NVSBE 2017: Patrick Pearcy - Business Opportunities with FMBT
So. Good, afternoon everyone my name is Patrick, Pearse e to my left is dr., Paul, Tibbets. Get. Supple osseous and Linda, Ennis we were expecting, one more he may sneak in here in a little bit if. You are here, for the, financial, management business, transformation. Special, program office brief you're in the right place if, you're. Not I hope we entertain you anyways. I'm. Going to go through the slides fairly, quickly, because I think it's. Better if it's, an interactive, discussion so I don't mind you asking questions. During my brief or as I'm talking or. Holding the questions, till later either way it's, much better if you guys ask questions. And, engage with me, because majors, reading slides is not fun for anyone on the. Other hand I gotta let you know I did, not stay. At a Holiday Inn so. I'm gonna defer any tough questions, to this guy. So. We're going to talk a little bit about what's, called the financial management business transformation. Special, programs office or as we sometimes abbreviated, the. SPO we, are part of the IT organization we underneath the enterprise, program management, office and our, mission in the SPO is to oversee, and coordinate all the IT stuff. That. The eff MBT, program, requires. A. Standard. Boilerplate I'm, not telling you to do anything for us don't worry about it don't do it I didn't tell you it. So. Again, some background, if you've been to some of the other briefings. Like Bill James please raise your hands, and I will skip, all of this stuff but I will tell you that right, here, is some of the folks that were involved, with, our new IT organizational. Structure, and the. Consolidation. Effort, and the transformation. Efforts so dr. Tebbetts at the time was director, of office, of enterprise development. And I do remember, him turning out all the letters one. Night to change the organizational. Structure within Oh int, that was a man. Subset of letters going out. Let's. See, we. Have 4.5, billion, in, our budget, that is. Including. Salaries, this including, all, of the IT, support. Costs, that we have at the hospitals, as well as development. Lots. Of numbers on here you, can read them later but it, boils down to being a large organization. Some. Of the goals and approaches, that we're trying to do is again we want to stabilize and, streamline our processes, we've. Eliminated. P. Mass and instituted, VIP, it. Reduces, a whole bunch of. Processes. That were out there that we're actually hindering, our development. And implementation of, projects, to. To, decisional. Briefs CD, ones and CD 2's a lot. Fewer artifacts. And i knew i was going to get the real guy over here for phone. A friend, dr.. Aaron drew, all. Right. Let's. See transparency. Definitely, anything, we're doing in Alliant. Tea with inspo we actually, you can see it we publish it we have a. Website. Which, is on VA pulse, we, put weekly updates, to it our team members each one of them have, drafted. And published articles, for, pulse, as well as I think, we've put it out on our public, facing websites also in certain certain. Activities, so we were, very happy to share with you what we are doing within, the SPO, again. Part of it is our meeting here today so ask questions, we'll be happy to we're also very accountable, for, the dollars, and we want to deliver what.
We've Promised, for ROI for. Our business side of the house and we're doing in an innovative way we, are doing cots solutions so we are implementing, a momentum, commercial. Off-the-shelf solution. To, support our business so we are not developing. We are doing integration, and. Implementation. Of a cost solution, and again we are partnered, with USDA, we, are partnered, with, our business, office of management office of Finance we were partnered with OLC, to, do all these great things for the VA. Okay. Bill, can talk to this one much better but again. Stabilized. Streamline processes, eliminate, material, weaknesses, IT, modernization. We are number two in the, department. By. Dr. Shulkin with respect to modernization. EHR. Modernization. Is being number one program second, program is FM, BT the, financial. Modernization. Alright, now we're going to get to us boiler, plate is done and I notice, they also took out about 60, slides so we could have those discussions, that's. Great, so. We understand. Within the VA that, our, financial. Management system, is a little bit old and, it's. A little bit behind the times and, it has a. Problem. It, has several problems one was the security of the system keeping. It up to date with the patching, keeping our programs, and applications the at the correct level and, we've, got a whole bunch of audit, issues with the existing system so it's it's in end-of-life. So. The plan is to replace FMS. With a cloud-based as. Cgi, momentum, cloud and a, commercial off-the-shelf solution. Momentum. Is also called Pegasus, in USDA. So if you hear, that name Pegasus, and stuff like that that's the same thing as momentum, and we've, had to rebrand it we call it I fams, integrated. Financial, management. Acquisition, system IFA, MS okay financial. Acquisition, management system so the VA name for, momentum, is I fams our. Program, is FM BT and of course you hear momentum, and Pegasus, out there. Our. Goal is to reduce our audit issues our goal is to have a single authoritative, source, for financial, truth. Within, the VA there. Are a number of systems right now that have separate general Ledger's we want to consolidate and, move, those into our financial solution, and, again, we would like to increase our reliability, and, availability of, our financials, system all, of that. In. An, effort to just give better value to our veterans, better value, to our. Employees. Doing the work. Our. Organization. Structure, is really basically. Lean we. Have a, number of directors, we have six directors, dr.. Tipis is our program executive officer I'm his deputy, and, underneath. Those we have the, alignment. By the various work streams dr., drew is over to my left here is. Well. He's over to well shoot he's not an order here so anyways dr. true is architecture, and engineering lended. To the software development integration, gets. Ax is our. Legacy. And interface, work and we, know dr. Tibbets not, available, to be here as Keith Cox who is actually running, implementation. And. Also. Data and, Tammy. Which is our director of operations, and sustainment, and finally, miss, Mickey crow Z that's not able to be here she's holding down the home fort dealing, with all the activities.
