Automated User Provisioning Program
Program Context
The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Electronic Health Record Modernization (EHRM) Program is being executed under a $10B, 10+ year federal contract to deploy a modernized Electronic Health Record across VA medical facilities nationwide. Within the EHRM Program, I serve as the Program Manager accountable for the $32M Automated User Provisioning program, which comprises multiple coordinated projects and workstreams required to automate and scale user provisioning in support of VA’s EHR deployment schedule.
Business Challenge
User provisioning for the new Electronic Health Record has historically been a fully manual process performed by Oracle Health resources. When Congress accelerated the schedule for deploying the EHR across VA sites, the existing approach could no longer scale fast enough to support the increased rollout pace.
The program needs to automate user provisioning and integrate that capability with VA’s existing provisioning environment so users can be provisioned at the scale and pace required for each new site deployment. Without this transformation, Oracle Health and VA risk being unable to provision users quickly enough to support the accelerated implementation schedule.
Because of its direct impact on rollout readiness, completing the overall User Provisioning Automation program is a top-five priority for the VA Deputy Secretary.
Scope & Complexity
The $32M Automated User Provisioning program spans multiple coordinated workstreams, including two supporting development projects, two application-development projects, infrastructure and integration, cybersecurity, testing, financial management, risk management, and required VA development activities. Delivery is coordinated through nine project and workstream leads—including four development project managers, a Technical Project Manager, a Testing Manager, a Cybersecurity Project Manager, a Financial Lead, and a Risk Lead—along with external VA development teams and other client-side dependencies.
The current phase focuses on automating provisioning for the three most-used applications, while future phases are expected to extend automation to approximately 10 additional applications. Each phase must remain aligned across development, infrastructure, integration, testing, cybersecurity, financial management, risk, environment readiness, and VA deployment timelines.
My Role
As the Senior Federal Program Manager for Automated User Provisioning, I am accountable for end-to-end delivery of the $32M program across its multiple projects and workstreams. I provide cross-functional leadership to nine project and workstream leads, own the overall Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), and coordinate incorporation of each workstream’s project schedule into the consolidated program plan.
I am responsible for program governance, scope management, stakeholder alignment, resource coordination, requirements oversight, and overall delivery outcomes. This includes leading weekly status reviews; contributing to Monthly Performance Reviews; maintaining executive and EHRM-level dashboards; coordinating priorities across Oracle Health and VA stakeholders; identifying and negotiating resource needs; ensuring work remains within approved contractual scope; shepherding required changes through the established EHRM change-control process; and submitting final Acceptance Memos for client approval.
I maintain visibility across risks, dependencies, readiness, and key decisions while driving resolution and escalation when needed.
Leadership Approach
I lead the program by creating a single integrated view across workstreams, connecting individual project execution to the broader program plan and deployment objectives. I use the Integrated Master Schedule, weekly governance reviews, risk and dependency tracking, and frequent stakeholder communication to identify where one team’s decisions, constraints, or delays could affect another and address those issues before they threaten the broader deployment schedule.
When priorities or dependencies conflict, I bring the appropriate leads together, clarify the program-level impact, and help drive a path forward. I will recommend a course of action when appropriate, while also relying on the expertise of the workstream leads and adopting their recommendations when they provide the strongest solution.
I approach escalation as decision support rather than simply raising problems. For significant issues, I gather the relevant facts, evaluate available options and tradeoffs, and present leadership with a clear recommendation and the specific action needed—whether that is approval, prioritization, or assistance securing resources.
I also apply lessons learned to subsequent phases. For example, unexpected downtime in a testing environment reduced available testing time during an earlier phase. We used that experience to identify and shift future testing to another environment with greater availability, reducing the risk of similar schedule impacts in later phases.
Results & Impact
The Automated User Provisioning program is enabling Oracle Health and VA to move from a fully manual provisioning model toward a scalable, integrated approach designed to support the accelerated EHR deployment schedule. The program has established the delivery structure, governance, and cross-organizational coordination required to automate provisioning across multiple applications while maintaining alignment with deployment milestones, security requirements, and operational readiness.
The program has reached its first production milestone, with automated provisioning for one application now live. Following that initial deployment, design refinement for the remaining two applications in the current phase has been completed, with both targeted for production availability by year-end 2026.
Future phases are planned to extend automation to approximately 10 additional applications, further reducing reliance on manual provisioning as the capability expands.