VA’s mission is to promote the health, welfare, and dignity of all veterans in recognition of their service to the nation by ensuring they receive medical care, benefits, social support, and lasting memorials. Its three major components, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), and the National Cemetery Administration are primarily responsible for carrying out this mission. Over time, the use of information technology has become crucial to the department’s effort to provide benefits and services, with its budget for IT exceeding $1 billion annually. In reporting on VA’s IT management over the past several years, we have highlighted challenges the department has faced in achieving its “One VA” vision, including that information systems and services were highly decentralized and that its administrations controlled a majority of the IT budget. For example, according to an October 2005 memorandum from the former CIO to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, the CIO had direct control over only 3 percent of the department’s IT budget and 6 percent of the department’s IT personnel. In addition, in the department’s fiscal year 2006 IT budget request, the Veterans Health Administration was identified to receive 88 percent of the requested funding, while the department was identified to receive only 4 percent. We have previously pointed out that, given the department’s large IT funding and decentralized management structure, it was crucial for the department CIO to ensure that well- established and integrated processes for leading, managing, and controlling investments were followed throughout the department. Further, a contractor’s assessment of VA’s IT organizational alignment, issued in February 2005, noted the lack of control for how and when money is spent. The assessment found that project managers within the administrations had the ability to shift money to support individual projects. Also, according to the assessment, the focus of department-level management was only on reporting expenditures to the Office of Management and Budget and Congress, rather than on managing these expenditures within the department. We have reported in the past on key factors that are needed in order to successfully transform an organization to be more results oriented, customer focused, and collaborative in nature. We reported that conducting large-scale change management initiatives are not simple endeavors and require the concentrated efforts of both leadership and employees to realize intended synergies and to accomplish new organizational goals. We also noted that there are a number of key practices that can serve as the basis for federal agencies to transform their cultures in response to governance challenges, such as those that an organization like VA might face when transforming to a centralized IT management structure. Among the significant factors we identified as critical for ensuring the success of VA’s move to centralized management are ensuring commitment from top leadership, establishing a governance structure to manage resources, linking the IT strategic plan to the organization strategic plan, using workforce strategic management to identify proper roles for all communicating change to all stakeholders, and dedicating an implementation team to manage change. VA’s plans for realigning the management of its IT program include elements of several of the six factors that we identified as critical to the department’s implementation of a centralized management structure (see table 1). Additional departmental actions could increase assurance that the realignment will be completed successfully. Without further action to fully address the factors we have identified, the risk to successfully centralizing the IT operations increases and the long-term benefits of the realignment may not be realized. It is important that an organization’s top leadership supports and sustains major change initiatives through to completion. We have testified that top leadership involvement for making management improvements is critical to overcoming an organization’s natural resistance to change, marshaling the resources needed to improve management, and building and maintaining organizationwide commitment to new ways of doing business. In addition, in reporting on the results of a forum to identify useful practices and lessons learned from major private- and public-sector organizational transformations, we noted that a key factor for successful organizational transformation was ensuring that top leadership drives the effort. The department has addressed this critical success factor through multiple actions. For example, in February 2007, the Secretary approved a new organization structure for centralized IT management. This structure was recommended by the realignment contractor following its review of the department’s strategic business objectives, existing organization structure, and business processes and will serve as the framework for organizing the IT workforce under the centralized model. The structure assigns roles and responsibilities for IT management that VA expects will provide the Office of Information and Technology leadership the organizational stature and credibility to deal effectively with the administrations on IT matters. Another example of the Secretary’s commitment to the realignment came through approval of the transfer of IT personnel to the Office of Information and Technology. Previously these personnel had been assigned to the administrations (e.g., VHA and VBA) and staff offices. The movement of these personnel should enable the CIO to improve control over IT development and operations in the department. A governance structure should ensure suitable stakeholder participation in the change initiative and reflect clearly defined stakeholder roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority. When an organization is considering a major change initiative, it must ensure there is an established governance structure in place that provides for the effective use and oversight of resources during and after the change. According to VA’s independent verification and validation contractor, two critical aspects of governance are (1) the inclusion of relevant stakeholders in the development of any new processes resulting from the initiative and (2) holding these parties accountable for execution of their responsibilities throughout the entire life cycle of the initiative. We have reported that organizations need to establish a governance structure that represents the entire stakeholder community and reflects clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and decision-making authority among the different levels of leadership. VA has partially addressed this critical success factor. In particular, while the governance plan for centralized management has been approved by the Secretary, the department has not yet established boards necessary to provide governance over the centralized structure and processes that are being developed. One of these boards—the Business Needs and Investment Board—is to provide investment control for the department’s IT projects. According to VA officials, this board had not been established because some of the positions on the board had not yet been filled by permanent staff. In addition, the documentation that the department provided to us lacks detailed descriptions of how the new organization would support a completed, centralized IT governance process. Until the department establishes the elements needed to provide governance over its new IT structure and processes, the department cannot provide assurance that implementation of centralized management will be successful. Our November 2002 report noted that organizations attempting a transformation needed to establish a coherent mission with integrated strategic goals and align the transformed organization to support those goals. For example, if an organization’s strategic goal is top-quality medical care, IT strategic goals and the related transformation should be aligned to support that goal. An IT strategic plan should define, in cooperation with the relevant stakeholders, how IT will contribute to the enterprise’s strategic objectives and related costs and risks. Industry documentation further notes that planning helps ensure that leadership understands the link between an organization’s direction and how IT is aligned to meet the organization’s goals. According to this documentation, an organization and its strategies should be integrated, clearly linking enterprise goals and IT goals, and recognize opportunities as well as current limitations. Further, integration of enterprise and goals should be broadly communicated throughout the organization to ensure that all users and stakeholders have a clear sense of what the organization is attempting to accomplish. However, VA has not addressed this critical success factor because it has not yet updated an IT strategic plan to reflect the goals of the new centralized structure. According to department officials, a draft version of an updated IT strategic plan is expected to be completed by June 30, 2007. Additionally, this plan is expected to support the department’s strategic plan, which includes the goals of each of the department’s administrations. Until the IT strategic plan is updated, the department will have neither a clear link between the department’s strategic plan and the IT strategic plan nor assurance that the realignment will meet the goals in these plans. Workforce strategic management is necessary to ensure that an organization has the personnel resources capable of developing and delivering the services required of the organization. We have previously reported that success in major change initiatives is more likely when the best individuals are selected for each position based on their competencies rather than on where they work. That is, the new organization needs to avoid a situation where key personnel are selected on the basis of an understanding that each of the originating components gets its “turn” in the selection process. Such an approach not only undermines the quality of the selections but also raises questions about top leadership’s ability and commitment to creating a new, integrated organization. We have also reported that it is important to establish an organizationwide knowledge and skills inventory to exchange knowledge among transforming organizations. Valuable information resides in the organizational components of transformations, and when these components are combined, these intellectual assets are extremely powerful and beneficial to employees and stakeholders. Knowledge and skills inventories not only capture the intellectual assets of the new organization but also signal to employees that their particular expertise is valued by the organization. In addition, industry documentation notes that workforce strategic management should be supported by well-defined personnel competencies, staffing of appropriate roles, training, and related factors necessary for high performance. The department has taken steps to partially address this critical success factor. As stated previously, the department has aligned almost all of its IT workforce under the CIO, having transferred approximately 6,000 personnel from the administrations to the CIO’s office. In addition, the department has identified the responsibilities for workforce strategic management within its new organizational structure—the Assistant Secretary for Information Technology has responsibility for workforce planning; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology Resource Management has responsibility for ensuring the alignment of IT workforce skills with IT goals and objectives; and the Human Resources and Training Management Office has responsibility for developing and executing the human capital plan that supports the IT strategy. Nonetheless, key tasks remain to be completed in order for this critical factor to be fully addressed. For example, department officials indicate that VA is currently assessing the roles and responsibilities of the approximately 6,000 staff that have been permanently assigned to the Office of Information and Technology, but the department has not yet established a knowledge and skills inventory to determine what skills are available in order to decide the proper roles for all employees within the new organization. Also, the department has not yet developed policies and procedures to centrally manage the IT personnel, assessed personnel requirements, defined training requirements, or created career and training paths and requirements for the personnel. Until the department completes these important tasks, the success of the realignment is at risk because IT personnel may be situated in inappropriate positions within the department or they may lack adequate training to fulfill their job requirements. Any major change initiative should be supported by an effective communication strategy that shares expectations, reports on progress, and articulates the mission, service objectives, and policies and procedures. Our 2002 report on transformations noted that such communication should reach