VA CDO Wants Data to be as Reliable as Water, Electricity

If Lisa Rosenmerkel had one wish for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ data, it would be for it to become as much of an afterthought as water or electricity.

“You don’t really think too much about it, right? You just turn on the tap, and water comes out, and you know it’s clean because someone really smart at the water company makes sure it’s clean. Turn on the electricity; it doesn’t hurt your appliances because it’s all managed and coordinated,” said the VA’s CDO Thursday at the Federal Cloud & Data Forum. “You don’t think about it. You just know it’s going to be there when you need it, and I feel like data can have that same effect.”

Overseeing massive troves of veteran information, Rosenmerkel aims to put those datasets to work to better anticipate veterans’ needs for VA services rather than requiring them to repeatedly search for and request services.

Achieving that goal requires a combination of cultural change, infrastructure modernization and safeguards to ensure data can provide new insights securely.

The burgeoning awareness of artificial intelligence and automation has sparked more conversations within VA about how to better use data. But Rosenmerkel said that while the technology has provided the department with new insights, data quality must be strong for VA to realize its full value.

“They say when you win the lottery, you don’t become a different person. You just become more of the person you already were. I think applying AI to data is sort of like that. It doesn’t make your data better or worse, but it makes you acutely aware where its limitations are,” she said. “AI and automation are opening up these huge areas. We’ve been looking at things that we’ve literally never had the capacity to look at before, but that can also create some vulnerabilities as far as being able to interpret the results strategically.”

Rosenmerkel said ensuring the quality of data VA collects from veterans is a key goal. By making sure data is formatted to be accessible across multiple programs, the department can reduce the friction and repetitive processes veterans experience when applying for benefits. With greater accessibility, Rosenmerkel said VA can think more creatively about how best to serve veterans.

“How could we be more proactive? Instead of having the veteran say, ‘Hey, I think I’m eligible for this other thing,’ how could we proactively say, ‘It looks like your kid might be getting to be college age, have you looked at GI Bill benefits?’” she said. “Right now, we send out materials, but they’re kind of generic. Can we be more proactive and say, ‘Here’s something we’re pretty sure your eligible for. Why don’t you check this box and we’ll look into it further?’”

To make that happen, Rosenmerkel said VA is working to improve interoperability to better capitalize on its data. The department is also exploring opportunities to automate processes that access data where it resides when it cannot be stored in a central location.

“We ask veterans the same question too much,” she said. “Because they don’t realize that they’re working with an office in our benefits administration, and they’re working with an office in health. They don’t understand they’re operating in two different groups, and that’s fair, right? We should be able to share foundational information like that, so that you don’t need to do that.”