Making Lives Better

Ali Mustafa Meredith is a Navy Veteran and native of Brooklyn, NY. Mr. Meredith previously worked for the Marine Corps Program Systems Office in Virginia Beach at the Marine Corps Intel schools. He currently works as the Finger Lakes Healthcare Area Manager, which encompasses the Canandaigua, New York region and the Bath region, which consists of the central parts of New York and northern Pennsylvania. He oversees support services for the Veterans Crisis Line, member services, homeless call center and Womens Call Center.

Tom Cofrancesco is a Marine Veteran and a Tier 2 Tech supporting End User Services in West Haven, Connecticut. Mr. Cofrancesco served four years in the Marines and has been with the Department of Veterans Affairs for 16 years.

Linda Brinkley a Senior IT Specialist who provides technical support for the Veterans Benefits Administration’s Regional Office and VHA Connecticut. She provides account management support, client connectivity support, and application support for various devices, als well training for the new hire staff and for the IT staff. She has been with VA for 15 years.

What do you enjoy most about your work in OIT?

Meredith: The variability and the work. When I come to work, it’s something new every day. It’s a new problem, and it’s something to solve, and that gives me gratification to know that the work I did directly impacts some Veterans. And I even love hearing the numbers. We had an issue with the Veterans Crisis Line (VCL), where Veterans call in. We dropped 20 Veterans calls, but we quickly got the system back up and the VCL was able to reach back out to all of those Veterans and engage them. It’s not that we want to have a lot of problems, but knowing Monday morning when I come in, it’s going to be a new issue, we’re going to have an opportunity to fix it and touch the life of a Veteran, and that brings me great joy.

Cofrancesco: The people, the Veterans, of course, that’s number one. But the people here are just such cool people. I can’t speak for the rest of the VA and the other sites, but in West Haven, the employees are just very, very cool people. Everyone’s just seems like they’re on the same page, marching in the same path. Everyone does it with a smile on their face. It’s like a family here really. So, I really enjoy coming to work because of the people.

Brinkley: What I enjoy most about my profession is assisting others with resolving their IT issues. Most workers are confident using their computers while performing their daily tasks. However, when issues arise, they may feel comfortable speaking to someone who has an IT background. It’s beneficial to both of us if I can help to solve an interdepartmental user problem, while also advising them on how to prevent any future occurrences, or, how to proceed if they do.

How does OIT support the work that VA does to care for the Nation’s Veterans?

Meredith: Even though we don’t directly service our Veterans, we are serving the most frontline staff, and that’s what I tell my staff all the time. And then even with the call centers we support, it’s critical that we provide them exceptional service, even with something as simple as a laptop. Without that laptop, that national call center representative can’t take that call for that Veteran and provide them the service and care that they need over the phone.

Cofrancesco: Everything’s computers now. So, if the network goes down, then doctors and nurses are not charting on their patients, and they can’t properly and effectively take care of their patients. So, every computer, all our networks, all of our data closets, everything that makes IT world go is critically important. What we do here in support of our Veterans, even though it’s not direct patient care, it’s more indirect care, but nonetheless, it’s critical.

Brinkley: OIT supports VA by fixing immediate IT problems and implementing preventative measures against future IT problems. OIT support analyzes and diagnoses the problem, resolving it quickly. The goal here is to reduce your downtime to almost zero so that it would not impact the veteran’s care. This allows all employees of the VA to do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.

What motivates you to work in a mission-driven federal organization?

Meredith: I think it’s that it’s knowing how impactful our work is. Knowing that the work I do provides service to myself and other Veterans, my family members have a direct benefit from it as well as my brothers and sisters in arms. Saving lives, making lives better, getting people to services and the resources that they need in a timely manner to help them out. Yeah, we probably can make money in another industry getting better pay but I see the fruits of my labor right when I walk in, when I while walk down the halls at a medical center, and that Veterans are getting care, or someone gets service because we rolled out this program or because this application is up and running and they can use it to get the benefits that they need from it. I don’t think you get that anywhere else.

Cofrancesco: If I make a nurse or a doctor happy by fixing their laptop for them, that should trickle down and have positive effects on the Veteran in terms of seamless service and attitude, which should help in both ways of serving our Veterans. And that’s kind of the way I look at it. I think most of us do anyway.

Brinkley: Striving to make a positive impact in the VA is what motivates me.  I strongly desire to use my knowledge and expertise within the VA to improve veterans’ overall wellness. As a veteran myself this is extremely important to me.

Do you have a memorable story you’d like to share about your work?

Meredith: I want to say it was maybe two Christmases ago. I got an email from Korea that service members were unable to call the Veterans Crisis Line, but they were able to chat or text us, and we were wondering how to even start to troubleshoot this.

From New York, we were trying to troubleshoot overseas across the time zone with the military base and Korea and working with the Veterans Crisis Line, working with our business partners and our telephone telecom team, scrambling to find the right point of contact for communications between Korea and the mainland. It was an amazing experience to see so many people come together over Christmans to try to resolve this issue and fix it. I will never forget that.

Cofrancesco: A while back I had an interaction with a nurse. Her computer wasn’t working, and she had something time sensitive that she had to get done. She was in a total panic. I was able to go and run some updates and do a couple of fixes for her, and when I was done, she was so happy and so appreciative, she actually got teary. So, whatever she had to do was critically important and she was just so, so happy and appreciative. I got a big fat hug and a big, big smile. But that was satisfying to me because I thought to myself that, even though it’s indirect patient care, I just know I set this woman up for a nice day. Whereas she otherwise thought she was going to have a bad day, and now this positive attitude is going to trickle down. All that is going to trickle down now to her staff. And that trickles down to the patient.