WASHINGTON — Today the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (OIT) released its 2017 Year in Review to celebrate the tremendous progress OIT has made in the past year toward creating a modern VA and an enhanced Veteran experience.
The Year in Review details OIT’s pivotal shift from its transformation efforts of 2016 into a new era of modernization aimed at streamlining VA services and improving the Veteran experience.
“I know modernizing an agency of our size and geographic breadth is no easy task,” said VA Secretary David Shulkin. “But it is not a task that is out of our reach. If we set bold goals and miss, we’ll make much more progress than we would by setting smaller goals and exceeding them.”
The Year in Review includes information on IT initiatives, such as VA’s new White House hotline and REACH VET — initiatives designed to field requests for information and eliminate Veteran suicide through early engagement of at-risk individuals; and Lighthouse, a new tool that will enable Veterans to manage their own health experience holistically on a secure, streamlined and interoperable platform.
Other modernization efforts detailed in the report, such as VA’s cybersecurity overhaul and improvement of the electronic health record offer a glimpse into the future of Veteran health care and benefits delivery.
The accomplishments detailed in OIT’s 2017 Year in Review represent a departure from methods used in the past and signal a bright, innovative future for the standard of care for the nation’s Veterans.
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Reporters and media outlets with questions or comments should contact the Office of Media Relations at vapublicaffairs@va.gov
Veterans with questions about their health care and benefits (including GI Bill). Questions, updates and documents can be submitted online.
Veterans can also use our chatbot to get information about VA benefits and services. The chatbot won’t connect you with a person, but it can show you where to go on VA.gov to find answers to some common questions.
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