That Are going on even while we're here, very. Lean organization, we. Went, out there and specifically. Hand-picked, our, folks, for this organization had, permission, from our leadership, to bring in this team to specifically, address the issues, and challenges. So. In architecture, interesting we're going to talk a little bit about what we're, looking for support. With so. Architecture, engineering network, management, performance. Our. Business partner extranet, I'm taking some of your words out here dr. drew so add on or take away as you see fit, looking, for capacity, planning as well as performance. Measurements. So what. Is the, experience, by, the end-user at the desktop so that's part of the areas that dr. drew is putting in place to make sure we have those service. Level agreements, and to, make sure that we, can. Measure, them and as, we see them coming close to that area, we. Can increase the capacity of the pipes whatever. We need to do on that part we. Are doing a shared platform approach so we're not the only folks using, that momentum solution, out there so we are in a cloud we are using a shared platform we, have specific. Instances. For VA but, again we have shared components that we have to make sure that we get our appropriate, bandwidth, Wis also. Dr. Drew is responsible, for engineering, and architectural, documentation. An. Example is dota another, one would be fee type of stuff so those are areas that he is focused, in on. Oh. Underneath, architecture. We also looking, at data management, as well as business, intelligence. If you will so we got a lot of financial information, that, we have to report up and out, and just, by moving it into momentum does not solve our problem. Because we're not moving everything, into, momentum we're, moving, a certain select set, of information master. Data reference, data and a, potentially, open transaction. Well we still have to go back to our, legacy. Information. And pull that forward to do our business intelligence, one. Of the approaches, for, a data repository where, the business intelligence is implementing, a data Lake, solution. When. We talk about data we also have to be very careful, that is we're testing we do de-identification. We, do not put PII or pho data over into, an area that's not secured. Specifically. In what we call the sandbox, environment. So we want to make sure that as we do things we do that data D identification. As. Well as again at the bottom business. Intelligence, reporting, or forecasting. Of what we need to do not, only reporting. Of the legacy, but forecasting. Moving. Forward to, anticipate, the. VA s needs etc oh. This. One software development integration so, I said, we're not doing any cots. Development. We're implementing, a cot solution, well we got to talk to and connect, up to approximately, a hundred and twenty different systems, within, the VA 120. Legacy, systems currently. Feed FMS. Or their second, tier or third tier systems, so. We have to look at each one of those interfaces, as currently, feeding FMS, and make a determination, is this, interface, still needed or is. The information, really going to be provided, by momentum and we can turn that thing down or, turn it off and we call that retire. That. Interface. And, potentially, all the interfaces means we could retire a system, second.
