Name: Inside the VA: FY 2027 Priorities and How to Compete
Uploaded: 2026-11-10T20:30:46.558Z
Duration: 1 h 56 s
Description: Inside the VA: FY 2027 Priorities and How to Compete

Transcript for "Inside the VA: FY 2027 Priorities and How to Compete": Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's webinar. Before we get started, I just have a few housekeeping notes I wanna share with everybody. For our browser, please use Google Chrome or Firefox for the best experience. The audio is gonna be streamed through your computer, so there's no dial in. So just make sure your volume is turned all the way up. You can, download the slides, and some other additional resources from the docs tab on the right. We've got the presentation slides. We also have access to the top federal opportunities for fiscal twenty seven resource hub. So if you haven't seen, both of those, the unrestricted and the set aside reports yet, I highly recommend downloading those. And there's also a link for the inside the agencies webinar series, which is... This is part of. It also has some of the other agencies that we have been featuring. Additionally, the recording will be sent out via email within twenty four hours. And if you have any questions, please use the q and a tab to the right at any time during the presentation to submit your questions, and we will try to get as many answered as we can. Alright. Today, we have Tina and Kevin gonna present inside the VA fiscal twenty twenty seven priorities and how to compete. Take it away. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to officially welcome you to today's webinar, Inside the VA FY 2027 Priorities and How to Compete. My name is Tina Barton, and I'm filling in today for Christine Fritsch who couldn't make it at the last minute. I'm a principal research analyst on the Federal Market Analysis team here at GovWind, and I will be presenting alongside my colleague, Kevin Andrews, who is a senior and... Senior research analyst on the Federal Information Solutions team. These are the areas that we plan to cover today. First, Kevin will provide a look at VA historical spending trends and what those are signaling about the department's acquisition environment. Working our way clockwise around this diagram, Kevin will next take a deep dive look at a few upcoming opportunities that contractors should be aware of. Afterwards, I will walk through the VA's FY twenty twenty seven budgetary details, including some requested funds for certain IT priorities at the department. I'll also provide an outlook on what to expect from the VA in the next few years. And then after that, we will wrap up with conclusions and questions and answers as time permits. And with that, I'll hand things off to Kevin to begin. Thanks, Tina. So one of the things I do before looking at opportunities is I wanna understand where the money is actually going. So over the next few slides, we're gonna look at VA spending trends, what the department is buying, who's receiving those dollars, and how those trends are shaping some of the opportunities that we're tracking in FY '27. Let's start with the big picture. When I pulled this data together, what really stood out wasn't that, just VA spending has increased, and that's not necessarily surprising. Over the last several years, we've seen continued investment in veteran health care, benefits delivery, modernization initiatives, and community care programs. But what really stood out was that VA became a larger share of the overall federal contracting market. And so looking at our chart, obligations increased from about $57,000,000,000 in f y twenty twenty two to more than $84,000,000,000 in f y twenty twenty six. And at that's during those same times, VA share of overall federal contract spending grew roughly 8% to more than 10%. And to me, that's more significant, of a trend just because it suggests that VA spending has grown faster than the broader federal contracting market over that period. And so what's also interesting is that the growth wasn't limited to a single year. We can see a fairly consistent upward trend across the entire time frame, with the most significant increases occurring in f y twenty twenty five and f y twenty twenty six. And so for contractors, that's significant because it reinforces that VA remains one of the largest and most active civilian agencies in the federal market. And whether you're focused on health care, professional service, construction, or IT, VA continues to be a market worth paying attention to. And so over the next few slides, we're gonna take a closer look at where those dollars are actually being spent, who's driving that spending, and how those trends connect to some of the f y '27 opportunities that we're tracking. So when we break that spending down by organization, one thing becomes pretty clear. VHA is still the story. Roughly seven out of every $10... Contract dollars obligated by VA flow through Veterans Health Administration. And that's not to the the... Sorry. Sorry. That's not to diminish the role of OALC or VBA, but most of this, spending growth we're seeing comes from VHA. In fact, VHA obligations increased from roughly 47,000,000,000 in f y twenty two to nearly 61,000,000,000 in f y twenty six, accounting for the majority of VA's overall spending growth during that period. And so what's interesting is that while VA continued to grow, OALC remained relatively consistent at more than $20,000,000,000 annually. So that's reinforcing its position as VA's second largest buying organization. And from a contractor perspective, this concentration matters. When you look at the largest spending categories later on in the presentation, many of them tie directly back to to VHA's health care mission. So understanding VHA priorities, the major contract vehicles, and health care related requirements remains critical for firms pursuing VA opportunities. Another takeaway is that despite VA size, spending is actually concentrated among a relatively small number of buying organizations. So VHA drives the majority of the obligations. OALC accounts for much of the remainder, and VBA and NCA, represent comparatively small port... Portions of the overall contract spending. So if you're trying to understand where VA is investing and where future opportunities are likely to emerge, VHA priorities remain one of the most important areas to monitor. And if we take one step further and look at what VA is actually buying, the health health care story becomes even more obvious. So many of the largest PSC and NAICS codes are tied directly to health care delivery, physician services, pharmaceuticals, insurance programs, and medical support. In fact, if you look at both the charts here, four of the five largest categories on each side are health care related in some form. And that tells us that these aren't isolated spending areas. They're core requirements that continue to receive sustained investment, year after year. And then one area that really caught my attention was medical evaluation and screening services, which saw substantial growth during our period, and that aligns closely with the growth we're observing in the medical disability examination spending and highlights the continued importance of those services within the VA market. And we also see... We continue to see strong spending in areas that, may reflect VA's continued