Veterans Affairs explores new data integration approaches

The Veterans Affairs Department has started market research efforts to inform its work on a potential contract for acquiring technology integration and related support to help VA work with all the data it has.

VA’s current environment of mission data and integration products includes the VA Profile portal for veterans to access and manage their information online, and the VADIR service database system used by VA and military. VA’s Health Data Repository of clinical information is also a part of that environment.

VA is launching this new Mission-Oriented Services for Application Integration and Capabilities effort to close access and reliability gaps that impede both the reliability and authority of data, the department said in a sources sought notice posted Tuesday.

The department says its missions increasingly require real-time transactional application programming interfaces, bulk and analytical access suitable for data-lake and large-scale workloads, event-driven and streaming exchanges, and artificial intelligence-ready data products.

By releasing the request for information, VA is seeking industry feedback and ideas on how MOSAIC can help the department shape its future technical environment over the next five-to-10 years and potential acquisition approaches for this effort.

VA is particularly interested in responses that explain how AI agents, agent-to-agent interaction, real-time data, event-driven architecture, interoperability standards, automation and reusable data products could change the role of traditional APIs, middleware, point-to-point integrations and manual integration services.

The RFI includes a series of questions for respondents to answer across 10 general areas, including a comparison of managed services operating models versus platform-first.

Responses to the RFI are limited to 25 pages. Submissions are due by 3 p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 4.