Choice Is, well, you know what that actually is sending, us all we need in MMS. Is the same stuff we need in AI. Fams or momentum, so, that, would, be a rewire. Or we just basically change where, that information is being pointed, to to point to the IFM so again this is some. Development. But generally, speaking it's more of a sustainment. Type of activity, where they just changed an IP address and a configuration, table, or something like that but, then we come to the systems. In the interfaces. That aren't. Providing, the right information to. The, IAF's, system. It could be lacking, accounting, information, it could, be in the wrong format. For what i fams needs and those. Systems we actually, have to go in and do software, development of. Not, in momentum but, on the VA systems. Linda. Has the the fun challenge, of taking those 120, systems, oh by, the way that determination, all that work is actually gets, this job to figure out okay, what are we going to do with these systems. But. Linda has the fun job then of working. With the various system owners, as well as with the software integrator, and developer. To change. Those. Systems. We. Are using, a VA messaging, bus, right now it's actually the VA ESB. Formerly, known as EMI, and, that. Is how we are actually communicating from our VA systems, to the, momentum solution. Over on CGI so it's a bus to bus connectivity. Across our, firewalls, with, the, different. Systems connecting, into the VA bus and then being. Sent. Over to momentum. Let's. See we're also looking at. Moving. Towards, a digital, center or a DevOps. Approach for, doing this so we know that as we go in and touch our legacy, systems, and if there's extensive, development it, makes sense to then say let's move those into the cloud along. With, the momentum solution, so we are looking at doing DevOps. So. That as we move forward in our. Financial. Modernization. We. Then can use modern. Approaches, to keeping, our systems, up to date I. Hadn't, thought they're gonna come back to it one, other approach is automated, test-driven development so as we're doing our, DevOps, we do want to in doing, our development, effort we want to bake in testing, up front. Before. I go into this one does anybody have anything else you'd like to add in what, else you guys want oh. It's. Wired. So. Please feel, free if you want to come up here and talk. Okay. Here's another session, with these guys at 4:15, same slide deck so. Oh yeah. We're, smart we didn't make up more than one slide deck it's got a different title but it's the same deck. So. We want to do so. This. Program. Is not about. Moving. Software. Into. Momentum it's, all about financial. Modernization. Financial, and business. Modernization. So it's it's, yes. Momentum. Is a part of the solution, but there's a lot more behind the scenes going on on our business side where we look at the processes. That. We are doing oh. No. The. Microphone. Is there. So. It's it's not just the. Fight it's not just the IT solution. It's, all about the business side doing. Those changes, within the organization. We, have a major challenge, with what's called a 1358. And getting. Of the VA out of the business of using, 1358. And moving, towards, more, of the approved. Tools within FM, FM's, and and momentum. And those tools there so, please. Don't think the solution, is just putting stuff on momentum. It's, a lot more than that we actually have the easy job and I talked about 120, systems, out there and and we have to possibly modify those things that's actually simpler, than what has to happen within the business side as they change an organizational. Culture so. Definitely. We look. For in, use. More. Efficient. More effective tools. With respect, to program management. Salesforce. Is a tool we want to use it's been implemented, within the VA so we're using it to support, our. Monitoring. Of development. Activities, the Kanban, I believe you guys call this thing. Data. Management, tools we're looking for tools that allow us to do the end-to-end, data, management, not just the migration. Activities. But looking at the data profiling. The data cleansing. Activities, and what. Do we have to do for data archive, all downstream. So we're looking for those tools, again. We do look at the infrastructure. Routers, and circuits, we, know we have a certain level of support already. Acquired. Through, our CenturyLink. And AT&T I believe are the two folks but that means we have to monitor it and make sure we continue to stay ahead of the. Capacity. Requirements, on our side and by, the way if you're looking to do it business with us make sure you've, got those, demonstrated.
Knowledge, Skills, and abilities. On one, of our toughest challenges, which is Vista oh man. Those Vista internals, for if cap and things like that that's definitely, something we're looking for. Experience, in it's a I know from, scheduling, that. Was extremely, challenging and I, see. No reason that, if cap wouldn't be just as challenging as, Ruth's and, by the way IBM, integration bus is, the underlying, infrastructure, for the VA ESB. So that knowledge skills and abilities not to write code for it but to use the tool effectively. And efficiently is, what we're looking for. Going. Back to some of our standard, boilerplate, okay. Here are, sure. Now. It's skills an ability. Sorry. Acronym. I did. That one. And. Service. Codes these aren't the only ones but these are the ones you'll probably see our acquisitions. Going out through. All, right I, don't. See anybody needs this one that's the numbers. And. Again yeah we we do it this way this is the standard boilerplate. All. Right here's the one you guys probably are looking for this is how much we have in our current forecast for, this fiscal year with. Respect to the. Dollars, in support, of. Enterprise. The. Enterprise bus integration, which is the messaging, bus I was talking about program. Management support, opportunities software. Quality Assurance IV&V support. Services. By. The way one was the integration, bus. Services. And the other one was actually support, for the bus itself, so that would be licenses. And and as sort of stuff. Software. Development. Integration remember, those 120, systems. That's where the big chunk, of the funding is aligned. To within. Our organization. And then, we actually have some high levels, me subject. Matter expert, support. Focused. On areas, that we may not have the best understanding of Vista, again and. Then of course we have some circuits in there, and. For structure type of things everybody. Got their picture. Yes. Sir. So. Some, are new opportunities some, are recompete, I actually. Don't. Know which are which from. This slide I can sit there and say. Support. Services actually goes through Enterprise, ops. Inside. The VA a software, development integration that, is a new opportunity for sure. Smee, support, is a new opportunity. Angie. Waxed, the, way on circuits, that's the recompete, and IBM. Support actually actually that acquisition, is actually on the street right now I. Really. So. For, the IBM. Support was, that t4 mg it's. Actually out there so it's it's the I think the period. Has been closed and we received the RFP proposals. And everything else so that's in process PMO. Support. That's. Through FSC, Financial, Services Center I think, that would be a recompete, so I wouldn't on. That one, the. Others would be t4, ng likely. And. Again some more circus, out there integration. Support. T4, ng definitely, on that one, licenses. I don't, know what the acquisition. Plan is, but you know it's it's essentially.
