The department’s vision of “One VA” was articulated to assist it in carrying out its mission of providing benefits and other services to veterans and dependents. It stems from the recognition that veterans think of VA as a single entity, but often encounter a confusing, bureaucratic maze of uncoordinated programs—such as those handling benefits, health care, and burials—that puts them through repetitive and frustrating administrative procedures and delays. According to the department, the “One VA” vision describes how it will use IT in versatile new ways to improve services and enable VA employees to help customers more quickly and effectively—in short, to really become “One VA.” To help carry out its activities, VA plans to spend about $1.4 billion of its total fiscal year 2001 budget of about $48 billion on various IT initiatives. Of this $1.4 billion, about $763 million, $80 million, and $400,000, respectively, are intended for VHA, VBA, and the National Cemetery Administration (NCA). The remaining $589 million is for VA-wide IT initiatives in the financial management, human resources, infrastructure, security, architecture, and planning areas. The Clinger-Cohen Act and other related legislative reforms provide guidance on how agencies should plan, manage, and acquire IT as part of their overall information resources management responsibilities. These reforms require agencies to (1) appoint CIOs responsible for providing leadership in acquiring and managing IT resources, (2) perform business process reengineering prior to acquiring new IT, and (3) complete an integrated architecture to guide and constrain future investments. The Clinger-Cohen Act requires agency heads to implement an approach for maximizing the value and assessing and managing the risks of IT investments. It stipulates that this approach should be integrated with the agency’s budget, financial, and program management processes. As detailed in our investment guide,an IT investment process is an integrated approach that provides for disciplined, data-driven identification, selection, control, life-cycle management, and evaluation of IT investments. In May 2000, we testified before this Subcommittee that VA had improved its processes for selecting, monitoring, and managing Capital Investment Board-level projects.In addition, VA had improved its in-process and post implementation reviews. However, as we testified, the in-process reviews may still not have been timely and lessons learned from post implementation reviews were provided only to the sponsoring VA organizations, and not to decisionmakers, such as the investment panel members, who could also benefit from them. Finally, the capital investment process used for projects below the Capital Investment Board- level was not as structured, and guidance for managing those projects was not complete. To address these issues, we testified that VA needed to (1) establish and monitor deadlines for completing in-process reviews, (2) provide decisionmakers with information on lessons learned from post implementation reviews, and (3) develop and implement guidance to better manage IT projects below the Capital Investment Board threshold. Last month we recommended that the Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs implement these actions to improve VA’s IT investment decision-making process.VA concurred with these recommendations, and stated that the in-process review plans will include completion dates, post implementation review findings, such as lessons learned, will be provided to investment panel members, and the VAInformationTechnologyCapitalInvestmentGuide,which was printed and distributed to VA’s agencies earlier this month, provides guidance on processes for selecting, controlling, and evaluating IT investments and procurements below the Capital Investment Board threshold. The Clinger-Cohen Act directs the heads of major federal agencies to appoint CIOs to promote improvements in work processes used by the agencies to carry out their programs; implement integrated agencywide information technology architectures; and help establish sound investment review processes to select, control, and evaluate IT spending. To help ensure that these responsibilities are effectively executed, the act requires that the CIO’s primary responsibility be related to information management. In July 1998, we reported that the responsibilities of VA’s CIO were not limited to information management.Specifically, the CIO served the department in a variety of top management positions, including assistant secretary for management, chief financial officer, and deputy assistant secretary for budget. We noted that in an agency as decentralized as VA, the CIO was faced with many significant information management responsibilitiesthat constituted a full-time job for any CIO. Accordingly, we recommended that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs appoint a CIO with full-time responsibility for information resources management. VA concurred with this recommendation. It decided to separate the CIO function from the chief financial officer and established the position of assistant secretary for information and technology to serve as VA’s CIO. This executive branch position—assistant secretary for information and technology—has remained unfilled, however, since its creation in 1998. Instead, the principal deputy assistant secretary for information and technology served as VA’s acting CIO from July 1998 until he