Baker’s Three Tiers of IT Savings

Roger Baker, the chief information officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, manages one of the largest information technology budgets in the federal government, but he’s also one of the best at finding ways to become more efficient. Baker, who will give a keynote address on Wednesday at FedScoop’s 4th Annual Lowering the Cost of Government with IT Summit at the Newseum, recently sat down with FedScoop in his office at VA headquarters to discuss his model for IT savings.

Baker said he breaks savings down into three levels: micro, minor and major. Micro savings, which save between $40 million and $100 million per year, include optimizing software licenses, equipment prices and the like.

Minor savings encompass initiatives like the Project Management Accountability System, known as PMAS, where there is a renovation of some area of the organization. The PMAS program, for instance, drastically changed VA’s deliverables. Baker said before PMAS, the department’s delivery rate was about 30 percent. It now stands at 90 percent. To put it in broader terms, when the agency spent $1 billion before, it was getting $300 million in successful software deliverables. That number is now $900 million...

Finally, the major savings. Baker said this is when technology can be used to completely change the way a business works.  For VA, it’s the VISTA system, where the department invested $4 billion and got a return of approximately $7.5 billion...