Licenses, Of materials, so I would, what. You guys make the assumption, of the GSA. Or NASA soup type of thing. Analytics. Again that's, license, is. Additional. Center equipment that's material. And. Data. Warehouse, is again. That's more of enterprise, operations, work, so these are the total numbers we have in our budget but some of them may be what. We call service level agreements, and memoranda internally. To the VA so data warehouse would be a slam, if you will. And. You, have your opportunity for slide number two picture. Okay. Yes. Sir. Yes. It's. Yes. Actually it would, this. Is this, represents our, best understanding. Back. In June, of, 2017. Of what we're going to do this year so. Yes. We can adjust combined. To to get the better things and stuff like that so stand. By. All. Right again this is the standard boilerplate type. Of thing if you want to do business with us certainly. TAC. Watch out for that. You. Can, corner. Any one of us out here on the floor and you ask us anymore about what we're doing within FM BT SPO, about. Any of the opportunities, in here I will, give you a hint that the, folks over here are the ones that really do, the work and define what needs, to happen within, the SPO I just, sort of make sure the checks can be, cashed. When they get written. All. Right so now we come to the fun part questions. And stumped the audience. Pretty, babies. In place besides just being. Now. I'm gonna walk in gage alright so that is a very good question because you can think about it, we. Have our environment, then there's the environment of our provider so you're absolutely right so it doesn't necessarily matter what we do per se on our side of the house because, we have to coordinate, and, collaborate our activities, with whomever our provider is going to be so let's talk about let's, talk about the, cloud, hosting, environment, yes we need to from a security standpoint from, your process standpoint we need to make sure that everyone, is doing their part because when we put these circuits into place and, we put that cross connections, into place I mean the, monitoring. The performance capacity, mentioned, that is going to be partly. Us partly. You guys so so there's a dance a relationship. That we're entering into that, we all have a part so yeah so don't, think of this is what the VA is going to do think of this is what are we going, to do and how are we together going to solve a particular problem so, but, yeah I absolutely agree with you I don't want to get up here and tell you that I'm I'm agile, evolutionary, prototyping or, I'm agile scrum if that only is 50% of the equation, so. We're. Getting married folks you didn't know this but what we've outlined are the terms of conditioning for marrying us is so we need to figure out our part so that we can do this and deliver, and get ourselves to FOC, over the next seven to eight years and and I'm the marrying type so who's in it with me, okay. All right thank you. Okay. I think yeah. Next. Question, please. Yes. Sir oh. Yeah. Well. Linda. Wants you to take the first, part about the software, development, type of stuff the various systems, because yes, I think. That would be very appropriate is that the same we have several, environments. One is a production. Environment and, we have a pre prod environment, it looks very similar to production environment but the sandbox, environment. As long as we have the appropriate security controls we, definitely, think that would be a, good, place, for us to open it up and allow outside, vendors. To provide, superior. Solutions, to us I know, that we are leveraging, what. USDA and CGI have done with interfaces. To Treasury, and other government, systems, so it makes sense that let's. Expand that idea to support, concur. And DFAS. And, those type of things so Linda you want to do yours or do you have anything. Ok, so. I think what. Was the first question about this the software, itself. Ok. The legacy environment, a. Big. Part of what we're looking for in DevOps, is just. That the legacy environment. It's, more about life cycle it's more about the lifecycle management it's you. We might have a couple of systems that gets a as, a disposition. Of that when we start looking at it we, can actually have. That data. Consumed. For AI fams, readily. And I'll stay on the baseline of the life cycle very, quickly and we can monitor that and measure it and have a performance, metric and be, successful, but. The modernization. Effort might, be something absolutely. Different and that's where you come in many. People in here I could look at and say ok.
