VHA taps Fred Mingo to help lead Vista Evolution

A 2006 Federal 100 winner its taking a leadership role in one of the biggest IT projects in the federal government.

Fred Mingo, a former Navy officer, is moving to the Veterans Health Administration to take a lead role in redefining the agency's open-source health record system.

Mingo will serve as VHA's deputy program executive for Vista Evolution, a multibillion-dollar, multiyear plan to improve the Department of Veterans Affairs' Vista electronic health record system. Goals include streamlining regional instantiations by centralizing the software and basing it in the cloud, meeting federal interoperability requirements, and exchanging data more freely with proprietary private-sector systems, including a commercial system that the Defense Department is working on deploying.

Vista Evolution will also deliver apps and services via application programming interfaces and add more advanced functionality, including analytics.

Mingo comes to VHA from professional and IT services firm ICF International, where he was chief technology officer. He earned a place among FCW's Federal 100 in 2006 for his work in maintaining the continuity of operations at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The center provides IT services and support to the U.S. Navy.

In 2006, David Wennergren, who was CIO at the Department of the Navy at the time, said, "Mingo is a visionary leader who is committed to the people and mission of the Department of the Navy."