VA mulls moving telecomm to the cloud

The Veterans Affairs Department, looking to get out of the business of buying and maintaining its own telecommunications infrastructure, is considering buying cloud-based telephony services.

The VA’s Technology Acquisition Center issued a request for information Dec. 21 seeking input that could go into developing a Voice-as-a-Service pilot program. The agency is interested in seeing whether such a service could provide basic telecommunications functions – dial tone, internal and external call transfers, common reporting metrics, etc. – while also integrating with various digital communications systems, such Internet chat, videoconferencing and voice-over-IP.

“The goal is to continue to provide VA with a robust communications solution that has the scalability to adapt to future VA need,” while relieving the agency of the time and expense needed to maintain its existing telecommunications infrastructure, the RFI states.