Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Homeless U.S. military veterans stand in line for free services at a ‘Stand Down’ event hosted by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Denver, Colorado.

Roger Baker, the Department of Veterans Affairs chief information officer, says his decision to resign on March 8 isn’t tied to a better offer — he just needs to “recharge some batteries.”

Baker, who’s overseen some of the VA’s most challenging issues such as its efforts to create a joint electronic health records system with the Defense Department, said he took the job in 2009 with the intention to stick around for two terms.

“It was my intention to stay for eight years when I got here, but frankly I can’t take another four years,” Baker told reporters during a conference call today. “It is a very demanding job.”

The position requires 11 or 12 hours of work a day, on top of an hour-long bus ride into Washington in the morning and the metro home at night, he said. He hasn’t decided his next move, but said he “owes it” to his family, himself and veterans to step aside.

“You cannot outwork Ric Shinseki,” Baker said, referring to the VA’s secretary. “He is here when you come in, he is here when you go. If you’re going to run with that pack, you better have your tennis shoes laced real tight.”

The VA hasn’t made any decisions yet about Baker’s replacement, Jo Schuda, an agency spokesperson, said.

Baker shied away from bragging about his accomplishments, noting that when he took the job the VA faced criticism for spending more than $100 million on software that didn’t deliver.

“At least now we’re talking about systems in the field that may not be as good
as we’d like them to be,” Baker said.

The VA and Pentagon announced this month they’d scrap plans to build an entirely new shared health records system, and instead focus on combining health data through existing technologies to cut costs and speed up delivery. Baker had overseen much of that effort.

Original post is VA Technology Chief ‘Can’t Take Another Four Years’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

A combat-disabled veteran of the Vietnam War demonstrates his newly fitted Otto Bock Healthcare X2 prosthetic limb with a physical therapist at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pledged last year to “meet or beat” a 2017 deadline to integrate two health-records systems, one for troops and the other for veterans.

Now, Panetta and Eric Shinseki, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, are scrapping plans to build a single system because of concerns about how much it would cost and how long it would take to develop.

“Our worry is, how long is it going to take to get to that goal?” Panetta said at a media briefing yesterday in Washington. “And what is going to be the price tag to get to that goal? And how many times is it going to be delayed?”

The two officials announced yesterday they would combine health data from the two agencies by 2014. That will better enable the departments to track patient records through “existing solutions,” Panetta said.

“Rather than building a single integrated system from scratch, we will focus our immediate efforts on integrating VA and DOD health data as quickly as possible, by focusing on interoperability and using existing solutions,” Panetta said.

The move away from an entirely new system is disappointing, Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a press release. “What they are now proposing is not the fully integrated, end-to-end IT solution that this problem demands,” she said.

President Barack Obama in 2009 ordered the two agencies to figure out how to share electronic health records. The VA has struggled to treat veterans without a complete record of their service injuries.

Panetta and Shinseki previously had promised to deliver the new system by 2017. Their new approach would allow them to comply by 2014, they said.

The two agencies “have been at this for years and have sunk over $1 billion into making this the cornerstone of a nationwide electronic medical records initiative,” Murray said. “I intend to follow up with both secretaries to find out why this decision was made.”

The decision to cancel plans for a new system may benefit vendors with contracts to serve the two departments’ existing medical-records programs, said Brian Friel, an analyst with Bloomberg Government. Those companies include Hewlett-Packard Co., SAIC Inc., Harris Corp. and Dell Inc.

Original post is VA, Military to Beat Health-System Deadline by Changing Their Goal by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Vice President Joe Biden arrives during the presidential inauguration on the West Front of the Capitol on Jan. 21, 2013 in Washington.

President Barack Obama skipped the American Legion’s veterans ball for the second time, favoring his own inaugural event for service members.

About two dozen recipients of the Medal of Honor joined hundreds attending the organization’s “Salute to Heroes” ball, a 60-year tradition designed to recognize soldiers given the top military award for valor in combat.

Vice President Joe Biden subbed in for Obama. He arrived shortly after attendees finished their entrées — beef medallions and swordfish — and after the dinner soundtrack had played country star Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” for the second time in two hours.

“The entire country owes you,” Biden told the veterans and their families gathered at Marriott International Inc.’s Renaissance hotel in downtown Washington. `”Where your service ends, as citizens, our obligation begins.”

