2023 Year in Review

Part of our role as a leader in the Federal IT space is to remain vigilant in safeguarding Veterans’ data. Demonstrated through our Zero Trust strategy, which starts with the premise that we must assume our network will be breached, our first line of defense is to ensure that the bad actor cannot profit from breaching our network since no vital information or resources will be available to them if they do. One of the ways we’re doing this is by doubling down on the importance of adding increased layers of security to VA accounts through multi-factor authentication (MFA). Now, a record number of Veterans have enrolled in VA’s MFA option, with over 3.6 million accounts or users authenticated on VA.gov, Login.gov, and the VA Health and Benefits mobile app. This extra layer requires users to verify their identity through two channels, such as a passcode or a text message code, further protecting Veterans’ sensitive information.

A culture of not sharing bad news can permeate an organization quickly. If left to fester, it can impact the organization’s ability to adapt as new issues present themselves. It prevents us from seeing the key issues, and it prevents us from leveraging the organization’s collective expertise to solve the problem. At VA, we’ve adopted a mantra of “Embrace the Red.” This means that rather than hide issues from the rest of the team, we encourage people to bring them forward so we can solve them together.

In The CIO Blog, Mr. DelBene shares how this mantra is shaping OIT’s workplace culture to encourage staff to bring issues forward and create more opportunities for collective problem-solving. By creating an environment where individuals are empowered to address challenges and learn from their mistakes, the broader team can focus on shared goals that help accelerate innovation and achieve engineering excellence.

In 2023, we became aware of technical issues on VA.gov that had prevented some Veterans from submitting updates to claims and appeals. Guided by our “Embrace the Red” mantra, OIT teams notified our VA, VSO, and congressional partners once we learned of the issue. We worked around the clock to identify the impacted Veterans, backdate their applications to the exact day they first encountered the website errors, and implement immediate workarounds to process any claims errors manually. We stood up a “Code Yellow” process for these defects, focusing relentlessly on solving the issues across the organization, including building additional continuous monitoring to catch such issues in the future. We established clear and comprehensive exit criteria for declaring an end to the Code Yellow to ensure all issues are resolved.

To improve the rigor of VA systems and create a more dependable network, OIT established a goal that all our systems run at 99.99% service uptime.  This concept is designed to prevent as many service interruptions as possible through backup plans, redundancy measures, and built-in system resiliencies — so when issues inevitably arise, OIT teams can respond as quickly as possible to reduce downtime.

The four nines are critical in achieving OIT’s Vision for Digital Transformation. With over 900 IT systems across VA used by millions of users, OIT identified the “critical 100”— VA’s most significant systems with the largest reach and impact. We’ve implemented rigorous early warning and monitoring so that our teams can take immediate action and help mitigate any impact to our end users, enabling VA to do what it does best: provide seamless world-class care and services to Veterans and their families and caregivers.