Think of this as Volume 17, Number 21 written since 1997. Enjoy.
The VA “Scandal” is considered one
of the biggest of the Obama Presidency. Commenters from Andrew
Sullivan to Jon Stewart bring it up constantly.
But the truth is
that this isn't really a scandal at all. Not in the sense you're
thinking, a deliberate theft of public funds by someone. It's
scandalous, sure. But there's a difference.
At the heart of
the scandal is the computing systems used by the military and the VA.
The VA uses a
system called Vista, which was crafted thirty years ago based on a
technology called MUMPS. Before the age of open source, it was
considered public domain. Since then, versions with open source
licenses have been developed, and even brought to the commercial
market.
The military uses
a system called AHLTA, which was built by contractors. It is
proprietary. It has been a real mess. The military has constantly
thrown money at AHLTA, hoping to make it work, but to no avail. The
systems contractors have built with AHLTA money were deliberately
made incompatible with Vista, so that the contractors could take
their code and walk away if Uncle Sam decided they were ripping him
off, which they were.
I began covering
this story for ZDNet in 2006. At the time the Administration was
deliberately starving VA of funds for VISTA development, and
encouraging people like Roger Maduro to seek the first exit. The idea
was that the VA code would wither and die, to be replaced by that of
some contractor. Eventually, Cerner did win a contract to develop a
lab system, which Vista already had.
This is the
situation the Obama people walked into. There was a large obsolete
code base, which some people in private industry were trying to build
on, and there was this kludge. There was, and is, no way to connect
the two, because (again) AHLTA is proprietary, and they don't have to
give out that information.
There was also,
coming down the pike, a huge spike in new entrants to the system.
While the VA budget was increased, substantially, that didn't answer
the problem, the incompatibility between the computerized
record-keeping systems. Once people get into VA care, remember, they
get in, and things move. It's getting in that's the problem.
This is not a
problem you can just throw money at. We're talking about different
file formats. You either order a change, which the Administration
tried to do, but you get the slow-walk in that case, and claims that
you're stealing someone's code. The Administration has also tried to
update the Vista code, rewrite it under open source standards, but
this means re-building the freeway while the cars are passing over
it.
There is a vast
bureaucracy, and a unique business model, around the defense
establishment. The contracting model holds that you pay an enormous
amount of money up-front to get in, and then you load those costs on,
plus a handsome profit, once you're in. This is now a huge part of
the U.S. economy, and it was grown under George W. Bush. The vast
bureaucracy exists to both police and defend this model – it's hard
to budge.
My
friend John Weathersby has been fighting the good fight against this,
on behalf of open source, for many years. His Open Source Software
Institute http://oss-institute.org/
has probably done more work to reduce the cost of government, and
with less thanks, than any other agency, anywhere. He has done it
through many meetings and conferences, between open source companies
and government bureaucrats, including Defense bureaucrats, all aiming
to get more open source into the government, contract by contract,
piece by piece.
Despite widespread support from the
Administration for the open source concept, the ship takes time to
turn, and there is always resistance to the turning. Many
bureaucrats, tied to contractors, figure they can wait out any
Administration, slow-walk things until their friends get in power,
and then go to town. History shows they're right.
While all this grinds on, the backlog
grows. As Iraq ends and Afghanistan is wound down, more and more
servicemen and women find they can't re-enlist, and they come into
the system with immense difficulties. Many of these difficulties make
them reluctant to sort through a bureaucratic nightmare based on
trying to find needles of paper in haystacks and judge whether their
problems are service-related. (Hint, they are.)
Without some process, money is going to
be wasted. There are people who will make false claims, or who will
falsely claim, benefits to which they're not entitled. Some form of
intake process is needed.
Once veterans get into the system, they
are going to get treated like heroes, at least superficially, and
they're going to get more care at lower cost than anywhere else in
American medicine. The problem is getting into the system, finding
the paperwork spat out by AHLTA and getting it into Vista. This whole
process should be automatic, but it's not, and it's not going to be
for a time.
The best solution is to take money out
of the Defense Department budget and “out-place” veterans with
the VA, taking the financial burden out of the VA and placing it on
the Defense Department. And to do this with paid staff, not with
contractors, which is the DoD's favored way of doing business.
But guess what that requires? Right.
Congress. Think you're going to get anything out of this Congress? I
don't. Until you fix Congress, until it's aligned with the will of
the people, in the hands of the same party that holds the executive,
you're not going to see an end to this nonsense.
And you won't, because it's not in the
Republicans' interest, or the interest of their contractor friends,
for this problem to be solved. They'd rather have the issue, and
they'd rather see Jon Stewart sticking it to Barack Obama on The
Daily Show than have him find out what's really going on or (worse)
do something about it.