Biden’s eldest son, Beau, Delaware’s attorney general, served in Iraq for a year as a member of the Army National Guard. Hunter Biden, Beau’s younger brother, is about to be sworn in as a Navy officer, the vice president said last night.

Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and attended the American Legion event, praised Biden’s speech. The vice president “truly understands” the sacrifice of military families, Miller said.

Less than two miles away, Obama again hosted his own inaugural gathering for troops, the Commander-in-Chief’s Ball, at the Washington Convention Center.

This is the second time Obama hasn’t made the American Legion event. In 2009, he became the first president to miss the ball since it was first held in 1953 and Dwight Eisenhower had just taken office.

“We know he has a lot going on,” Marty Callaghan, an American Legion spokesman, said midway through last night’s event. “The president is always welcome here.”

Original post is Veterans Partied on Without Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Commander DomInic Gorie/NASA

The International Space Station (ISS) over Miami, taken from the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

NASA plans to upload code developed by teens to control bowling ball-sized satellites aboard the International Space Station.

The off-the-wall experiment tomorrow is part of a contest sponsored by the elite Pentagon research unit known as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The software code was developed by teams of U.S. high school students as part of the fourth annual student robotics challenge, according to a NASA press release today.

The top 45 teams had their code sent last week to the space station, where an astronaut plans to command the satellites to run the teams’ flight programs.

The best-performing code wins.

In return, the winning team of students will receive certificates and a flight patch that was flown aboard the space station, according to the release.

Original post is NASA: May the Best Kids’ Code Win by Political Capital.

Photograph by Rich Clement/Bloomberg

People walk through a newly-renovated corridor at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

The Pentagon announced on Dec. 5 that C.R. Bard Inc. won a maximum $4.67 billion, one-year deal to deliver surgical products to the military.

The award would have been a coup for Bard, representing almost twice the company’s $2.9 billion in sales in 2011.

Unfortunately, it was a typo.

The Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency plans to correct its announcement, said Michelle McCaskill, an agency spokeswoman. The actual value of the deal is as much as $46.7 million, she said.

“We’d love to have all of it, but that’s not the case,” Scott Lowry, a spokesman for Murray Hill, New Jersey-based C.R. Bard, said in a telephone interview. “We do have a relationship, but it’s on a much smaller scale.”

The company received less than $1 million through an existing agreement in the past year, Lowry said.

Original post is Pentagon Off (Oops) by Billions by Political Capital.

Now, it has a dance partner: CACI International Inc., which announced yesterday it had acquired IDL for an undisclosed amount.

IDL, based in Germantown, Wisconsin, had been telling potential  buyers “no” about once a week, Ed Silva, the company’s senior vice president, told Bloomberg News in a February 2012 interview.

The interest in the company came after it won one of 16 seats on the contract with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. It picked up in November 2011 after the company won a $59 million order on the agreement.

“Having the spot on the contract absolutely gets you attention,” Silva said last year.

CACI isn’t the first company to buy its way onto the health contract. General Dynamics acquired Baltimore-based ViPS Inc. for $225 million in 2008 to get a spot on the deal. It got its second seat by purchasing Vangent Holding Corp., based in Arlington, Virginia, for $960 million in September.

Maricom Systems Inc., a Baltimore health-care technology firm, was bought in 2011 by Falls Church, Virginia-based Computer Sciences Corp. in part because of its spot on the deal.

Maricom’s seat on the contract was the “No. 1 selling point,” Chris Guckert, who was Maricom’s chief operating officer and who remained in his role after the sale, told Bloomberg last year. “It is the ticket to the dance and there are a lot of companies that would covet having that ticket.”

Original post is IDL Dances With CACI After Federal Health Contract by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Brandon/AP Photo

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act.

Senior federal employees risk losing bonuses if their agencies fail to meet government goals of awarding 23 percent of eligible contract funds to small businesses.

The bonus-busting measure is part of the defense bill signed into law today by President Barack Obama.

While some federal agencies have met the target of awarding 23 percent of eligible prime, or direct, contracts to small businesses, the U.S. government as a whole has missed the goal
for at least 11 straight years.

The National Defense Authorization Act requires that meeting small business goals be considered during senior staff reviews and bonus discussions.

