Dominic Cussatt
The Department of Veteran Affairs is an agency that never stops running, its acting CIO Dominic Cussatt said. “Our networks are always running,” powering the country’s largest health care system and massive benefits programs for veterans. The pandemic brought challenges both for its health care workers on the front lines and those trying to reach veterans for mental health assistance, adjudicating claims and other services that once needed to happen in person. Cussatt and his team were behind that massive shift to telehealth, tele-mental health and general teleservices. And those are things he predicts will stick around after the pandemic subsides. “We had to launch into the future like 3-5 years,” he said, and now the future is here to stay.
