Do You Know What VA’s IT Team Does that Benefits You?

Veterans receive health care and benefits from the VA. You most likely know VA’s Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), and National Cemetery Administration (NCA).

But there’s another team behind the scenes at VA who work daily to partner with and support VHA, VBA, and NCA to serve Veterans and to help make the process more efficient and better for VA staff and Veterans.

Can you guess who we are? And more importantly, why should you care?

Overall, we have nearly 16,000 employees and contractors on our team.  A total 60 percent of our employees are Veterans. Many more are in families of Veterans. So we understand the importance of our work and we have the same needs and concerns as other Veterans.

Our team consults and collaborates with every administration — VHA, VBA, NCA — leaders and staff and other program offices regularly to develop solutions to improve business process efficiencies and business and Veteran outcomes. We are a partner with all VA organizations.

We provide services and products to every office and all the nearly 400,000 people in the VA workforce.

Our employees and contractors are present in or virtually support every VA facility nationwide, including VA Medical Centers (VAMCs), VA clinician offices, regional benefits offices, and cemeteries and memorial services facilities.

A 71-year old Veteran recently spoke about how a VA tool we deliver helped him quickly and easily connect with VHA to get his COVID-19 vaccine — and he was happy and surprised how VA reached out to him proactively and made scheduling the vaccine so easy for him.

We work closely with VHA in developing and implementing VA Ethics Standards related to protecting Veterans’ data and records.

We help supply and sustain operation of end-user devices, infrastructure, networks, and cybersecurity that are critical to Veteran health care in hospitals and clinician offices and provide and sustain bandwidth needed as the backbone to telehealth services—including telemedicine, tele-mental health, and telecritical care. These services have been especially critical and the demand skyrocketed during the pandemic, and our office kept up with the needed bandwidth to support all the increased demand for health care from home.

We provide end-user devices, infrastructure, networks, and cybersecurity that are vital to VBA claims processing and for VBA and NCA providing Veteran benefits and memorial services to Veterans.

We create and support development of user-friendly, helpful Veteran-facing digital tools that we put into Veterans hands to give them easier access to health care and benefits, including VA and health mobile apps and the va.gov website.

For example, three frontline digital technology tools we rolled out, or expanded features of, this past year are significantly aiding VA’s COVID-19 response and making a difference in delivering COVID-19 care and vaccine services to Veterans and families.

We work with our partners to digitize business processes across VA to streamline VHA, VBA, NCA, and other VA internal business processes and enhance delivery of services to Veterans.

We manage and deploy collaboration and productivity software for the VA workforce.

We’re crucial partners on projects like Electronic Health Record Modernization, MISSION Act, Colmery GI Bill, Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT), Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support (DMLSS) and LogiCole Implementation, and more. We ensure that IT is in place and operational to manage and deliver to Veterans under all these programs.

We help ensure all VA systems work together, focusing on system interoperability across VA and with our DOD and other government partners.

We drive VA’s digital transformation strategy, including IT and technology modernization.

Have you guessed who we are yet? We are VA’s Office of Information and Technology and we are committed to bringing modern technology to boost VA’s capabilities and continuously enhance VA’s delivery of benefits and services to Veterans. It Starts With Us.

We think this is a crucial mission and our team is always seeking to enhance digital innovation to ensure VA consistently delivers exceptional customer service to our Veterans.