VA’s Technology Spending to Focus on Continuing Shift to Cloud Platforms

Continuing the shift to the cloud will account for a “big part” of the Department of Veterans Affairs technology spending in 2024, Kurt DelBene, VA assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer, said. 

Speaking at the online LinkedIn TalkingTech series, DelBene disclosed that the VA ultimately aims to move all of its systems to the cloud, which provides “more resiliency, more scalability” to the department. VA is seeking an increase of about 5 percent in its 2024 technology budget to $10.1 billion, Nextgov/FCW reported Friday.

Over 1,000 VA systems operate on several cloud platforms and physical data centers in 2,900 locations accessible to over 700,000 devices, the news website added.

Managing workplace collaboration is one of the department’s most recent cloud initiatives, with a subscription to Vyopta’s Technology Insights software platform in September 2023.

Other VA cloud initiatives also include the standardization of the core platforms for the cloud hosting applications that the department uses. DelBene said the department needs third-party developers who can make VA cloud platforms deploy a monitoring framework seamlessly for faster problem-solving.