This document discusses the Office of Information and Technology (OIT) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It provides background on the VA, noting it has over 20 million customers, 320,000 employees, and a $3.4 billion annual IT budget. It describes the VA's "burning platform" as facing growing cyber threats, industry transformation, budget pressures, and more veterans receiving benefits. The document outlines the VA's IT vision to leverage new technologies through workplace flexibility, security, device-independent applications, and on-demand infrastructure. It lists the Chief Technology Strategist's priorities as improving information security, achieving information agility, and reducing IT lifecycle costs. Finally, it introduces the concept of enterprise common services

1. Get the latest OIT news at
http://go.va.gov/OIT360
Joe Paiva
Chief Technology Strategist
@joepaiva
June 2014

2. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
Background About VA
• 20+ Million Primary Customers
• Several Lines of Business (Healthcare, Insurance, Death
Services, Homeland Defense, Education, Employment…)
• ~320,000 Employees
• ~$3.4B/Year IT Budget; 400,000+ Users; 5,000+
Applications
• One of the Biggest Open Source Software Shops in World
• One of the Biggest NoSQL Shops in World
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3. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
VA’s “Burning Platform”
• Growing and evolving cyber threats
• Transformation of the healthcare industry
• Increasing pressure on federal budgets
• Greater number of Veterans receiving and using benefits
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4. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
IT Vision Overview
• The VA FY 2013-2020 OneVA Enterprise
Technology Strategic Plan describes VA’s
information technology (IT) vision
• The IT vision diagram, contained in the
OneVA Enterprise Technology Strategic
Plan, shows how new technologies are
leveraged to provide an environment that
effectively supports VA’s mission
• The four key aspects of VA’s future state
operating environment are:
o Workplace – Device, location, and
temporal freedom
o Security – Data security and secure
authentication
o Device Independent “Best of
Breed” Applications – All data is an
enterprise asset
o Infrastructure – Utility computing
and on-demand capacity
Figure 1: IT Vision Diagram 4

5. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
Chief Technology Strategist’s (CTS)
Key Priorities
• Improve and Evolve Information Security
• Achieve Information Agility
• Reduce Total Lifecycle Cost of IT
High-Level Concept of Enterprise Common Services
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6. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
Enterprise eCRUD Services
User
Clients/
End-User Devices
Presentation
Layer
Services
Layer
Data Layer
Data
Storage
Data
Services
Shared Infrastructure
Services
Application Specific
Services
Application Specific
Services
• Web Server
• Authentication (NPE / PE)
• App Store
• Device Certification
Management
• Device OS Handling
• UDDI Registry
• Authentication
• Auditing
• Access
• WSDL
• Orchestration
• Messaging
• Failover
• Instrumentation
• Web Pages
• JS
• CSS
• JSON
Shared Presentation
Services
• eCRUD Services • Traditional Simple
CRUD Services
• Composite Services
eCRUD Service: A
data schema
agnostic service
that enables
rapid application
development and
enhancement
without server-
side coding
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7. OFFICE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY http://go.va.gov/OIT360
Questions?
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