Nikki Budzinski Asks VA Official Point Blank: Will VA Rehire Employees After Mass Layoffs?

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During a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-IL) asked Acting Assistant Secretary for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs Eddie Pool about layoffs at the department.

Transcript

00:00I'd just like to say, you know, I hear you when you're saying this is about smarter, not bigger.

00:05Part of today is not anybody's talking about bigger.

00:07We're talking about bigger cuts, the cuts that are actually happening

00:11and what that's going to mean for what the mission is for OIT.

00:15That's more of, that is my concern.

00:18I do want to go back to this question about staffing

00:21and the lower levels of staffing through the DRP, the Vera, and then natural attrition.

00:27Mr. Poole, if I could ask you, OIT staffing looks now lower than what it was budgeted,

00:34than what is budgeted for fiscal year 2026.

00:37Will OIT now need to rehire staff after essentially paying employees to leave?

00:45Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question.

00:48Yes, we will likely need to continue to hire folks just as we will in perpetuity.

00:54It's a cyclical thing.

00:55You've got people coming in, going out, different life cycles of the employment process.

01:00Many of the folks that left were, again, retirement eligible.

01:03As I mentioned before, 78% of those resulted in retirements.

01:08And so we will continue to recruit.

01:09We will bring in new folks to the workforce.

01:13And as we do that, we'll be focusing exclusively on mission.

01:17So whereas we might have hired across the board previously, we're going to be looking at prioritizing

01:23for the most, again, value-added opportunities and how we're driving the mission forward for

01:27the department as we recruit.

01:29So I can imagine you could hire new folks.

01:31But I mean, for those that have left, do you imagine having to rehire any of them because

01:35the vacancy itself is too critical?

01:39They left.

01:39We need to bring them back.

01:41Can you see that happening?

01:42Congressman, no, I wouldn't see that happening.

01:46You know, again, as we went through this process, we put a lot of rigor behind how we approved

01:54folks that wanted to take advantage of these opportunities and, again, making sure that

01:58we didn't create any operational gaps.

01:59And so it would be highly unlikely that we would be hiring folks back as a contingency.

02:05Many of them are, again, available to the end of the year.

02:08But I don't anticipate that being a contingency we'd have to exercise.

02:12And I should just say, like, some of my concern is coming from the fact that over the last

02:16eight years, it seems like OIT staff, the OIT department has been saying we're way understaffed.

02:22And now we've seen a major attrition of employees over just this last six months.

02:29So I guess that's part of where my concern is.

02:32But the question I'd also have is, how are you then prioritizing?

02:36When you're talking about mission, and we want everything to be mission-driven, of course.

02:40But within that mission, you're going to have to make, probably with less staff, some really

02:45hard decisions on what is prioritized and what is not.

02:48Can you walk me through what that looks like?

02:51Yes, certainly.

02:52You know, it goes back to the opportunity here with standardization.

02:58You know, previously in the construct that you referred to, OINT would be positioned to

03:05support maybe five, six, seven, ten or more similar type workflows, capabilities, or systems

03:11across the department for one set of capability.

03:17As the department standardized down to a real enterprise process on how we do business, that

03:23allows OINT to come in and really automate an enterprise solution around those functions.

03:28And so that in itself will be a tremendous efficiency driver for how we staff the organization.

03:37And then second, as I mentioned previously as well, we have a number of administrative functions

03:43that we have grown into the organization.

03:46We have a lot of things that are not a pure IT-focused mission that are consuming resources within

03:53the department.

03:54And we're no different than the rest of the organization.

03:57We're going to get back to our core mission, which is delivering IT, and where we can get

04:02services and functions from other places in the department that are not IT-related, we

04:07will be pursuing that.

04:08Could you give me an example of what that would be?

04:10Sure.

04:11I'll go back to the example of HR.

04:13You know, we in IT, over the previous administration, decided to build our own HR function within the

04:20Office of Information Technology.

04:22That consumes 300-plus resources to do that.

04:25And at the department level, we do have an HR department.

04:29We have several HR options within the organization.

04:33And so, again, it doesn't make a lot of sense financially or otherwise to build that function

04:38in-house when we can leverage the department-level resources for that.

04:42And I appreciate what you're saying about standardization, because this comes up a lot.

04:46And when we've been talking about the EHRM, moving that forward, standardization seems

04:52to be really important.

04:53But I would just kind of point out my bigger concern here is without enough people power

04:57to help the VA actually in OIT standardize, that could set yourself up for failure if you

05:03don't have the people to do the standardization, because the VA is such a unique place and has

05:08a lot of challenges as it relates to standardization.

05:11So it may be easier said than done.

05:13So I'll yield back.

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