I Remember when we did this in Vista. Well. Some of these applications, or systems in, FMS. Today. Still. Have data that, resides as, a tertiary type, of system, a Vista. That's going to touch EHR, m so now you have the two top initiatives, in the agency, where, we have to think a little bit smarter, on lifecycle, management how. Are we going to work that system, if what's, the best approach for that systems, in DevOps, how, do we get people engaged how, do we look at the designing of that system to provision, and as, a system. For a to be future what, does it look like when it's a managed service environment. So, there's more than just taking, down the application and. Saying that oh we can transform. It consume in and put it into a cloud that isn't. What it's all about it's, about making sure that the, people that are working the system today are going to be working in managed services, tomorrow the, system itself has to move through some sort of infinity, of DevOps. It has to start and keep going. So, we need the assistance in, order to come in and actually test. Prove, know, what we're going to do with these systems. Aaron. As a, Solutions, Architect can, work very readily, with my team with get so with all of us to, sit down and look at that provisioning. How, do we test out that DevOps. Approach not. Everything, is going to be just because we wrote one for let's say if cap that. That can be working for. CMS. Or anything else, we. Have to bend. And move as we move forward so just because we might have been successful, in one area does, not necessarily, mean that's, going to work for all systems, so. We have to be smarter, today on knowing, that we might not have that solution yet what, did we do over here and how can we move it over there so DevOps, is a really big one lifecycle. Management, someone. Mentioned, measurements. I, think. EVM plays a big factor into. Integration, and I would say for everybody in here that's, something, that I would read when, you look at technical feasibility when, you look at performance, standards, when I look at that when, I read somebody that can show me something, on earned, value, also, from, past experiences. Or what they're doing today in order to stay where the VA is moving to, me that's that's. A strength and so that's the type of work, effort, FM VT needs in, order, to say that we can probably, move, if cap but will it stay on the baseline it might. Not right. But it's going to move so, we just have to work a little bit more on our DevOps and and. Start. Putting stuff together working, on our. To. Be state not, everything, that our solution. Momentum. I, look, at from a best practice, or a lessons learned approach, from other agencies, what. Did they do what. Was the worst part let's make sure that we do that as a post-mortem over here so, we don't you know mirror, what's happening in other agencies, I hope. That helps thanks. 100, second, part of the second part was a question regarding a data, link who. Was the second part we're gonna detail a question. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, so we answer that part but I think you also mentioned, I think dated Lake is part of your ask and I got excited oh. Well. With. The date of Lake so here's how we're gonna using the data Lake so obviously, the organization's, has to come up with for example their archival, strategies they may say you know what we, want, to keep records, for let's say maybe three, years and I go Kate great and so with that we, now know how when to purge the records for example out of that ERP, known as momentum, those. Records, then go inside the data Lake then, there's another record, we have our worker control schedule regarding what does the law say how, long we have to keep those records period, before we can purge them and so maybe, there might be health information associated with that record next, you know we're keeping a record for like maybe 70, plus years so, we. Definitely need something, to grow with us and and you're maybe saying what we're drew that's just the same thing as a data warehouse, and you would be right but, I got another problem - so, now we're dis positioning, systems but, I don't want to change for example the. Way that the data is structured, or even, formatted, as it is today I want to preserve its, innocence, as we, shut these systems down and so to, be, able to disposition. A system, and maintain, its, native, formatting. In a virtualized, environment. That. Just screams data lake so, I want. To do it I need, your help I can't do it alone you know and so that's why you saw data Lake not, data warehouse, thrown, on a slot over my right shoulder because, I want us all thinking, about how.
