The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to integrate its acquisition and financial management systems to improve how the agency buys technologies as part of its ongoing modernization program, Government CIO Media & Research reported Monday.

“Longstanding in VA, we’ve not had an integrated acquisition and finance solution,” said Terry Riffel, deputy assistant secretary of financial management business transformation at VA. “It’s presented problems in terms of what VA’s buying and how we’re leveraging buying and all of that.”

Integrating the acquisition and finance communities in one solution will improve monitor spending on information technology and help to understand the needs of veterans, Riffel said. VA plans to leverage the cloud and data analytics to update legacy systems and prepare its workforce for organizational changes for new technologies. In July, the agency deployed its new time and attendance platform that serves nearly 360,000 employees.