The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to continue efforts to consolidate its financial management system by summer, Federal News Network reported Friday. The VA wants to begin the National Cemeteries Commission’s financial operations in the new system in July.
In 2018, the VA announced plans to transition its business management platform to a cloud environment as part of its Financial Management Business Transformation program.
Avie Snow, associate deputy assistant secretary for financial business operations at the VA, said the department intends to learn from its previous consolidation challenges, which stemmed from prior initiatives such as supply chain and electronic health records modernization.
“It was lack of government oversight," she said. "We didn’t step in and do what we needed to do for the VA and essentially, there was no found under there, and the thing just crumbled in on itself.”
The VA plans to transition the Veterans Benefits Administration to the cloud-based financial management platform by February 2021, according to Snow.