out to employees, customers, and stakeholders, engaging them in a two-way exchange. Furthermore, communication should provide for feedback about progress and concerns from stakeholders that will result in meaningful improvement in the transformation. The department has partially addressed this critical factor for successful implementation of its new structure. In particular, VA has taken actions to improve communication for the realignment by addressing staff concerns. During our site visits to two VA medical centers, communication of realignment goals and activities had been a concern for IT staff. The staff at these locations reported they had difficulty communicating directly with VA headquarters staff responsible for the realignment to obtain responses to issues. In addition, the department’s realignment contractor reported in its survey of 167 VA facilities that 47 percent of VA facility staff wanted to see more information about the realignment and 23 percent of VA facility CIOs reported little opportunity for feedback from the VA field sites. In response to these concerns, the department distributed policy memoranda on changes resulting from the realignment and requested employee input on the realignment through a forum on the VA Web site. In addition, the department held conferences for Office of Information and Technology management and staff (which included sessions with the VA CIO) to communicate the goals and activities of the realignment. Nonetheless, further action could help ensure sustained communication throughout the realignment effort. Specifically, while the department has identified the Business Relationship Management Office as the single point of contact between the Office of Information and Technology and the administrations, it has not yet staffed this office. According to the department, it has concentrated its efforts to date on transferring staff to the CIO’s office and on creating a new organizational structure. However, the performance of the Business Relationship Management Office in communicating the needs of the administrations to the Office of Information and Technology will be critical to the success of the realignment. Until this office is fully staffed, VA increases the risk that communication across the department will be inadequate, jeopardizing user and stakeholder support for the initiative. We reported in 2003 that a dedicated implementation team that is responsible for the day-to-day management of a major change initiative is critical to ensure that the project receives the focused, full-time attention needed to be sustained and successful. Specifically, the implementation team is important to ensuring that various change initiatives are implemented in a coherent and integrated way. The team must have the necessary authority and resources to set priorities, make timely decisions, and move quickly to implement the transformation. In addition, the implementation team can assist in tracking implementation goals for a change initiative and identifying performance shortfalls or schedule slippages. It is important for the team to use performance metrics to provide a succinct and concrete statement of expected performance versus actual performance. Because of its close involvement with the change initiative, the implementation team can also suggest corrections to remedy any problems. The department has not addressed this critical success factor because it has not dedicated an implementation team to manage the realignment effort and track its progress. At the conclusion of our review, staff from the IT realignment office, which was responsible for overseeing the realignment, had been reassigned to other areas of responsibility within the department’s new structure. In addition, the Director of the Realignment Office told us that multiple offices will assume responsibility for managing the realignment through July 2008. For example, the Office of Quality and Performance Management will oversee process implementation across the Office of Information and Technology, and the Office of Oversight and Compliance Management will assess whether the department is complying with the new processes. However, there is no one entity currently responsible for managing the realignment. In addition, according to the Director of the Realignment Office, the department has developed performance metrics to measure progress on the implementation of the new management processes. However, metrics have not yet been developed to assess progress in implementing key milestones of the realignment. He noted that the department planned to develop performance metrics for tracking the progress of the realignment and that these metrics would be finalized by mid-June 2007. Also, the department expects to implement the new IT management processes incrementally by July 2008, but it has missed key implementation dates for these processes. Implementation of the first 9 of 36 processes was to begin in March 2007; however, as of early May 2007, the department had only begun pilot testing two of the new processes. With the dissolution of the IT Realignment Office in June, and the absence of any one entity currently dedicated for managing the realignment, it is less likely that VA will be able to ensure that the realignment is managed effectively throughout its implementation. Within VA’s new centralized management structure, the CIO is expected to be responsible for ensuring that there are fiscal controls over the department’s IT appropriation and for overseeing capital planning and execution. These responsibilities are consistent with the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996, which requires federal agencies to develop processes for the selection, control, and evaluation of major systems initiatives. According to the department, it plans to establish the CIO’s control over the IT budget by (1) designating organizations with specific roles and responsibilities for controlling the budget to report directly to the CIO, (2) implementing an IT governance structure that assigns budget oversight responsibilities to specific governance boards, and (3) developing and implementing IT portfolio management and financial management processes in the new organization. While these measures show the potential for establishing the CIO’s control of the budget, the department has not yet fully implemented them; thus, their effectiveness in ensuring accountability for the budget has not yet been established. As one measure to establish CIO control within the new organization, two deputy assistant secretaries under the CIO are expected to