VA’s Journey to Cloud Optimization

We propose to share the journey to cloud optimization of the Department of Veterans Affairs, one of the earliest federal agency adopters of cloud technologies, highlighting both the successes and challenges experienced since its cloud strategy was developed in 2017 and then in 2018 when the Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office (ECSO) was established. We intend to highlight that journey and what we have learned implementing an effective financial operations (FinOps) strategy within the context of the second largest federal government agency. VA is a massive and complex organization, consisting of three major components charged with running over 170 hospitals and 1000 outpatient sites, processing the benefit claims of nearly 20 million Veterans, and overseeing 155 Veterans’ cemeteries, respectively. This type of scale means two critical things:

• the agency must remain committed to pursuing its cloud migration and FinOps strategies and
• many federal agencies continue to look to the VA for lessons learned.

ECSO focused from the beginning on cost savings and reserved instances, but it has taken time for VA’s FinOps strategy to stabilize and mature.