During a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) asked Acting Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs Eddie Pool about staffing at the department.
00:00Thank you, Chairman. And I'll actually try to pick up where you left off here. And my question is going to be for Mr. Poole, but I'll open it up to Ms. Beard as well if you have the answers to this.
00:09So were you just saying that there are 100 people that have taken either the DRP or the VERA? They've accepted, you've accepted their resignations, 100 people within OIT. Is that what you said?
00:22Let me hand it over to Ms. Beard, ranking member. It's actually not 100. It's actually somewhat north of that.
00:32So our total participation in the programs is 1,172 as of today.
00:40Okay, that took advantage of one of those too. Okay. And then when you were talking about it, I appreciate what you were saying that these are folks that are providing support.
00:49I guess my concern is that support, though, does support the overall mission of OIT.
00:53So at what level or what point does that type of a level of vacancies then erode the overall mission of OIT?
01:02And I guess I'll direct this to you, Mr. Poole.
01:05If you could kind of further elaborate on when you were accepting these early retirements or resignations,
01:12how did you kind of consider that when they came to you?
01:16Does it in any way erode what you're trying to accomplish within OIT?
01:20Yeah, thank you, ranking member Brzezinski.
01:23Yes, to answer your question, this is largely an opportunity where we have looked at where duplicated functions exist within IT
01:34and where these administrative functions are being performed elsewhere.
01:37I'll use HR as an example, where in OIT, we built our own IT function within the IT department.
01:45This is a shared service that we can get from the department-level HR areas.
01:51So that in itself is a pretty significant opportunity where we are able to basically reinvest back into the, you know,
02:00mission-focused functions of IT to be, again, as mission-facing, mission-purposed as we possibly can.
02:07So I guess just to, would it be possible to provide to this subcommittee kind of a list of, you know,
02:14who participated in this reorganization and where these resignations or early retirements have come,
02:21just so we can kind of better understand?
02:23I appreciate the example you gave with HR, but obviously if it's well north of 1,000 people, you know,
02:30just concerned about where all those are coming from.
02:33Yes, Congresswoman, we can absolutely do that.
02:36Okay, thank you.
02:37Can I just ask then, Ms. Harris, could you kind of elaborate a little bit on, you know,
02:42what you've been able to observe as far as OIT's workforce planning and how they looked at this?
02:47I know they've done a significant amount of restructuring.
02:50Yeah, so back in January of 2025, we actually issued a report evaluating VA's cyber workforce in particular,
02:58but I think those trends can probably be applied across OIT.
03:03What we found was OIT's strategic workforce plan was incomplete.
03:08They don't have an inventory of their current workforce skills and competencies.
03:12So in terms of if, you know, with the restructuring, not even having a baseline of what it is that they have,
03:19it's going to be difficult to tell, okay, from there, what is it that you're going to project to
03:24and what you're going to need in the future.
03:26They also didn't comprehensively identify their current and future human capital needs, skills, and competencies.
03:32So those are essential things that you're going to need with any reform effort.
03:36Whatever your goals are and objectives are for a reform effort,
03:41you're going to need to make sure that the workforce matches that need.
03:45And so being able to have those processes in place and have a complete picture of what you currently have
03:52and what you need to have in the future to match your reform effort, that's essential.
03:56And right now, VA does not have that capability.
03:59We have open recommendations related to that.
04:02Okay.
04:02Could I just, Mr. Poole, ask you to kind of respond to that?
04:05I would be curious kind of how you might have looked through your process in these different early retirements, et cetera,
04:13what processes were in place and talk a little bit more about that and kind of trying to meet this metric,
04:20I think the GAO is pointing out being important to the overall, again, the mission of OIT.
04:26Yes.
04:26Thank you for the question again, Congresswoman.
04:29We looked at every single one of the individuals that took advantage of these opportunities
04:35and assessed that from a leadership perspective to ensure that this would not create any operational gaps
04:40or introduce unnecessary risks to the department.
04:43And where we, in going through that process, we made certain that in order to honor the request,
04:50the voluntary requests that were being submitted, that, again, we had mitigation strategies in place
04:54to ensure continuity of operations.
04:56And as I mentioned previously, it gave us the opportunity to actually bring efficiencies in some areas
05:03and optimize some of those processes and workflows to really, again, provide a better outcome for the department.
05:08So it was very, very rationalized and very, very closely analyzed as we went about that process.
05:15I think I'm out of time, but I'll yield back for now.
05:20It's Sheriff Melissa McCormick for five minutes.
05:23Thank you, Chair Barrett, and thank you, Ranking Member Budinsky, for convening today's hearing.
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