VA names Wooten to head enterprise program management office

The Veterans Affairs Department today named David Wooten, a retired Navy aviator and senior program manager, to direct its new enterprise program management office. The office will oversee the department’s largest and highest-risk IT projects to detect problems and ensure the projects’ success. Wooten will start at VA Aug. 7.Wooten, who retired from the Navy in June after a 30-year career, will be deputy associate deputy assistant secretary for policy, portfolio oversight and execution in VA’s Office of Information and Technology. He will be responsible for developing objectives and performance goals for projects and their managers. In addition to preparing detailed plans with specific budgets, schedules and milestones, he will ensure the financial and technical aspects of project plans, including cost and risk analyses.The new office will review all major IT projects for best practices, such as independent validation and verification, to establish a governance environment ensuring their success, said VA CIO Robert McFarland. The office will initially oversee the highest-risk major IT projects, including the conversion from VistA to the HealtheVet hospital and clinical system and the Web site and Exchange consolidations. When it is fully staffed, the office will monitor all major IT projects.“The team would put immediate focus on auditing the development acquisition phase to determine the true health of those projects,” McFarland said.Previously, Wooten served as the missions systems lead for avionics, computer systems, software and weapons systems integration for the Joint Strike Fighter Program. As program manager for Naval Undergraduate Flight Training Systems, he was responsible for the procurement and complete life-cycle management of the T-45TS, T-6ATS, T-2C, T-34B, T-44A, TC-12, T-39, and TH-57 aircraft systems and the associated computer-based training systems for the Navy and Marine Corps.Wooten received a bachelor of science degree from Eastern Michigan University and a master of science degree in engineering management, with information management as a subspecialty, from George Washington University in Washington.