The Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded a $5 million contract to The Informatics Applications Group to act as a custodial agent to manage an open-source software development community aimed at modernizing VA's VistA electronic health record system, Government Health IT reports.
VA is set to launch the open-source community -- which will include both public and private participants -- in July, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Under the contract, TIAG will help to establish and operate the community, its processes and results (Mosquera, Government Health IT, 6/20). TIAG likely will hire subcontractors to perform some of the key elements of the open-source community, NextGov reports (Brewin, NexGov, 6/21).
VA declined to release a copy of the one-year contract, noting that pricing and "some aspects" of TIAG's proposal could be considered proprietary information and therefore is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 6/21).