Do We address you know these federal, and these programmatic. Guidelines. For protecting. And storing. And retrieving records. Long term 20, 30 70, years to, include. Systems, from the days of yore and even longer to. Be able to answer, for example, maybe a GAO increase, or audit tomorrow and we. Can do that so, require some data scientists, I never to saying is like doc but don't, Dana lakes require a higher end knowledge. Skill, set absolutely. It's not your typical warehouse, but, that's why you guys are here you represent, the gaps that may be me and my team don't have so I look to all of you, and I look to the data scientist, thank you guys represent and I say welcome. Welcome, to the problem. Questions. Regarding a data Lake yes. Randy. Oh very. That's a very good question very um. What. I need, to always remind, myself when, I hear, a question that just causes me to salivate, is that I don't do innovation, because it's the neat gee whiz bang the do I need, to have the business guide me in the right you need to make the case that we. Believe, the. Adoption, of blockchain, helps us solves a particular business problem, you know but yes if I own, my own understanding, of blockchain, and how it works and Nevada can provide I would, readily say yes but, but right now I don't have. A problem. For, which that answer, fits. Now. On a EHR, level is there a story I could talk about blockchain and they'll help, yo this is f mb t this is f mb t, okay, i got thoughts Randy, I got thoughts all, right any. Other questions from the audience regarding the, wonderful, virtualized, dean of archival world knows data links. All, right we're for those where this is just swim lane yes sure. Oh. Certainly. ATO, controls. As the minimum. So. Dirt welcome, thank you for the question, not. That you have a security, background at, all but. Yes, definitely we, are reliant, upon both. The ATO, for, the CGI momentum. Environment. As well, as for the solution, itself and on top of that then we have to make sure that there are controls, in place that. Vendors. Who are accessing, it don't. Get access to be a sensitive, information, without having the appropriate controls, in place and, that we, don't expose, any, of that information without. The, the, right. Permissions. And approaches. In place I want, to go back to something, dr..
Drew Said just a few minutes ago there. Is no way that the six directors, up here and the, folks. You see matrix 10 down below there can do everything that needs to happen by, the. VA to make us successful we. Rely upon you. In the audience and your companies, to, provide that, expertise. That knowledge skills and abilities, to keep us on, track, okay we. Have a lot of information in, our heads. But it is I'll, say two inches, deep maybe and a mile, wide so we need that focused, attention, from. The folks talking about data lakes how you implement, those data lakes which you have to think about from a security perspective we have to think about from an access, as well as from a, implementation. Approach that, we needed across the board we purposely. Because. Of resource, constraints, within our organization. Can be very lean organization, structure. For F and BT we, do not intend, to expand, it this is it. Please. Yes. Sir. Oh you, started. That, raised the bar a little bit in questions create one there so we actually have, there. Is several, schedules, that are out there for review by the business, business IT. Will stay ahead of the business I think we will successfully, be able to stay ahead of the business because the business, process, changes, is the, harder, component. To do our. First milestone, if, you want to call it that that we're hitting is a March, 2018. Date, where we will have the momentum. Instance. Live and what we're calling the prototype, environment, to support budget formulation activities. What the business did is work with our service provider to break the different financial. Things. Into. Nine. Nine. Different, areas, budget formulation all, the way through business intelligence, down at the bottom and they. Grouped. These, different, functionalities, together and as. You do things in a lot of instances you, we, found out that you really can't just implement, a functionality. Budget. Formulation is, the exception, we can actually do budget formulation for, the department fairly simply. But. Then as we move forward we have to look at other implementation. Strategies, one of them is okay, do we do it by an organization. Or do we buy functionality, it turns out we're looking at an organizational. Type of approach where we pick an organization. Or a group, of organization say okay you, guys are all moving over to momentum so, there's a lot of work behind the scenes that we have to do to group and, adjust. The systems, that feed for those organizations, into. The, IFM solution or momentum so, right now 2018. Is the first one we should go law so, we'll have the prototype. Environment. 2018. We're. Talking, to March. 2019. For. The second. Wave. IOC. As they call it which is where we'll have the first organization. In and then, it goes out from there we recognize. It's a it's a, challenge. To get a hundred and fifty. Three VA Medical, Center's plus all the administration. Has moved over so let's say it, is a long process. On. The. Development. Questions that came up earlier I just wanted, to emphasize a few things patrick said, earlier that our. Program. Is really to implement finance and acquisition best practices, in the department, yeah yeah there's some 90 dependencies, there FMS, cannot be dated data Act compliant, blah blah blah etc that's all true, so. There's a lot of system stuff but at the end of the day it's, Finance, and acquisition, best practices, implemented, across the department. No. One said this so far but then he, mentioned the work the business is doing but our program is heavily front loaded with business process re-engineering in all nine of these areas there way is a business process reengineering going, on which, is one, of the it's complimentary, cannot modify the cots product, right no changes to the cots product, but we're changing all the people in VA to, use this card's product and, for those of you don't know part. Of the rationale that made that pretty, easy for us is. A momentum, for those of you who know momentum, it's. Focused. On the federal market space so the. Way it is built is to optimize. Federal. Best practices, for finance and acquisitions so we have no reason that be no rationale, for us to change the cots product. We do be working. Against our own logic as to why we chose it so hence, the the major investment in being beyond which, I really don't think we did with flight, or core FLS so this is a big.
