TECHNOLOGY AND THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT

I'm picking up five-by-five signals - that's "loud and clear" in radio speak -- that the Veterans Affairs Department's $600 million financial and asset management system may never take wing.

Although VA, according to the Government Accountability Office () has already spent $90 million on the Financial and Logistics Integrated Technology Enterprise program -- mostly for program management support -- I hear that top managers and some folks on the Hill would like to see the project go away.

If it does, this will be the second VA financial management program not able to get off the ground this decade. VA's first attempt at an integrated financial management system, the $472 million Core Financial and Logistics System, was killed after it failed miserably in its initial deployment at a VA hospital in Bay Pines, Fla.

Maybe VA should try a bite-sized approach to financial management, instead of trying to develop one humongous system.

Does this sound like an all too familiar news story?

A series of botched IT projects has left taxpayers with a bill of more than $37 billion for computer systems that have suffered severe delays, run millions of dollars over budget or have been canceled altogether.

Substitute pounds for dollars, and you've got the top story on Monday in The Independent of London, which catalogues a list of U.K. IT horror shows.

Leading the list is the $18.2 billion project to develop an electronic health record system in Britain. This project started in 2002 and to date, The Independent reported, has signed up a mere 150 health organizations out of the 9,000 in operation in the United Kingdom.

Maybe we ought to pay attention, as we have a $20 billion health IT project designed to sign up every doc and hospital in this country.

I spent eight out of 12 days of my Hawaii Christmas vacation on the island of Molokai and decided it made sense to read a biography of St. Damien, the Belgian priest who volunteered to care for lepers banned to that island.

I had vowed that I would not even think about the federal government while on vacation, but the Damien biography had an all too familiar ring.

It tells the tale of a dedicated soul frustrated in trying to accomplish a dangerous mission (Damien died of leprosy in 1889, 16 years after he arrived in Molokai) beset by petty bureaucrats who, it seemed, wanted him to do everything but care for the spiritual and physical needs of the sick.

The French church bureaucracy wanted Damien to build churches on the island (he was an accomplished carpenter) rather than focus on the lepers, and the Republic of Hawaii bureaucracy wanted him to make nice to other agencies, specifically other denominations, even though they were far removed from the scene.

Damien -- and this sounded real familiar -- also was forced to do more with the same amount of assets such as feed a population that had doubled with half the amount of food.

High ranking officials -- the Hawaiian royalty -- made a show of support for Damien, awarding him ribbons and certificates, but no real help.

After reading Molokai: The Story of Father Damien, I decided that anyone in the federal government beset by petty policies or managers would do well to invoke Damien as their saint.

I live in New Mexico, one of the 36 states whose drivers licenses will no longer qualify as identification for domestic air travel as of the New Year. That caused me to worry that I might never return from my holiday trip to Hawaii.

This meant I needed to renew my passport, a process I started the day after Thanksgiving, with a fear that the passport would not arrive before I left on vacation this month. The State Department Web site says it takes two to three weeks to process a passport application even with its expedited service, which I opted for.

Those concerns were alleviated when my wife and I received our passports on Dec. 7 via express mail. That's six business days (almost to the hour) from when we put them in the mail.

I considered this a miracle akin to the Internet, a testament to the Postal Service and the State Department.

Megan Mattson, a spokeswoman at State, told me that even though the department cautions the public that it can take two to three weeks to get a new passport with the expedited delivery option, it's not uncommon for it to take only a week.

Despite the Real ID Act's Jan. 1, 2010, deadline, which will make many drivers licenses in 36 states Unreal ID (unless the Department of Homeland Security extends the deadline), Mattson told me that the volume of passport applications this year is running about 2.7 million behind 2008's volume. State has issued 13.5 million passports in 2009 so far, compared with 16.2 million in 2008.

I'm thrilled to have my new passport but still miffed that I need to use one for domestic travel. That's a policy that was a hallmark of the old Soviet Union, and by today's standard, the Peoples Republic of China.

Such a policy has no place in a democracy.

