Veterans Affairs Department Selects New Acting Chief Information Officer

The Veterans Affairs Department named long-time physician and federal health care executive Dr. Neil C. Evans as its new acting chief information officer, Nextgov confirmed on Monday.

As the top tech chief of a massive federal unit that underpins the nation’s largest integrated health care system, he’ll steer several hefty modernization- and innovation-aligned pursuits.

Evans served VA in an array of roles over the last two decades, including several with specific attention on clinical informatics. He operated in those positions for the agency, and simultaneously as an active clinician managing a panel of patients in a Washington, D.C.-based primary care clinic. Evans was most recently tapped as the chief officer of the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Connected Care, which heads VA’s expansive telehealth program, patient portal and mobile program, among other notable initiatives to deliver relevant digital technologies to vets and their medical providers. 

Last October, he was selected as a winner of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal for Management Excellence.

The department’s former acting CIO Dominic Cussatt is heading to the State Department, according to a VA communications director.

Cussatt served in that temporary CIO capacity since political appointee James Gfrerer exited with the switch of administrations. Before Gfrerer's confirmation at the beginning of 2019, the department went through three different acting officials in two years.