have responsibility for managing and controlling different aspects of the IT budget. Specifically, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for IT Enterprise Strategy, Policy, and Programs is to have responsibility for the creation, implementation, and control of an integrated IT portfolio, and for the design, development, and implementation of a portfolio management process. In addition, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology Resource Management is to have responsibility for managing budget execution and compliance, including tracking actual expenditures against the budget. However, as of May 2007, the deputy assistant secretary positions had been filled with acting officials, and department officials could not provide a date for when permanent appointees would be named to these positions. In addition, while these offices had been identified in the new organization structure, VA had not determined when personnel would be staffed to the offices and would assume their budget oversight responsibilities. Until these positions are filled with permanent appointees, the department cannot ensure their effectiveness in managing and controlling the IT budget. As a second measure, the IT governance plan, which was approved by the Secretary in April 2007, describes VA’s approach to enhancing governance, including management of the IT budget. The plan states that the decision to undertake IT investments requires adherence to the governance process to assure that investments align with the department’s strategic plan. In addition, it states that investment governance decisions should address how the department will program and budget resources against the IT business plan, meet customer demands, and allocate funding according to the needs and requirements of the administrations and staff offices. According to the plan, two governance boards are to have responsibility for overseeing the development and approval of the budget and monitoring budget execution: The Business Needs and Investment Board is to provide departmentwide investment control for the IT programs. Its responsibilities are to include reviewing investments, formulating and approving budgets, determining the source and amount of funding for IT projects, and monitoring budget execution. This board is to be chaired by the Principle Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Information and Technology, and its membership is to include senior representatives of the administrations and staff offices, resource management offices, and selected IT service managers. The IT Leadership Board is to develop and approve the departmentwide IT budget based on information submitted to it by the Business Needs and Investment Board. This board is to be chaired by the CIO, and membership is to include key executive leaders in the Office of Information and Technology, administrations, and staff offices. In addition to these two governance boards, the Strategic Management Council is to be responsible for making decisions on the overall level of IT spending and priorities for the department and for approving budgets. The Strategic Management Council was in place prior to the realignment effort and the governance plan noted that it would be included as part of the governance structure. It is chaired by the Deputy Secretary, and its membership includes senior department leadership. As an example of the planned interaction between the boards, the Business Needs and Investment Board is to ensure that the administrations and staff offices’ requirements have been identified, documented, justified, scoped, planned, and prioritized and that funds have been allocated. This information is to be forwarded with all other prioritized requirements to the IT Leadership Board for review and endorsement and then sent on to the Strategic Management Council for departmentwide approval. As of early May 2007, however, VA officials stated that neither the Business Needs and Investment Board nor the IT Leadership Board had been established. VA officials also could not provide a date for when they would be set up. Until the governance boards are in place with the Strategic Management Council, the department will lack a complete governance model for the new organization. As a third measure to establish the CIO’s control over the IT budget, VA plans to implement processes that specifically address portfolio management and financial management. As noted earlier in this report, it is crucial for the CIO to ensure that well-established and integrated processes are in place for leading, managing, and controlling VA’s IT resources. These two processes represent how the CIO organization intends to carry out its responsibilities for the development and control of the budget. Specifically, the IT portfolio management process is to address how the CIO will manage the department’s investment portfolio to achieve strategic objectives and allocate funding. The process is to include steps VA will take to identify, select, initiate, manage, and control its projects. According to the realignment assistance contractor, implementation of this process should help VA make better investment decisions and gain better control over its projects. The financial management process, according to its charter, will address how the CIO organization plans to manage IT investment programs, address costs and benefits of investments, and provide a formal budgeting process for managing the IT portfolio against the budget. According to the realignment assistance contractor, implementation of this process should provide the CIO with accurate cost information to support IT investment decisions and justify expenditures, and enable this official to ensure that the Office of Information and Technology operates in a cost-effective manner by providing a sound basis for cost-benefit analyses. While the department had identified individuals who would be responsible for implementing these two processes, an official in the realignment office told us that the schedule for implementing the processes had not been established. The official stated that VA nonetheless expected to complete implementation of all management processes and meet the July 2008 target date for full implementation of the realignment. However, the absence of a schedule to implement these two processes increases the risk that they will not be implemented in a timely manner, thus reducing their effectiveness in contributing to improved IT budget accountability and oversight. The department has taken various actions that address several of the factors we identified as critical