Fergie's Tech Blog

The VA's Computer Systems Meltdown: What Happened and Why

Dian Schaffhauser writes on ComputerWorld:

At times, the bad news coming from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs seems unstoppable: D-grade medical facilities, ongoing security and privacy breaches, and a revolving door of departing leadership. In September, during a hearing by the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, lawmakers learned about an unscheduled system failure that took down key applications in 17 VA medical facilities for a day.

Characterized by Dr. Ben Davoren, the director of clinical informatics for the San Francisco VA Medical Center, as "the most significant technological threat to patient safety the VA has ever had," the outage has moved some observers to call into question the VA's direction in consolidating its IT operations. Yet the shutdown grew from a simple change management procedure that wasn't properly followed.

The small, undocumented change ended up bringing down the primary patient applications at 17 VA medical centers in Northern California.

posted by Fergie @ 11/19/2007 09:25:00 PM