The Veterans Affairs Department has awarded The Informatics Applications Group Inc., of Reston, Va., a $5 million contract to be the custodial agent to manage VA’s open source community to modernize its VistA electronic health record.

The vendor, TIAG, is a management and technology services company, which has performed business process and clinical applications work for the Defense Department. 

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The custodial agent is an organization with experience in establishing and operating an open source community, its processes and resulting products. 

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VA announced the contract award June 20 in Federal Business Opportunities.

VA plans to start in July to stand up the open source community, of which VA will be just one of the public and private participants, although a very large one, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has said. The custodial agent is an organization with experience in establishing and operating an open source community, its processes and resulting products.

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VA must accelerate the modernization of VistA, (Veterans Integrated Systems Technology Architecture) developed initially in the 1970s, even as it is collaborating with DOD on a common EHR. VistA’s legacy technical architecture makes maintenance and upgrades difficult and expensive, a number of VA officials have said. VA will incorporate the open source approach in the joint EHR.

As part of the community, VA will contribute non-security essential modifications to the VistA product it makes or pays for to the open source custodian.