to its realignment, including establishing a new organizational structure, approving its governance plan, and transferring IT staff to the CIO’s authority. While these are positive steps, the department has much work to complete in order to ensure the success of its efforts. For example, the department has not yet developed detailed IT governance process descriptions to address the management of IT resources, established a knowledge and skills inventory to determine the proper roles for employees transferred to the new organization, or identified the personnel requirements, career paths, and training requirements for these employees. Further, the department has not fully staffed offices necessary for supporting the new structure, identified an implementation team that will be responsible for managing the change to the new management structure, or developed performance metrics to assess progress in implementing key milestones of the realignment. The department’s continued focus on ensuring that these important actions are taken is essential to successfully achieving and realizing the benefits of the realignment. While department officials and realignment documents identified three measures of the realignment that are to provide the CIO with control over the IT budget, VA has yet to identify how and when this control will be achieved. Specifically, the department has not yet staffed with permanent appointees the two deputy assistant secretary positions that will have responsibility for IT budget management and control, established the two governance boards that are to have IT budget oversight responsibility, or developed a schedule for implementation of the IT portfolio management and financial management processes. Without showing how and when such controls will be in place, it remains unclear if VA’s actions will result in optimizing its IT investment management process to provide the CIO with full control over the budget. To ensure that VA’s IT realignment is successfully accomplished, we recommend that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs direct the Chief Information Officer to take the following six actions: Develop detailed IT governance process descriptions that address how the department will manage IT resources within the centralized organization. Establish a knowledge and skills inventory to determine what skills are available in order to decide the proper roles for all employees transferred to the new organization. Assess personnel requirements under the centralized management model, including career paths and appropriate training requirements. Fully staff all offices necessary for supporting the new organizational structure. Dedicate an implementation team responsible for change management processes throughout the transformation to a centralized IT structure. Expedite the development of performance metrics to track the progress of the realignment. In addition, to ensure that centralized control of the IT budget is established, we recommend that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs direct the Chief Information Officer to take the following three actions: Establish milestones to permanently staff the deputy assistant secretary position for IT Enterprise Strategy, Policy, and Programs and the deputy assistant secretary position for IT Resource Management. Commit to a date for establishing the Business Needs and Investment Board and the IT Leadership Board. Establish a schedule for the implementation of the IT portfolio management and financial management processes. In providing written comments on a draft of this report, the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs agreed with our findings and generally concurred with our recommendations. (The department’s comments are reproduced in app. II.) The comments described actions planned that respond to our recommendations: for example, developing and implementing an IT career management program that includes a knowledge and skills inventory for Office of Information and Technology employees, and fully implementing the IT governance plan by October 2007. In addition, the comments provided further information on the department’s actions taken since receiving our draft report, such as the establishment of the Business Needs and Investment Board that is a key component of the IT governance process; establishment of offices responsible for ensuring compliance with IT policies, directives and core IT processes; and filling a senior executive position in the Office of Information and Technology. If the actions that the department has planned to undertake are properly implemented, they should help ensure that the IT realignment is successfully accomplished. Although the department concurred with all our recommendations, it provided an alternative approach to dedicating an implementation team responsible for change management processes throughout the transformation to a centralized IT structure. Its written comments indicated that change management would be the responsibility of two organizations in the new structure. However, in our view, having a dedicated implementation team, responsible for day-to-day management of major change initiatives, is crucial to VA’s ability to ensure that the IT realignment is fully and successfully implemented in a coherent, integrated, and coordinated manner. The approach articulated in the department’s comments does not make clear how progress will be monitored, schedule slippages or shortfalls identified, and solutions to problems developed and implemented. Without having a dedicated implementation team, as we recommend, the department may increase the risk to the success of the realignment. We are sending copies of this report to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, House of Representatives. We are also sending copies to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs and appropriate congressional committees. We will also make copies available to others on request. In addition, the report is available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov. If you and your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-6304 or melvinv@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. Major contributors to this report are listed in appendix III. To determine whether the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) realignment plan includes critical factors for successful implementation of a centralized management approach, we obtained and analyzed realignment documents from VA, its realignment contractor, and the independent verification and validation (IV&V) contractor. These