The Lighthouse program represents a crucial shift that will allow VA OIT to deliver new technology and services to the veterans at a more rapid pace than government-led innovation typically moves. In a safe and measured way, we wanted to see what we could do to leverage the power of this data and not always focus on VA as the internal developer of everything that we do.” “We’re the stewards of all this data, and we do very carefully protect it through our cybersecurity measures. “The feeling was that we could do more,” said Dominic Cussatt, principal deputy assistant secretary and deputy CIO at VA, at the Breakfast with the Govpreneur April 9. The commercial sector has used a similar method of API sharing to fuel innovation for years, but this is the first time any government agency has created a public portal where anyone can register for an API key to develop applications and programs. Lighthouse creates a commercial gateway for the VA’s partners to use its application programming interfaces (APIs), which allow mobile applications and programs to communicate with VA servers. One major effort that the VA Office of Information Technology is promoting is called Lighthouse. To better serve the nation’s veterans, the VA is looking at technologies, including those already used in other agencies and the private sector, to make its data interoperable and readily accessible. With more than 170 medical centers and 1,000 outpatient sites that serve more than 6 million veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs owns one of the largest repositories of patient data in the world.

Lighthouse program application