Optimizing how VA OIT Delivers Enterprise Products
Background
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Information and Technology’s (OIT) Veterans Experience Services (VES) delivers world-class, veteran-centric IT capabilities that securely, seamlessly, and cost-effectively deliver healthcare, benefits, and other services to veterans and their families.
Over the past few years, OIT has worked to change the way it approaches IT development, operations, and deployment by shifting to a Product Line Management (PLM) structure and DevSecOps-based approach. In 2019, VES was one of the first portfolios to adopt this PLM model and drive a DevSecOps approach across its products. Currently VES includes the following product lines- 1. IT infrastructure and Services; 2. Data Analytics and Knowledge Management; 3. Cyber Security and Access Services; 4. Trusted Information Sharing; 5. Platform Management; 6. End User Operations; 7. Contact Center; 8. Eligibility and Enrollment; and 9. Customer Master Data Management.
Understanding the Need
VA OIT is in the middle of the most significant transformational period in its history and due to increasing demands, a growing user base, aging systems, and COVID-19, it’s had to accelerate several modernization initiatives.
Given its role in improving customer experiences, increasing the speed and frequency of deployments, and identifying innovations to lower costs without sacrificing quality, VES is essential to OIT’s modernization plans. VES needed a teammate with experienced staff acting as partners during challenging product initiatives. VES’s partner had to understand the enterprise-level impacts of its work and have the resources to quickly adjust for emerging technology needs such as platforms and cloud smart initiatives, cybersecurity, and analytics.
Our Solution
Since 2017, GovCIO has served as a dedicated partner to VES and VA OIT, providing invaluable thought leadership, knowledge, and expertise to guide portfolio leadership through all its major initiatives and transformation efforts. GovCIO has embraced the VES mission, leveraging and improving our proven Integrated, Scalable Agile Product Management Framework to meet OIT and external customer needs across a broad range of services including strategic planning, architecture and engineering, project, product, and portfolio management, communications, and capital planning.
Portfolio Management Services
VES is a high-performing Agile organization. Despite challenges relating strategy alignment, acquisitions, budgeting, and project-centric planning, GovCIO has helped mature VES’s Agile approach, including implementing portfolio-wide practices around DevSecOps, PLM, and built-in-quality. We facilitate iterative, incremental product development and the faster, higher-quality delivery of features.
GovCIO guides the critical strategic engagements that are laying the foundations for the next decade of VA’s enterprise IT transformation, including platforms and cloud-smart initiatives, cybersecurity (e.g., continuous ATO), IT capital planning, and data analytics/management.
Agile Delivery and Product Team Services
Our program and technical leads collaborate with flexible Agile Scrum teams, business partners, and product owners to foster a culture of total ownership of products and outcomes with everyone invested in the success of solutions. Teams self-organize and during VA-facing and internal Scrum sessions they collaborate to ensure there are no delays affecting project teams and work to reveal emerging concerns immediately.
Architecture and Integration Services
To support VES’s transition to managed services and the Open API Pledge, we helped set up the VA’s API platforms’ management structure. The framework we set up enables rapid innovation, creating APIs that can be managed as products and consumed by developers within and outside of VA. This secures and streamlines seamless data access and exchange with internal and external systems.
Our team also drives VA’s IT hosting modernization by helping to implement VA Platform One (VAPO). VAPO allows for ready-to-use functionality for hybrid and multi-cloud development; it lets developers spend more time solving business problems instead of wasting time on cross-cloud issues.
DevSecOps Implementation
GovCIO established a framework of policies, practices, governance, training, and tools for DevSecOps implementation across VA’s five portfolios, encompassing more than 700 products. Our coaches worked with nine change teams to identify the highest priority issues, resolve obstacles, set a common cadence, and produce meaningful results. Our team also built a “software factory” to help teams provision and deploy cloud-hosted infrastructure and toolsets and enable fast, consistent and reliable platforms for product development.
Results
GovCIO successfully helps deliver Veteran-centric and Enterprise technology solutions. Per our most recent customer feedback, GovCIO consists of high performing, high skilled staff who consistently deliver a premium level of service, including comprehensive oversight, management, and thought leadership across products and product lines. Some of the most notable impacts GovCIO has had on the VES portfolio include:
- Establishing effective and sustainable Agile project management practices- our team has conducted 1,918+ elaboration sessions, decomposed and delivered 2,795+ epics, and supported 640+ sprints.
- Developing VA’s Enterprise Cloud (VAEC) migration strategy and intake process and successfully completing Wave 1 and 2 of VAEC’s cloud migration plan, included 51 applications.
- Implemented a fully automated DevSecOps pipeline and processes for the three product lines we currently support.
- Achieving PLM Level II maturity across product lines
- Transitioning VES to Managed Services and the Open API Pledge.
- Establishing DVP API Gateway to provide a new platform that eliminates multiple silos and provides interoperability between VA and commercial applications for a cohesive Veteran-centered experience.
- Providing foundational identity and access management services that addressed requirements of the MISSION, Colmery, and Blue Water Navy Acts, functionality critical to rolling-out the EHRM /Cerner initiative, as well as functionality critical to the rapid delivery of COVID-19 services.
- Led the modernization of VA Profile, the system that manages and processes data from a Veteran’s master data record for 14,793,241 Veterans with 191,680,551 transactions to date, to a DevSecOps delivery model.