Push Across the department, to do that the other thing I wanted to say. Keeping, that, business. Objective. In mind, is. Three. Of the things we're looking for in development, by way of attributes, where, you all could help us think through much like Erin saying help us think through the data like stuff and we're in each deep, and a mile wide a lot of our NASA. Nations but you, all understand, this stuff better than we do but, the three aspects, you're really interested in is one, apply mindset, info of the minimal Viable Product, right to make, sure we change only what we have to change in order to achieve the business objective, it's. A whole lot of technical stuff out there we could fix but. It has nothing to do with audit ability or nothing to do with the business objectives, of the program we're not going to fix it it's, just I don't want to drag it into the scope of the program because, there's, too much technical. Debt you can go on and on I mean, the. Coop the art deficiencies, all over the place blah blah blah it's not related to auditability, I don't care we're not going to take it within the scope of the program so, so, minimal Viable Product number two agile. A dream, we already talked a little bit about that at number three we, have a mensch you minh senator design so if, we could bring those three attributes to, fixing the legacy environment, I would say we would have a pretty ideal approach, to. Making those legacy, systems behave the way they're supposed to behave in, that bucket, three that Patrick talked about where they, can't be turned off but they're likewise not behaving properly today, that that's where those three things I just talked about would would. Ideally apply if we can work with you all to figure out how to do that we. Have initiated. Discussions. With some industry. Players out there whose, business, model if you want to know more about it I can tell you after but whose business model is exactly. These three things all, combined, into one package so. You might want to think about. How. You. Could. Help us think through to. Relate to you in such a way that we can the, basis of a relationship, is improved in the legacy environment, with these three things in mind, change only what needs to be changed, minimal, Viable Product agile, give, incentives. Yes, sir he. Got it up for you get up first I'll get right back to you. Drives business, drives, of things talked, about this summer. Kisses to you for free I. Didn't. See operating other. Financial, dimension. And talk about time to attend input house get it and now about so. Many things, in. The world of business, touch finance, and, about. Building the after you've got a rockstar team the. Dow has finance and there's so many systems whether this. Every. System. Is. Going to be really difficult. Rest of the 65 went out there did all ties back to finance, so how. Do you see getting. The industry to bring you the other stuff. Yeah. Thank. You thank you for thank.
You For the question, he's. Just remind me to bring up some. Over. The edge stuff here that I think would be useful to get you your. Input on from from all of you so the most specific example. I think of what Jo is talking about let. Me back up our. Comptroller our acting Comptroller, I think we're soon to have a real one that our acting comptroller ed Murray brought. Up a few months ago that he really in the department, would like to, see us. For. The first time in our history of the VA be able to tie resource, utilization to, actual outcomes, whether. That's health whether that's clean cycle, time when claims whether it's how fast we order a tombstone, you name whatever the whatever the outcome is and, you, know the quality of it myself so. I great. That's a you know Jay coming, from the green, eyeshade, this is a really interesting question I kind, of want to pull on that thread so, I went back to and said it would. Like not to drop that conversation. Which a great comeback, so, anyway that, started me on this journey throughout, the VA and show, happens Joe also shows up on my office in analyst John II one day and that. Part of the tale relates. To market research which I want to get to in a minute because it's. An important way that you often influence, our thinking in a positive, way but. Anyway that's started me on the journey and, so far it's been largely through VHA. Talking. About how, a, little, bit about on the outcome side Jim Warner the, VHA, fairness than that if any of you know him and, there's some vision level initiative, so looking at outcomes, relative. To, resource. Use, I've. Talked, to a lot of them already, at the staff level I haven't, gotten quite to the business directors yet, working my way up up there. And. So to discover, what's going on in the department, at that level and go back to ed Murray and tell them okay this is what I've discovered so far here's, what I know what's going on here's where I think you. Believe we should go and so, giad, uh based, on what we're doing and which way you want to go the. Next a reasonable set of next steps might be bah, bah bah bah bah and get, that worked out with so that's. Where I am in that process now with. Respect to market research with all that going on communion, I would encourage you all in this, regard and, by the way there's a group, of intermediaries. Here I'll give a plug to the. Intermediaries. Out there like Joe but others that, there's, a flock of them running around here, who, I call BD consultants, known them from, 850. Years and they. That's. My age they, they. You, know know the department pretty well they know it makes sense frequently. They know what does not make sense frequently. So many, of you who aren't at least not familiar, with the department, might want to think. Of some of them as an asset to you but in any case. In. That mode of. Pre-solicitation. Market. Research no