documents included the realignment contract request for quotes and memorandums signed by the Secretary and Deputy Secretary relating to approval of the permanent assignment of operations and maintenance and development staff to the Office of Information and Technology. The documents also included the establishment of the VA single information technology (IT) leadership authority. We also obtained and analyzed the realignment contractor’s performance work statement, which detailed the work the contractor was to perform. In addition, we reviewed other contractor deliverables, such as process charters for the new IT management processes, the “to be” organization structure transition plan, and the transition management plan. VA also provided IV&V contractor documents that assessed each of the realignment contract deliverables. We reviewed these documents to identify problems and concerns raised by the IV&V contractor. To identify factors critical to the success of the centralization effort, we reviewed GAO products relevant to organizational transformation. We also reviewed industry best practices documentation, such as the IT Governance Institute’s Control Objectives for Information and related Technology 4.0, to identify industry standard success factors for IT organizations. To validate the success factors, we met with IV&V contractor officials to elicit their input on the relevance and soundness of factors we identified for consideration in our assessment of the realignment effort. IV&V contractor officials concurred that the factors we developed are critical to VA’s successful IT realignment. In addition, we compared documents obtained from VA and realignment contractor officials against these factors to determine the level to which the critical success factors were included. We also conducted monthly meetings with the VA realignment team and the realignment contractor to determine whether these critical success factors were being considered in the implementation of the realignment. We visited the VA medical center and a benefits administration office in Baltimore and a VA medical center in Philadelphia to become familiar with the methodology that the realignment contractor was using to assess VA’s readiness for the realignment. We observed teams from the realignment contractor as they gathered information that would be used to create a baseline of IT activities and a transition plan for the department. We selected these locations due to the schedule availability of the department and the contractor and because they are representative of VA facilities. To determine how the centralized management approach will ensure that the CIO is accountable for VA’s entire IT budget, including those funds that previously had been administered by its administrations, we reviewed VA and realignment contractor documentation and plans that specifically address IT budget oversight and execution under the realignment. These documents included roles and responsibilities for those VA organizations listed in the single IT leadership organization structure that are to have responsibility for IT portfolio and financial management, the IT Governance Plan, and the IT Portfolio Management and Financial Management Process Design and Implementation Plans. To supplement our analysis, we met with officials in VA’s Office of Information and Technology who are responsible for managing and executing the IT budget. We conducted our work in VA offices in Washington, D.C., and at VA facilities in Baltimore and Philadelphia from June 2006 through May 2007 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. In addition to the contact named above, major contributors to this report were Barbara Oliver, Assistant Director; Nabajyoti Barkakati; Jacki Bauer; Neil Doherty; Nancy Glover; B. Scott Pettis; J. Michael Resser; and Eric Trout.

Summary: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spends nearly $1 billion yearly to support its information technology (IT) needs; yet it has encountered persistent challenges in managing IT projects. In October 2005, VA initiated a realignment to centralize its IT management program that it plans to complete by July 2008. GAO was requested to determine (1) whether the department's realignment plan includes critical factors for successful implementation and (2) how the centralized management approach is to ensure that the chief information officer (CIO) is accountable for the department's entire IT budget. To do so, GAO identified critical success factors, analyzed realignment and budget documents, and held discussions with VA officials. VA's plans for realigning the management of its IT program include elements of several factors that GAO identified as critical to the department's implementation of a centralized structure; additional departmental actions could increase assurance that the realignment will be completed successfully. Since undertaking the realignment, VA has concentrated its efforts on transferring approximately 6,000 staff to the CIO's authority and on creating a new organizational structure. It has also taken certain actions to establish an IT governance plan, identify workforce management responsibilities, and increase communication about the realignment with staff. However, it has not yet created a knowledge and skills inventory to help determine proper roles for all employees in the new organization, established governance boards to manage resources, or dedicated an implementation team to manage change and track the progress of the realignment with performance metrics. As a result, the department risks jeopardizing the success of its efforts and may not realize the long-term benefits of the realignment. Within the new structure, the CIO is to have responsibility for ensuring that there are fiscal controls over the IT appropriation and for overseeing capital planning processes, budget execution, and financial management programs. According to the department, it plans to establish the CIO's control by (1) designating organizations with specific roles and responsibilities for controlling the budget to report directly to the CIO; (2) implementing a governance structure that assigns budget oversight responsibilities to specific governance boards; and (3) developing and implementing IT portfolio management and financial management processes. While these measures show the potential for establishing control of the budget, VA has not yet fully implemented them or committed to a time frame for doing so. Thus, their effectiveness in ensuring the CIO's accountability for the budget has not yet been established.