A new day is dawning at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said Bob Howard, the VA’s assistant secretary of information and technology and chief information officer, explaining the department’s major information technology reorganization and its plans to strengthen data security.
“Life changed big time,” he said, in May, when a VA laptop computer and a hard-disk drive with about 26.5 million veterans’ personal records were stolen from the home of a department employee. “It was a wake-up call for us and a wake-up call for all of government.”
Howard said the department’s determination to become the gold standard of data security is on its way to becoming a reality. “We’re encrypting everything in sight,” he said.
He outlined the VA’s five-step plan at an executive session of the American Council for Technology/Industry Advisory Council today at the National Press Club. “A high-performing IT organization has got to happen or we will not be able to achieve some of the other objectives we have on the table,” he said.
The VA is the only agency that has a separate appropriation for IT, Howard said. “It’s $1.2 billion and growing,” he said.
“Management of that appropriation is also a very important priority,” he said, adding that the final three priorities come under Data Security Assessment and Strengthening of Controls, an internal VA program.
In March, VA Secretary Jim Nicholson began to centralize the agency’s IT and strengthen the department’s security controls, Howard said. “We want to move ourselves from a very narrowly focused organization in terms of IT to a more process-based organization oriented on the customer,” he said.
Since the May laptop theft, improving data security has become a major focus within the VA, and Howard views his life now in two phases: prebreach and post-breach. “I didn’t even find out about [the theft] until the 16th of May, which tells you a little bit about our [security] process, doesn’t it?”
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