VA Seeks A 10 Percent IT Funding Boost In 2014

The Veterans Affairs Department requested $3.7 billion for its 2014 information technology budget -- a 10 percent jump over 2013 spending. W. Todd Grams, the department’s chief financial officer, told a press briefing Wednesday that IT is central to VA’s ability to deliver benefits.

More than half of the $495.3 million requested for IT development in 2014, $252 million, is allocated for development of an integrated electronic health record and the related Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record with the Defense Department, a project all but considered dead this February when the two departments halted plans to develop the new system from scratch.

VA spokesman Josh Taylor told Nextgov, “The budget request demonstrates just how committed the two departments are to delivering a single, joint, common integrated electronic health record based on an open architecture and non-proprietary in design.”