Information Technology: VA and DOD Face Challenges in Completing Key Efforts

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is engaged in an ongoing effort to share electronic medical information with the Department of Defense (DOD), which is important in helping to ensure high-quality health care for active duty military personnel and veterans. Also important, in the face of current military responses to national and foreign crises, is ensuring effective and efficient delivery of veterans' benefits, which is the focus of VA's development of the Veterans Service Network (VETSNET), a modernized system to support benefits payment processes. GAO is testifying on (1) VA's efforts to exchange medical information with DOD, including both near-term initiatives involving existing systems and the longer term program to exchange data between the departments' new health information systems, and (2) VA's ongoing project to develop VETSNET. To develop this testimony, GAO relied on its previous work and followed up on agency actions to respond to GAO recommendations.