RFI, yet no RFP, no nothing this all pre free. Solicitation. Activities. We. We have his. Time in attendance, we have a system, already in deployment it's deployed about 2/3, or so more, or less throughout the VA, but. It's only one part of the time and attendance system, of this particular commercial, product happens to be Kronos that's not our name for it but that's the underlying thing and what. We're deploying. Yeah you know better than nothing is, voluntary. Declaration, of whether you were at work yesterday and you know yes I came in today yes I went home at 5:00 of course if, you came at 9:00 and went home at 4:00 you could still put 8:00 and 5:00 I mean and, nobody would know the difference but, that's a whole lot better than what we do now which is where you declare nothing, so. But. There's, other things there that that product offers where deal it reads when you walk through the door you wearing you with your RFID, things if they had your something it knows when you walked in those when you walked out or you can pick. It up from when you first log on in the morning and when you last log off in their variety of ways where you can get out of that voluntary. Declaration. Of your time and where it's a really. Objectively, captured, which is not a module, we own yet in any case as a result of that market research I've. Learned a lot more about that company their penetration into the private sector. The. Acceptance, of that culture, changed by our healthcare personnel that's, a lot of the conversation. I've been having so far. And. Surprising. Enough at least certainly by, a sample, though it be at those visions, where they're. Undertaking this kind of thing they see it yes yes culture, change but yes, it's a necessary thing that we get on with a figure out exactly what our resource utilization is, because, if we do start measuring our outcomes and we have no idea what the real cut what the cost structure was well again measuring, outcomes is better than not measuring outcomes but.
If. We, have successfully, treated pneumonia in the California. And successfully. Treated, pneumonia in Florida, and we can't figure out how much it costs to successfully, treat that pneumonia, we're. Better off knowing that we got more successful, but you. Know did it take 100 bucks to get that patient well it did it take one buck to get that patient well I mean who the hell knows I mean so and then, matching, up. Knowledge. Skills and abilities with patient, acuity is. Also, part of this equation anyway, that's. The resource, input, side to Mary where, we are so far in. Marrying. Up, the. Resource input part, of the equation. To. Ultimately, what might be outcomes and maybe the sirness of the world or quite frankly stuff we can get out of this that would even help, us with that right now it's not that we just have to put, everything off to. The long-term future of Cerner but anyway I. Spent. A lot of time on that to tell you all, how. One. The market research is important, to us but how, spending, your time and energy with. Us in this, market research. Dialogue, back and forth I, think can help you all understand, what we need but more, importantly, can help us understand, what you have to offer even. More importantly, so I'm at that sort of get it your question. Pious, Caius that budgets, are shrinking. We need better quality. The products, that we brought in but, they're all aliens need, to be looked at finance, and enough. So you all become one of the most critical pieces of this is writing outcome basic results, with a binding to understand. Our legacy systems, and I. Agree, that kind of a sandbox for people. And. That would be a good conversation to have with those of you who are interested is that sandbox, notion also yes absolutely. To. Add on to that we look at you telling us what we don't know we don't know because. We don't there was what he was yes, sir I. Think. It was a comment I'm not sure. Not, for us. Not. In the immediate future guy. Well. I mean Patrick, hit the nail on the head I mean you have to think about timelines, and and. Sure. I mean Cerner might become a reality it might become something we have to focus on and you know maybe let's say medium, to long term sure, but, we got to here and now focus, which is of high priority to us and that's Vista, and and. Even if, you look at some, of the presentations. That VA leadership, you. Know the areas have given for example at the Aesir conference, or FC and all that kind of stuff, for. The open source community for, example and and. The relationships, we have with a lot of the vendors Vista. Is gonna be important to us for a long time, and. For. All I know vistas, gonna continue, to be important to us even after Cerner is implemented, I mean who knows depending, on what we do with it is a legacy. File. Manipulator. Information. Cesare archiving, and everything else so you know we don't know what that future is but but but in, the, short to medium term. Vistas. Still the the big thing for us and and then, and then even for. Us with FM bt by the way. Interfacing. Strategies, and data management and all that becomes very important, with this than now but, even with the electronic, health record of the future there's going to be all kind of transition, considerations.
We're Moving. Some functionality. Out of this they're taking down the menus or whatever you're going to do with it to. Quote, unquote turn off this functionality, when you activate, it somewhere else all, that's gonna require our knowledge and understanding of this there so. So that, that's, gonna be with us a long time. So. I don't see anybody back here saying, waving, at me saying get get, finished but I know that there are we. Can keep going I have no problem doing it I don't think there's anybody else in this room so please. But. Feel free to leave also, I won't take it.
2018-02-22 19:20
