VA Embraces No-Fail Mindset to Meet COVID-19 Demands

Paul Brubaker, the deputy chief information officer for the Account Management Office at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said at a recent media roundtable that adopting a no-fail mindset has enabled the agency to address various technological demands amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Brubaker, the agency was set on staying ahead of challenges, whether it was a bandwidth issue affecting telehealth consultations or the need for rapid deployment of devices to newly onboarded employees, Federal News Network reported.

One such challenge that the VA overcame was a short-notice request to equip over a hundred new nurses to be deployed in Chicago with the devices they need to be productive once they get to the field. The VA got the job done within a few days and delivered the devices within just a few days, Brubaker told reporters.

Additionally, he said the VA was able to fulfill a request to equip a hospital with network connections and other technologies in a matter of weeks instead of three months.

“If you don’t think that government agencies can be flexible and agile and rapidly deploy, this is a prime use case that we should be able to disabuse you of that notion,” Brubaker noted.

Critical to the agency’s ability to respond to challenges are cloud migration efforts, which helped deliver better mission outcomes, and infrastructure upgrades, including those made to the agency’s call center.

By Brubaker’s estimate, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the VA’s digital transformation timeline by at least two years.