The Department of Veterans Affairs will temporarily halt 45 information technology projects which are either behind schedule or over budget.

Officials said the projects will be reviewed to determine whether they will be continued.

"VA has a responsibility to the American people, who are investing millions of dollars in technology projects, to deliver quality results that adhere to a budget and are delivered on time." Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki said. "They need to have confidence that the dollars they are spending are being effectively used to improve the lives of our veterans." 


Before any of the projects is allowed to resume, a new project plan that meets the requirements of the Program Management Accountability System (PMAS) must be created by the project manager and approved by Roger W. Baker, the VA's assistant secretary for information and technology.

The PMAS is a management protocol that requires projects to establish milestones to deliver new functions to  customers. A failure to meet deadlines indicates a problem in the project. Under the PMAS, a third missed customer delivery milestone is cause for the project to be halted and re-planned.

The PMAS, in conjunction with the analytical tools available through the IT Dashboard, will ensure early identification and correction of problematic IT projects. The IT Dashboard, launched last month, is a one-stop clearinghouse of information, allowing people to track federal information technology initiatives and hold the government accountable for progress and results. 



"Our goal is to increase our success rate for our system's development projects," Baker said. "We will use every tool at our disposal to bring about greater accountability and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely. PMAS and the IT Dashboard will be critical indicators of whether our IT projects are on schedule and on budget, and if they are not, we will take swift action to cut down on waste and redundancy."

Over the next year, all IT projects at the VA will be required to move to the PMAS.


The projects temporarily halted under the PMAS consist of:

• Scheduling Replacement
• 

Laboratory System Reeingeering Project (LSRP)
• 

Pharmacy Re-Engineering Pre .5


• Health Data Repository (HDR) II


• Pharmacy Re-Engineering Pre1.0
• HeVet Middleware Services


• Person Service Identity Management


• Administrative Data Repository (ADR)

Document & Ancillary Imaging


• Clinical Data Service


• VA Learning Management


• Home Telehealth (HT) Development


• Occupational Health Record Keeping System (OHRS)
• 

Enrollment System Redesign (ESR) v4


• CHDR - Chemistry & Hematology: ADC Automation


• Clinical Flow Sheet - CLIO


• E-Gov: E-Training


• Barcode Expansion


• Delivery Service
• 

Organization Service


• Enrollment System Redesign (ESR) v3.1


• Health Data Repository (HDR) Data Warehouse


• Home Telehealth (HT) Infrastructure Enhancements


• Radiology Outside Reporting


• BCMA Inpatient Medication Request for SFG IRA
• 

Blood Bank - VBECS v1.0


• Prosthetics Enhancements


• VIC (Veterans Identification Card) Development


• Spinal Cord Injury & Disorders Outcomes v3.0
• 

Radiology HL7 Interface Update


• Ward Drug Dispensing Equipment (WDDE) Interface
• 

Lab Data Sharing & Interoperability (LDSI) – Anatomic Pathology/Microbiology
• 

HBPC Medical Foster Home (MFH)


• eClaims Plus


• ASISTS Modification - Case Management


• National Teleradiology Program


• CAPRI Enhancements


• Master Patient Index


• RMS - Rights Management Server 


• National Teleradiology Program


• Problem List Standardization


• Radiology Standardization


• LDSI Terminology Support
• 

Clinical/Health Data Repositories (CHDR) Phase II


• Fee Data and HERO