retired on June 1, 2000. The Secretary subsequently designated an acting principal deputy assistant secretary to serve as VA’s acting CIO. VA still intends to have a departmentwide CIO. The White House just announced last week that it intends to submit a nominee to the Senate for confirmation as assistant secretary for information and technology and department CIO. The Clinger-Cohen Act requires agency heads to analyze the missions of their agencies and, on the basis of the results, revise and improve the agency’s mission-related administrative processes before making significant investments in supporting IT. According to our business process reengineering guide,an agency should have an overall business process improvement strategy that provides a means to coordinate and integrate the various reengineering and improvement projects, set priorities, and make appropriate budgetary choices. We reported in 1998that VA had not analyzed its business processes in terms of implementing its “One VA” vision. We also pointed out that VA did not have a departmentwide business process improvement strategy specifying what reengineering and improvement projects were needed, how they were related, and how they were ranked. At that time, VA concurred with our recommendation to develop such a strategy. This past May,we testified before this Subcommittee that VA no longer planned to develop such a strategy. According to VA’s assistant secretary for policy and planning, the department will, instead, rely on each of its administrations—VBA, VHA, and NCA—to reengineer its own business process. We subsequently recommended to the Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs that VA reassess its decision to delegate business process reengineering to the individual administrations. VA did not concur with this recommendation. Specifically, the department stated that the administrations best understand the desired outcomes of their missions and the means to achieve them. It further stated that business process reengineering is a constantly evolving function that is not conducted in a vacuum. We agree that the individual administrations best understand their own operations and that business process reengineering is an evolving function that does not take place in a vacuum. However, by delegating primary responsibility for reengineering to the individual administrations, each administration is able to pursue its own reengineering initiatives separate and apart from each other, rather than focusing on achieving the “One VA” vision. Accordingly, VA is less likely to achieve this vision until it develops a departmentwide business process reengineering strategy. The Clinger-Cohen Act and Office of Management and Budget guidelines direct agency CIOs to implement an architecture to provide a framework for evolving or maintaining existing IT and for acquiring new IT to achieve the agency’s strategic and IT goals. Leading organizations both in the private sector and in government use systems architectures to guide mission-critical systems development and to ensure the appropriate integration of information systems through common standards. In 1997, VA adopted the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) five-layer modelfor its departmentwide IT architecture. However, as discussed in our 1998 report,VA and its components had yet to define a departmentwide, integrated IT architecture. Accordingly, we recommended that VA develop a detailed implementation plan with milestones for completing such an architecture. VA concurred with this recommendation. In May 1999, VA published a departmentwide technical architecture,which included a technical reference model and standards profile. This document described one layer—the technology layer—of the NIST model. VA had not documented the remaining four layers—the logical architecture—showing the business processes, information flows and relationships, applications processing, and data descriptions for the department. Mr. Chairman, during the Subcommittee’s May 11, 2000, hearing, you requested that VA provide the Subcommittee with a plan and milestones for completing the logical portion of its departmentwide IT architecture within 60 days of the hearing. The resulting two-page plan, submitted to the Subcommittee on August 25, provides a high-level discussion of VA’s approach for developing a target departmentwide logical architecture and time estimates for various deliverables. According to this plan, the VA administrations are expected to develop logical architectures for their administrations. To avoid duplicating the efforts of the administrations, VA expects the departmentwide logical architecture to focus on crosscutting issues and interdependencies. VA is obtaining contractor support to develop a detailed plan with milestones and to assist in developing this departmentwide logical architecture. VA expects this architecture to be completed within 6 months of the contract award date. In commenting on a draft of this testimony, VA stated that it expects to have the contract awarded by mid-October. VA’s strategy for developing its logical architecture will not likely result in an integrated departmentwide architecture. In fact, VA acknowledges in its plan that the architectures developed by the administrations will not provide a unified picture of the department’s architecture. By allowing each administration to develop its own logical architecture, at least three separate architectures could result.