Appears In
VA’s IT Connect program does exactly what its name stands for — connects local IT staff at VA sites experiencing IT-related challenges with a support team of subject matter experts, project or implementation managers, and senior leaders. During dynamic sessions over three days onsite, the “boots on the ground” teams at VA Medical Centers and partners are invited to discuss their pain points and together devise an action plan to address the issues.
“I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”
— Larry King, CNN
These workshops encourage and facilitate open, honest conversations that address the unique challenges faced at VA sites nationwide. By actively listening and brainstorming together, participants spark fresh ideas, discover new solutions, and make real progress towards their goals. These workshops aim for fast results when possible, as the team can often fix processes or implement new tools right away, which helps solve IT problems faster and provides better support for VA staff and Veterans.
Enterprise IT is Local IT
The IT Connect program began through an informal partnership between several IT service lines. As the program gained traction, the collaboration expanded to a core charter group representing a cross-section of the entire Office of Information Technology, working closely together while engaging business partners in the field.
Immersing OIT leadership and staff into focused conversations with VA Medical Centers and other stakeholders enables them to hear, feel, and experience the daily struggles of these local end users. Doing so invokes empathy as well as allows OIT’s decision-makers to glean insight on opportunities to improve the customer experience at an enterprise level, emphasizing the idea that “We are all one team.”
Further, the program also allows time to foster relationships with Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Veteran Benefits Association (VBA), and the National Cemetery Association (NCA) employees throughout the working sessions. The goal is “one team, one mission,” meaning that any challenge faced at a single site across the country is a challenge worthy of a solution, which may assist other sites or facilities facing the same or similar problem. The innovation and collaboration happening through IT Connect is achieved mainly through the simple act of listening.
Some issues can be solved immediately. New processes and workflows, or new approaches and tools are just some of the solutions that the IT Connect experts can deploy in real-time. For more complex issues needing additional collaborative effort or other team involvement, the IT Connect team compiles an action items list from the visit, then assigns out and tracks the identified challenges across the appropriate VA workstreams. Collecting and reporting detailed data helps the IT Connect team dig deep into the pain points of each site and cross-collaborate on problem-solving scaling solutions. A full IT Connect Action Tracker and Dashboard shows every action being worked at each site, and as a collective effort across the enterprise, displaying summaries, actions by Service Line, actions by location, and check completion status. Currently, 477 actions have been added, with 389 closed and the remaining in various stages of short- or long-term completion, with a detailed summary of each. Using this dashboard, the IT Connect program drives sustained improvements and enhances transparency in reporting and resolving IT challenges. The team uses information from these sessions to find patterns, identify trends, and work with OIT to scale enterprise solutions, ensuring highly reliable and available IT services for all VA employees who rely on technologies to deliver care and benefits to the Nation’s Veterans.
“My Area Manager asked me a few weeks ago to be part of the IT Connect session. When I went to the SharePoint site and started learning about it, I was impressed. I’ll be in that room full of decision-makers who want to listen to and understand some of the issues we have at our local site. So, I raised my hand and said ‘sure, sign me up!’”
Gabriel Duran, Supervisory IT Specialist, Long Beach, CA.
Delightful Outcomes
IT Connect is a cornerstone effort in our pursuit of a delightful end-user experience. By placing customers and partners at the heart of the process, IT Connect fosters a culture of collaboration, trust, and innovation across VA.
Since the IT Connect Program’s first site visit to Togus, Maine in May 2022, we’ve closed over 80% of open action items, and our customers report an impressive satisfaction score of 9.13 out of 10.
“IT Connect provides a true glimpse into how our customers depend upon OIT products and services where it counts the most: at the point of Veteran service. Our OIT ‘away team’ has the opportunity to see and hear first-hand feedback from our end user communities on what is working well and what may not be optimal and needs our support. There is nothing better than the opportunity to ‘walk a mile’ in our customer’s shoes to inform OIT how we have the opportunity, each and every day, to help those who help our Veterans.”
Jack Galvin, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Executive Director, End User Services, Office of Information Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
IT Connect Case Study
Earlier in 2024, the IT Connect team visited a small, rural VA site in Cheyenne, Wyoming where they faced several challenges due to their remote location. One of these issues was a struggle with outdated fax technology. Facing a year-long wait for a critical upgrade to the newer eFax technology, the program in Cheyenne was struggling with low capacity for analog-only faxing capability – a major difficulty for a rural site without large-scale connectivity and digital options of more populated areas. While the site was scheduled for a deployment of ECFax in late FY25, that left the team struggling to identify an interim solution for the intervening 14 months. Learning this during one of the open forum sessions, the IT Connect Team facilitated a meeting between our ECFax partners and Cheyenne and accelerated the scheduled deployment by several months.
While most action items are specific to local sites, some are representative of issues that impact multiple sites. Some examples of these include the team’s work clarifying the roles and responsibilities for Special Purpose Systems, creating a Software Catalog, and deploying an Inventory Tracking Platform.
“IT Connect provides a tremendous opportunity for OIT to receive real-time feedback from our customer on the products and services we deliver. When our teams travel to a site where Veterans are served, we get to interview and witness first-hand how IT technology plays such a vital role in that delivery of service, our contribution to the mission is visible. They see the difference they make and how they can improve where it counts the most, at the point of service.“
Jack Galvin, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Executive Director, End User Services, Office of Information Technology, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
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