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House panel rips VA leaders on scheduling software pause
IN THE IT PIPELINE
WHAT: A sources-sought notice from the General Services Administration’s Federal Acqui- sition Service seeking infor- mation on the cybersecurity services market.
WHY: Commercial services are evolving beyond detection to become more proactive and preventive. GSA wants more information on what is available from commercial providers and a better sense of what agencies need.
The announcement states that FAS “is conducting busi- ness channel research to gain an enhanced understanding of what agencies’ needs are, what solutions currently exist and what role GSA can play in improving the ability of agen- cies to procure the suite of cybersecurity services.”
The information gathered will help identify offerings, improve their visibility and fill gaps. Some areas of interest include penetration testing, phishing assessments, network mapping, vulnerability scanning and inci- dent response.
FAS said it wants to know more about “the types of cyber- security products and services that are available to detect and remediate the kinds of cyber- security vulnerabilities, threats and incidents most prevalent in industry and in government.”
The notice includes a long list of questions about commercial services and how GSA’s offer- ings compare. Comments were due by April 20.
FULL ANNOUNCEMENT:
is.gd/GSA_cyber
Lawmakers seeking answers on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ plans to modernize scheduling software were not pleased with the answers they received from top officials at an April 14 hearing of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s Oversight and Investiga- tions Subcommittee.
VA Undersecretary for Health David Shulkin, CIO LaVerne Council and Assis- tant Deputy CIO Alan Constantian out- lined plans to pause development on the Medical Appointment Scheduling Sys- tem (MASS) and instead stick with in- house scheduling solutions — a reversal of the strategy the agency announced in the wake of revelations about a massive scheduling backlog in 2014.
The VA had recently decided that the VistA Scheduling Enhancement and Veteran Appointment Request systems met its scheduling needs, and MASS was unnecessary. “This decision is a dramatic about-face,” Subcommit- tee Chairman Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) said. “MASS has been stopped before even its first pilot could be compared with VSE and VAR.”
VAR, which lets veterans request appointments, is being tested at two facilities, while VSE, which focuses
on improving the existing scheduling system’s user interface, is in place at 10 locations. The enhancements are intended to speed the scheduling pro- cess and cut down on errors.
Shulkin said MASS is being put on a “strategic hold.” If the home-grown solu- tions do not fulfill veterans’ needs, then VA officials will come back to MASS, he added.
“Too often IT projects have pro- gressed to a critical decision point and then been abandoned in favor of another initiative or another plan,” Rep. Dan Ben- ishek (R-Mich.) said. “VA must realize that maintaining manual systems — and deferring to archaic operating systems as the default — cannot continue.”
Shulkin stressed that MASS has not been abandoned. “We did not cancel it at all,” he said. “It is a contract we can execute at any time.”
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), however, said the agency has wasted nine years and $127 million on the scheduling system. “We cannot and will not let this happen again,” she said. “You need to understand that Congress can- not continue to give VA a blank check to spend on IT projects.”
— Aisha Chowdhry
Kirk Borne
@KirkDBorne
Congrats to @Kathryn_Kienast => @BoozAllen Leader and #Fed100 Winner https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/28/ fed100_kienast-kathryn.aspx ...
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