Veterans Affairs Department to Pilot Facial Recognition in 2024

Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals could test facial recognition technology throughout 2024 as a potential alternative to using personal identity verification cards to sign into the network.

VA Chief Information Officer Lynette Sherrill said in November that the pilot program is meant to provide a frictionless authentication process for clinicians, including those in intensive care units, Federal News Network reported.

Sherrill noted that while 95 percent of department employees use PIV cards to log in, that leaves roughly 30,000 employees reliant on a username and password for access.

Carrie Lee, VA’s deputy chief information officer for product engineering service, shared that the department is moving away from the less secure username and password approach and toward Login .gov for external users. She told Federal News Network that the department is looking into adding multifactor authentication and ensuring compliance across all users’ single sign-on experiences.

In addition, VA is starting to implement a continuous authority to operate approach on some systems. According to Lee, the department holds quarterly security reviews for all applications in the continuous ATO.