Robert N. McFarland

Veterans Affairs
Robert N. McFarland
Chief Information Officer,
Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology

With nearly two years of government experience under his belt, Robert N. McFarland says that serving as assistant secretary for information and technology at the Veterans Affairs Department is the most demanding challenge of his career.

The difficulty of his job came as a surprise to the retired Dell Computer Corp. vice president of government relations. He says he is not used to the deliberate pace of the government and that the complexities of the VA's computer systems and networks "make Dell's problems look small."

A veteran himself, McFarland served in the Vietnam War. While he was a member of the Dell leadership, the company rose to become the No. 1 supplier of computers to the federal government. As VA's chief information officer, McFarland oversees the department's vast computer system and telecommunication networks containing medical information, life insurance programs and benefit payments for thousands of veterans. If a network goes down, it can spell disaster for the 230,000 people connected to the system. Part of his challenge is the VA's immense size. With 250,000 endpoints on its systems and a network spread out over the entire United States, VA is the "biggest animal in the house," next to the Defense Department.

A cyberattack on the agency's networks is something McFarland thinks about daily because of the VA's dependence on its communication systems. In a report card handed out by the House Government Reform Committee that measures agency efforts to guard computer systems from malicious attacks, VA was one of seven agencies to receive an F for 2004. McFarland says the VA is about to turn the corner with increased emphasis on certifying and accrediting its computer systems, something he says the agency has not taken seriously in the past.