VA shrinks IT workforce by 12%, redirects tech funding to other priorities

BlackHays

20 hours ago

Originally published VA shrinks IT workforce by 12%, redirects tech funding to other priorities on July 15, 2025 03:46 by https://federalnewsnetwork.com/it-modernization/2025/07/va-shrinks-it-workforce-by-12-redirects-tech-funding-to-other-priorities/ at Federal News Network

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is shrinking its IT workforce and redirecting a portion of its technology budget to cover costs elsewhere.

The VA’s fiscal 2026 budget request would spend $7.3 billion on IT systems, a nearly $300 million decrease from current spending levels. The budget request would also pause the procurement of new IT systems until VA can conduct a full review of them.

More than 1,000 employees with the VA’s Office of Information and Technology have accepted voluntary separation incentives and will leave the department at the end of this year. Those departures will result in a nearly 12% cut to the VA’s IT workforce.

VA exit interview data shows that 66% of departing IT specialists would recommend working for the VA again. About 200 IT employees responded to the latest exit survey.

Eddie Pool, the VA’s acting assistant secretary for information and technology and chief information officer, said VA OIT has repurposed more than $89 million of its budget to pay for other department priorities and is planning to shift another $100 million as part of this “strategic reinvestment.”

“We are executing a bold mission-first approach, so every dollar delivers maximum value to our nation’s veterans,” Pool told the House VA Committee’s subcommittee on technology modernization in a hearing Monday.

The VA, as part of its fiscal 2026 budget plan, is asking Congress for more flexibility in how it spends appropriated funds. Pool said VA OIT is requesting changes to appropriation language to eliminate “rigid statutory subaccounts” and authorize a three-year availability for IT funds.

“This will empower VA to plan and execute with greater agility, align investments with outcomes and minimize procurement risk and operational delays,” he told lawmakers.

The VA is shrinking its IT workforce through attrition. Devon Beard, the acting deputy CIO for people science and VA OIT’s chief people officer, said 1,172 VA OIT employees took the deferred resignation offer or were approved for voluntary early retirement.

“We were able to sustain those without any impact to our veterans, due to succession planning, cross-training, upskilling, reassignments — the tools that are in our toolkit to make sure that we, every day, have the resources that we need to meet our veterans,” Beard said.

VA OIT currently has 8,205 employees. Pool said it’s “highly unlikely” that VA OIT would need to rehire any of the employees who left through DRP or VERA.

“I don’t anticipate that being a contingency we’d have to exercise,” he said.

Pool said VA OIT, as part of its reorganization, will reallocate positions to “critical IT functions,” and will roll out more automation tools to make its workforce more productive.

Pool said the reorganization of positions “is designed to cut bureaucratic overhead, accelerate decision making, and focus every OIT position on delivering secure, reliable and modern IT solutions to improve veterans’ lives.”

“Our budget for 2026 and beyond will be spent on things that drive maximum value to the to the veteran community, and things that don’t have a use or don’t provide maximum value, those will be repurposed and reinvested, where we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck for the veterans of this country,” he said.

Pool said many of the departing VA OIT employees worked in administrative roles, including human resources, and that the department still has the workforce it needs to meet its IT and cybersecurity mission.

“We have a lot of things that are not a pure IT-focused mission, that are consuming resources within the department. We’re no different than the rest of the organization. We’re going to get back to our core mission, which is delivering IT, and where we can get services and functions from other places in the department that are not IT-related, we will be pursuing that,” he said.

The Government Accountability Office reported in January that the VA hasn’t yet conducted an inventory of skills and competencies for its cybersecurity workforce.

“These are essential things that you’re going to need with any reform effort. Whatever your goals are and objectives are for a reform effort, you’re going to need to make sure that the workforce matches that need,” Carol Harris, GAO’s director of IT and cybersecurity, told lawmakers.

“Being able to have those processes in place and have a complete picture of what you currently have and what you need to have in the future to match your reform effort, that’s essential. And right now, VA does not have that capability,” she added.

Beard said that as part of this reorganization, VA OIT will look at opportunities to eliminate “redundancies.”

“Do the processes that we have today need to remain in the way that they are? Are there redundancies of built up over time that we need to reevaluate and make sure that we can accomplish what’s still needed, but do the most effective manner?” Beard said.

Subcommittee Chairman Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) applauded the VA for pursuing a “smarter, not bigger” IT budget. The VA, he added, is addressing waste by identifying unused or duplicative software licenses.

“While it’s easy to ask for more money, history has shown that funding alone has not been the answer to many of OIT’s persistent issues and raises important questions,” Barrett said.

Subcommittee Ranking Member Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) raised concerns that 78% of departing VA OIT staff are retirement-eligible and that the department will lose “a significant amount of institutional knowledge and technical expertise.”

“VA has already lost critical technical expertise, and if the department doesn’t get this under control, it’s going to lose even more,” Budzinski said.

VA officials, however, say the department is ahead of schedule with its plans to resume to rollout of its new electronic health record next year.

Jack Galvin, acting principal deputy assistant secretary and deputy CIO, said four go-live sites in Michigan have completed the “heavy lift” IT infrastructure preparations, and that other nine sites across the country have completed preparations in several key areas.

“There’s an excitement building now to deliver real outcomes,” Galvin said.

Originally published Federal News Network