00:00I'll now recognize myself for five minutes again.
00:03Mr. Poole, I wanted to circle back just for a moment on something the ranking member just asked you.
00:09You said there are 300, under the previous administration, there were 300 people in the HR part of the OIT, is that correct, doing HR functions?
00:20Yeah, Mr. Chairman, that was an estimate, around 300.
00:24I believe Ms. Beard has the exact number if you want it, or we can take that for the record, but roughly 300 resources.
00:29So 300 out of 8,200 were doing HR functions that could have been or would have otherwise been done by the department as a whole
00:37and absorbed into the workflow of the department, into the, I'm sure, robust HR portfolio of managing 400 and some odd thousand people within the department.
00:47Would you say that's fairly accurate?
00:50Absolutely, Mr. Chairman.
00:51I mean, again, that does put it in great perspective.
00:54You know, we have 8,200 folks, roughly, in OIT.
00:59Do we need a 300-plus person organization to do our own?
01:03We're driving the business to standardize on common technologies.
01:08We will do the same.
01:09Yeah.
01:10Ms. Beard, do you have anything further on that?
01:14Yeah, I just do have the number.
01:16It's 242.
01:17We do have some additional upcoming attrition through the programs of impacting that, but do reinforce the focus about how we can, once again,
01:26make sure we still get the services we need for OINT to meet our veterans' needs,
01:29but also make sure that we have the capabilities to achieve that through the HR functions.
01:33Sure.
01:34Is that roughly 300 or 242, or the number you gave me, is that included in the roughly 1,100 that you talked about in, like, deferred retirements, things of that sort?
01:47Yes, Mr. Chairman.
01:48It's spread across the board.
01:50It's really, you know, again, we did not exempt any positions as part of that from an OINT perspective for the DRP programs or VERA.
01:58And so that 1,100 consists of multiple different domains and areas within the organization.
02:05Sure.
02:05But they also, those 300 people, I'm not minimizing or suggesting they don't have a legitimate, you know, work ethic or anything,
02:13but if that job can be done on an aggregated level, there's not a reduction in benefit for a veteran or a delayed in a claim or anything of that sort
02:21that would result from that job being done by a higher-level department asset.
02:26Yes, Mr. Chairman, that's correct.
02:28You know, again, and it is those Chinese cyber attacks are affected by that.
02:33No, you know, no update to the mobile app that I use or veterans like me use throughout the management of our claim or interfacing with the VA.
02:44So, okay.
02:46Correct.
02:47Mr. Poole, VA's budget documents describe a buy-before-build strategy.
02:53I think that's a good insight into some of the motivation for how we make this better.
02:58You know, do we have to design it from the ground up, or can we take something that is preexisting and kind of, you know,
03:04modify it for our use within the department?
03:06Can you kind of give me some insight into how that works and what the motivation behind it was?
03:11Yes, Mr. Chairman.
03:12Again, thank you for the question.
03:14It's a really good one in terms of how we are approaching optimizing the organization.
03:19So, the buy versus build is really driven by the need to look at enterprise standard tools out there today that can deliver functionality for the department.
03:31Previously, we've invested in building and building and building.
03:35And so, we have a very large portfolio of products that are custom.
03:39They're built and maintained, and we're perpetually stuck, and a lot of those get into the legacy portfolio.
03:46When you go out and buy capability from industry, you can generally get an enterprise platform that you can consolidate a standard workflow and process for the department on
03:56and maintain and keep that system modernized.
04:00And, again, it's just a much better model.
04:02With that comes increased cybersecurity, a lot of other, you know, efficiencies in terms of, you know, just how we maintain those products.
04:12Sure.
04:13I appreciate that.
04:14I had worked previously in our state treasurer's office a number of years ago, and we were using legacy systems that were built from the ground up,
04:22and we were having a hard time finding servers that would actually run them any longer.
04:26These things were, like, 30 years old at the time.
04:29And that was just one hardship that we were encountering, whereas if you have a process or you have a product that is purchased off the market,
04:38it has the robust backbone necessary to kind of keep it functional and running just, you know, as one example,
04:45and necessitates less maintenance over time and people doing that, to be sure.
04:50I am almost out of time, so I'm going to yield to the ranking member for five minutes for her questions.
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