My current job involves preparing for disaster recovery, going beyond just preventing issues with firewalls and other security measures. I recently read an article about the Veterans Affairs Department’s low priority of documenting a detailed view of its IT architecture.
This came out in the testimony Roger Baker, the VA’s CIO on May 11. Baker told Congress that the VA has 62 data centers and approximately 37,000 servers, but admitted that some of those servers could be “virtual instances running on a single physical server.”
How big an issue is this? Beyond the obvious of not having standard up-to-date hardware and software for security, there is another potential problem. The VAD is supposed to work with the Department of Defense to implement joint systems as well as to developing and securing information systems.
The irony is that from a medical records standpoint, the VA hospitals have their system right. A VA hospital in Florida can access a patient’s records in a VA hospital in Connecticut. This is something that computer savvy doctors understand. (Note: many doctors are still not committed to electronic medical records. Sometimes it’s because they don’t want to spend the money, but sometimes it’s because of the lack of standards outside VA hospitals.)
Back to the VAD's architecture, Baker's concern is because things are not being handled as they would in a private company. Joel Willemssen, managing director for IT at the Government Accountability Office, said it’s absolutely critical to get a picture of the VA’s architecture. Baker is planning to cancel failing programs and restructure the way VA's IT department operates instead of focusing on the broader architecture. Willemssen admits that Baker is going to have to cut up the problem like a sausage and deal with it in chunks. Realistically, it's the only thing that can be done for now.
Learn more from: http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?NewsID=2325
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