Review of the Award and Administration of Task Orders Issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs for the Replacement Scheduling Application Development Program (RSA)

At the request of the ranking member, Senate committee on Veterans’ Affairs, we conducted a review of the award and administration of the task orders issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The purpose of the task orders was to develop the Replacement Scheduling Application (RSA) which was to replace VA’s scheduling system which was two decades old. Work began on the project in February 2001 with the objective of selecting a Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software program. However, in April 2002, the scope of the RSA project was changed to from a COTS based solution to an in-house build of a scheduling application. From February 2001 through the termination of SwRI’s contract in March 2009, we found that VA’s program planning and oversight of the RSA project was lacking and/or ineffective due to program specific and IT system issues. The primary issues were a lack of requirements and program planning, a lack of VA staff with the necessary expertise to execute the RSA project, and multiple changes in the VA IT organizations who had responsibility for the program. As a result, VA has expended over $70 million through January 2009 and has no viable RSA application that is deployable.