The law also gives immunity to small businesses if they break procurement rules after acting on guidance from federal advisory offices, according to a press release from the House Small Business Committee, chaired by Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican. It penalizes companies that violate limits on how much  work can be subcontracted to other vendors.

“The federal government marketplace is full of great opportunities for small businesses to succeed, if only we give them the chance,” Graves said.

The bill is H.R. 4310.

Original post is Bonus Buster Becomes Law by Political Capital.

Photograph by Raimund Koch

Community and chain drug stores may have lost their fight in refilling maintenance medication under Medicare.

Congress gave retail pharmacies a lump of coal for Christmas and may have tossed a few sugar plums to McKesson Corp. and Express Scripts Inc.

Community and chain drug stores have spent much of 2012 fighting a push for more military health plan beneficiaries to get their prescriptions by mail. They lost last week: The Senate and the House of Representatives approved a defense spending bill that requires military retirees and family members 65 or older to enroll for mail refills of maintenance medication, such as drugs to reduce high blood pressure.

A five-year pilot program called for by the bill would affect as many as 1.9 million beneficiaries in the Pentagon’s Tricare for Life plan, which covers users who are eligible for Medicare.

The National Association of Chain Drug Stores opposed the program, saying it limited patient choice.

Military health plan beneficiaries “should be able to choose where to obtain prescription drugs and other pharmacy services,” the group said in a  statement e-mailed today by Chrissy Kopple, a spokeswoman.

The loss for retail drug stores may be a gain for McKesson and Express Scripts. McKesson is the primary supplier of prescription drugs for military mail-order pharmacies, and Express Scripts handles the claims processing, customer service and shipping of those drugs.

The defense measure still requires President Barack Obama’s signature.

Original post is Retail druggists get lump of coal from Congress by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

Members of Utah National Guard's 211th aviation unit attend a job fair.

A U.S. government watchdog agency said today it will no longer hear protests from military veterans seeking to use a 2006 law to get first dibs on contracting opportunities from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The Government Accountability Office has urged the department in at least 18 cases to comply with a law that directs the agency to prioritize spending with veteran-owned firms. GAO officials have said that means VA work should be reserved for veteran-owned small businesses, if there are at least two such companies that can do the work at a reasonable price. VA officials have never followed the recommendations of the GAO, which arbitrates contract disputes, on the topic.

Department leaders maintain the VA can give preference to pre-existing contracts with so-called “supply schedule” vendors that frequently provide discounts for buying in bulk, before turning to veteran-owned firms. Last month, a federal judge sided with the VA in a related lawsuit, ruling that the agency is entitled to deference on how to interpret the law.

The VA’s refusal to follow the GAO guidance and the recent court decision “effectively means that protesters who continue to pursue these arguments will be unable to obtain meaningful relief,” the GAO said in reporting its decision today.

“I’m very, very frustrated,” said Hardy Stone, a U.S. Army veteran who has a brain injury from his service between 1976 and 1981. “How many times can a cabinet level agency ignore the advice of an independent government agency?”

Stone, who owns a Walkersville, Maryland, media and public relations business that publishes VetLikeMe, a newsletter for disabled veteran business owners, said the next move for former service members will be asking the White House for help.

“I hope this becomes a political issue,” he said.

If the department changed its policy, it could shift as much as $3 billion in annual work to veteran-owned firms, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg last year.

Original post is Watchdog to Vets: Sorry, No More Contract Protests by Political Capital.

Spokesmen for two federal agencies declined to discuss what their offices do and who they help once learning a Bloomberg News story would address the reductions, known as sequestration.

The reductions would affect all agencies except the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is exempt. Veterans programs in other departments aren’t immune to the reductions poised to begin next month, according to the story published today.  

When asked about the Small Business Administration’s programs assisting veterans, Michael Stamler, an SBA spokesmen, suggested reaching out to another spokesman “in, say, late January.”

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, also wasn’t interested in bragging about its work helping veterans.

Susan Anderson, a spokeswoman for the department office, said in an e-mail that she let her supervisors know “we would stay away from sequestration 100 percent and simply give an overview of our programs.”

“But they still won’t allow the interview due to the reporter’s ultimate angle,” she said.

Original post is Agencies Help Vets; Don’t Ask How by Political Capital.