Page 10 - FCW, August 15, 2016

Trending
15,000 Defense Department IT networks are being folded into the Joint
Information Environment
Concerns remain about DOD/ VA interoperability
IN THE PIPELINE
WHAT: A call from the Army for white papers to demonstrate capabilities in cyber defense and electronic warfare, among other fields.
WHY: The Army has put a pre- mium on using training scenarios to simulate complex cyber and electronic warfare scenarios,
as evidenced by a recent pilot program.
The annual prototyping experi- ment, run through the Army Cyber Center of Excellence at Fort Gordon, Ga., is in that same spirit of rigorous training and advanced technical capabilities.The goal is to let vendors and others plug directly into the Army’s operat- ing environment to see how their technologies stack up.
Interested vendors and aca- demic institutions are asked to submit their latest tools in a num- ber of fields. In the cyber arena, Army officials are interested in malware forensics, insider-threat detection and software to help with defensive planning.
White papers are due by Aug. 31.
Verbatim: “The challenges facing our warfighters are too complex to make con- cept and acquisition deci- sions based upon a static \[demonstration\] of capability. Therefore, the intent of this event will be to discourage inert demonstrations of solu- tions in a stovepiped...man- ner. Instead, solutions will be integrated with existing sys- tems and live data feeds to drive outcomes and concepts toward wartime realism.”
Full announcement: is.gd/FCW_ArmyCyber
Senate appropriators grilled top Department of Veterans Affairs officials about whether the VA’s and Defense Department’s electronic health record systems are cooperating.
The VA “is still years away” from achieving interoperability with DOD, said Valerie Melvin, director of infor- mation management and technology resources issues at the Government Accountability Office.
She added that the VA still lacks clarity on what constitutes achiev- ing full interoperability and how the agency intends to achieve it, and the VA has “yet to substantiate its claim” on modernizing VistA, its homegrown EHR system.
In April, DOD and VA jointly certi- fied that their systems were interop- erable. However, although the Joint Legacy Viewer (JLV) was deemed interoperable, it lacks the capability to view X-rays and other medical imagery.
“We need to move forward so that there is no net burden to the soldier... \[and\] we 100 percent transfer our data totheVAsotheVAthatcanseeallthe imagery,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Military Construction, Vet-
erans Affairs and Related Agencies Subcommittee.
VA officials said the image viewer will be fully deployed and have access to all records in September.
“JLV has been a critical step in con- necting VA and DOD health systems, but it is a read-only application,” VA CIO LaVerne Council said. “Building on the interoperability infrastructure supporting JLV, the Enterprise Health Management Platform will ultimately replace our current read-write point- of-care application.”
She added that eHMP is a criti- cal component of the VA’s push for a truly digital platform, which she vowed would be agile and adhere to interna- tional open-source standards.
Some lawmakers also voiced con- cerns about the VA’s scheduling system. Agency officials recently said they were halting development of the Medical Appointment Scheduling System and would instead stick with an in-house solution. The decision was a reversal of plans the agency announced in the wake of revelations about excessive wait times at VA medical centers, which employees often sought to cover up.
— Aisha Chowdhry
Rick Holgate
@rickholgate
Move over, #ITMF? https://fcw.com/articles/2016/07/15/ cloud-bill-senate.aspx?s=fcwdaily_180716 ... via @FCWnow < Agree w/@WhipHoyer @tonyscottcio: no seed money, piecemeal approach are problems
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1:14 AM - 19 Jul 2016
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8 August 15, 2016
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