprise Program Management Office

IT Operations and Services

Quality, Privacy, and Risk

Strategic Sourcing

 

 

If 2016 was a year of transformation, then 2017 was a year of stabilization. We focused on cementing what we achieved through transformation, plotting a path toward modernization, and improving the ways we deliver the care, benefits, and services our Veterans depend on. Just as we relied on our core values and our three strategic goals as a roadmap during our initial transformation, they framed our success in 2017 and they continue to guide our plans for future modernization.

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