The Veterans Affairs Department manages a whole bunch of claims -- for disability, education and even burial benefits. Until this month, the department presented data on pending claims in a relatively straightforward fashion in a spreadsheet called the Monday Morning Workload Report.

But starting on Oct. 5, the Veterans Benefits Administration said it reformatted the reports to provide a "more meaningful and transparent look" at the data. But veterans groups said the new and improved Monday Morning Workload Report does neither.

The spiffy new format also omitted for the past three weeks data on pending education claims, which could lead anyone with even a mild case of paranoia to assume VBA was trying to hide this information due to the fact that it has botched claims processing and payments for vets going to school under the new post 9/11 GI Bill.

Katie Roberts, the VA press secretary, assures me that omission of educations claims data this month was due to a technical glitch and that information will be in the database next week.

How could VBA not notice such key information was missing for almost a month?

Jerry Manar, deputy director for national veterans services at the VFW, told me that in his view the changes in the new VBA report format "seem more designed to confuse those who monitor the progress and problems at VA rather than shed fresh light on them."

Pail Sullivan, head of Veterans for Common Sense, said he found the new format "misleading and cumbersome" and does not have a grand total of all the claims pending at VA. "It's missing two key pieces of information: How many vets are waiting [to have their claims processed] and how long are they waiting."

Manar said under the old format, VBA reported on Sept. 26 that it had 750,538 claims of all types pending at its regional offices. Under the old reporting format VBA had a total of 200,000 claims under appeal. Under the new format, that dropped to 176,415, with no explanation for the revised number, Manar said.

I guess that's one way for the VBA to magically reduce its claims backlog: change the way it presents the data.

This whole new format is about as transparent as an Abrams tank.

The Defense Department has spent almost $1 billion to develop as new personnel and pay system called the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, or DIMHRS. And what has it got? Bubkes, said Congress in its final version of the fiscal 2010 Defense authorization act, which a Senate-House conference approved on Wednesday.

The conference report accompanying the bill said "the DIMHRS program has not been successfully developed or deployed due to a number of technical and organizational difficulties," which goes to show a billion bucks doesn't go as far as it used to.

Congress decided to fix this problem by directing Defense to set up - are you ready for this? - a high level "transition council" to adjudicate funding, architectural, process and other technical issues that plague enterprise information systems programs.

When was the last time a high level Defense body ever solved problems with a system that's gone off the rails?

Here's a real "Hooah" for the top leadership at the Veterans Affairs Department, who decided early on Friday to keep all 57 of the department's 57 regional offices open until every veteran waiting in line picked up an emergency GI bill check valued at up to $3,000.

Based on reports I have received from individual veterans and veterans groups, the Washington D.C. office on 1722 I Street N.W. was nearly overwhelmed by a crowd of 300 vets waiting for payment at about noon on Friday.

VA spokeswoman Katie Roberts told me that to speed processing on I street, VA dispatched more computers and staff to handle the crowd. And since it was lunch time, they ordered pizza for one and all, she said.

VA likely was able to quickly assess the situation at the Washington regional office because Roberts told me Deputy Secretary W. Scott Gould and Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs Tammy Duckworth were hanging out there to greet veterans.

Also in the crowd at the I Street office was Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., chairman of the House VA Committee, who showed up to say hello and also eyeball the emergency payment process.

Lines in other areas of the country were smaller, Roberts said, a fact confirmed by Ryan Gallucci, a spokesman for AmVets, a veterans service organization like the VFW or the American Legion. Gallucci said AmVets staffers at VA offices in Oakland, Calif.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Atlanta, and Winston-Salem, N.C., reported long lines early in the morning, but had disappeared by the end of the day.

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, VA had made 6,619 emergency payments to veterans at regional offices and another 6,752 had requested emergency payments online, Roberts said.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, gets high marks for the emergency payment program and described the decision to keep the office open until everyone gets paid "unprecedented."

I've picked up low to medium strength signals that Debra Filippi, the Defense Department's information sharing executive, has emerged as a likely candidate to run the joint interagency program office in charge of sharing information -- including electronic health information -- between the Defense and the Veterans Affairs Department.

Rear Adm. Gregory Timberlake, a physician who headed the program office on an interim basis this year after being recalled to active duty, plans to return home to Mississippi next week, where he is a professor of surgery, physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Miss..

Defense and VA have been looking for a permanent director for months, and Filippi sure looks like a logical choice, as data sharing is already her game.

More shall be revealed.

I think I could write a monthly feature on lost or stolen government laptops. The Naval Hospital Pensacola in Florida reported the latest stray on Tuesday.

The hospital said the laptop went missing from its pharmacy department and contained a database of names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth on 38,000 patients who used the pharmacy in the past year. The hospital said the information does not contain any personal health information.

The laptop has been missing since Aug. 18, has a damaged exterior and may have ended up in the junk pile, the hospital said, adding it believes any "malicious intent" in the disappearance of the laptop is unlikely.

Because the hospital cannot account for the laptop, it is sending letters to each person whose information was on the computer. The letter will include information on steps the patients can take to protect their identities. Anyone who believes their personal information was comprised can check out this FAQ.

Last month, the National Guard Bureau reported a laptop containing personal information on 131,000 guardsmen was stolen from one of its contractors.

Whose turn will it be next month?

The Veterans Affairs Department on Friday said it halted development of 45 information technology projects that were behind schedule or over budget, with Secretary Eric Shinseki personally making the announcement.

Shinseki, who promised to leverage technology to develop a 21st century VA during his confirmation hearing in January, said he put the brakes on the projects because "VA has a responsibility to the American people, who are investing millions of dollars in technology projects, to deliver quality results that adhere to a budget and are delivered on time."

He added, "They need to have confidence that the dollars they are spending are being effectively used to improve the lives of our Veterans."

The Housed and Senate Appropriations Committees approved a record $3.3 billion IT budget for the VA for fiscal 2010, but the Senate fenced off expenditure of roughly $1.1 billion of IT development funds until VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker completes a review of some 300 troubled IT systems.

Key projects under review by Baker include the already suspended Replacement Scheduling Application Development Program, which VA has spent $167 million on since 2001 and had budgeted at $46.5 million in fiscal 2010. VA also halted development of the Pharmacy Re-Engineering project, budgeted at $20.5 million for fiscal 2010, and a Health Data Repository for the new HealtheVet electronic health record system, which had a planned $41.5 million budget for fiscal 2010.

Baker said all the suspended projects will be run through the department's new Program Management Accountability System before they get a go-ahead. "Our goal is to increase our success rate for our systems development projects," Baker said.

The other IT projects* halted by VA until the review is completed are:

HealtheVet Middleware Services
Person Service Identity Management
Administrative Data Repository
Document & Ancillary Imaging
Clinical Data Service
VA Learning Management
Home Telehealth Development
Occupational Health Record Keeping System
Enrollment System Redesign
Chemistry & Hematology: Automation
Clinical Flow Sheet
E-Gov: E-Training
Barcode Expansion
Delivery Service
Organization Service
Enrollment System Redesign
Home Telehealth Infrastructure Enhancements
Radiology outside Reporting
Bar Code Medication Administration Inpatient Medication Request
Blood Bank system
Prosthetics Enhancements
VIC (Veterans Identification Card) Development
Spinal Cord Injury & Disorders Outcomes
Radiology HL7 Interface Update
Ward Drug Dispensing Equipment Interface
Lab Data Sharing & Interoperability - Anatomic Pathology/Microbiology
Medical Foster Home system
Exclaims Plus
Case Management Modification
National Teleradiology Program
Compensation and Pension Record Interchange
Master Patient Index
RMS - Rights Management Server
National Teleradiology Program
Problem List Standardization
Radiology Standardization
Laboratory Data Sharing Interface Terminology Support
Clinical/Health Data Repositories Phase II
Fee Data/ Health Care Effectiveness through Resource Optimization Health Care Effectiveness through Resource Optimization

* Total projects listed do not add up to 45 due to multiple pharmacy re-engineering and health data repository projects