reliance on external provider networks and community care support led by community care network contracts, as well as related health care support vehicles as well. What's interesting is that while health care dominates the charts, IT hasn't disappeared from the picture. Computer systems design services remains one of the top NAICS categories, which suggests that VA is continuing to invest in modernization efforts and simultaneously expanding their health care delivery capabilities. And for contractors, that takeaway is that, many of the VA's largest opportunities sit at the intersection of health care and support services when... Whether that's clinical care or pharmaceuticals, provider networks, disavailability examinations, insurance programs, or the technology that enables those services. So the bottom line is that health care remains at the center of VA procurement activity. And this is probably not gonna surprise anyone who's worked in the VA market, but the scale is still notable. SDVOSVs continue to receive the overwhelming majority of identified socioeconomic spending. When you compare SDVOSB obligations to categories like Pubzone or women owned small business or eight a, it really highlights how central veteran owned businesses remain within VA's acquisition environment. And what's particularly interesting is that this is a one a one year trend or anything. If you look across the entire period, SDVOSV spending remains consistently higher than every other socioeconomic category by a significant margin, growing from roughly 7,800,000,000 in f y twenty two to nearly 10,000,000,000 in f y twenty twenty six. And then if you look on the left side, we have a scorecard there, on the left side of the screen, and that reinforces, the commitment that we're talking about. VA isn't simply meeting many of its veteran owned small business goals. It's exceeding them. In fact, SDVOSBs accounted for more than 21% of prime contract dollars in f y twenty six against the goal of just 5%. So for contractors, that's an important signal, and it suggests that VA's veteran first acquisition approach continues to play a major role in how the department awards its work. For large businesses, it reinforces the importance of teaming and partner strategies because many opportunities will continue to involve veteran owned businesses either as prime contractors or strategic teammates. And for small businesses, it highlights just how valuable SDVOSB status can be within the VA market and why understanding the veteran owned competitive landscape remains so important. The broader takeaway is that if you're pursuing VA opportunities, successfully navigating SCVUSB ecosystems remains one of the most important elements of long term growth strategy. Okay. So when we move from spending categories to contract vehicles, we see the same pattern emerging. The health care story we just discussed shows up very clearly when we look at the vehicles that VA is using to buy those services. Community care network continues to dominate. It's growing from roughly 21,500,000,000 in f y twenty two to more than 33,000,000,000 in f y twenty six. That makes it not only the largest vehicle on the slide, but one of the most significant contract vehicles across the entire department. PPV two remains the second largest vehicle and highlights VA's continued investment in pharmaceutical procurement and supply chain support, and we saw significant growth in NDE related spending as VA expanded support for medical disability examinations and veteran claims processing. And so what's kinda interesting, is is how much spending is concentrated among a relatively small number of health care focused vehicles. In fact, if you look at the top three vehicles alone, they account for a significant portion of total VA obligations. Another item worth pointing out is the contrast between health care and IT. T four n g is the only major IT focused vehicle that appears in this top five, while remaining vehicles are tied directly to health care delivery or pharmaceuticals or patient support services. And that reinforces the trend we've seen throughout the presentation that health care remains the primary driver of VA procurement activity. And so from a contractor perspective, understanding these major contract vehicles is often just as important as understanding the agency itself because these vehicles frequently determine how requirements reach the market. It also helps identify where follow on opportunities may emerge. So for example, we already know that the next generation community care network vehicles have been awarded. T four n g will transition to t four n g two, and PPV three remains on the horizon. So monitoring vehicle transitions can often provide provide you an early insight into future procurement activity. For... From a contractor's perspective, you know, you you wanna make sure you know that these major contracts are out there and then where that money is flowing. So the broader takeaway is that VA's largest contract vehicles remain closely aligned to the department's health care mission, reinforcing health care as the dominant area of contractor opportunity within, the agency. Now that we've looked at where VA has been spending its money, let's shift gears and talk about where we see some of the most important opportunities heading into FY '27. The first opportunity I wanted to highlight is Omega two point o. What makes this one particularly interesting is that it's not focused on delivering a single application or capability. It's supporting the governance, engineering, onboarding, and assurance functions behind many of VA's broader modernization efforts. This is anticipated to be a follow on to the current Omega task order, which is being performed by Sartora Management Consulting LLC. The current task order is estimated to run through September 2027. So this is a procurement, we'll be watching closely over the next year. The VA has released an RFI in June 2026 and has spent much of the year reviewing industry feedback, refining the acquisition approach. And while there hasn't been a final solicitation released yet, the level of market research suggests that, the agency is still actively shaping the requirement. And then what makes this opportunity particularly interesting is its role within VA's broader digital modernization effort. The requirement supports onboarding, engineering, governance, and assurance functions for programs managed through the digital transformation center and product delivery service organizations. So in other words, this isn't a standalone IT project. It's supporting the framework and oversight that helps enable digital modernization initiatives across the enterprise. The opportunity is estimated between 500,000,000 and just under $1,000,000,000 and is currently expected to be competed as an SDVOSB set aside. It makes it one of the larger small business opportunities on VA's IT horizon. For contractors, this is one to monitor because it aligns closely with VA's continued investment in digital transformation, product delivery, governance, and enterprise modernization initiatives. So TAP TAP is probably the most mission focused opportunity I'm highlighting today. It's transition assistance program for VA, VBA, Office of Transition and Economic Development. Unlike many of the health care related efforts we've discussed, this program focuses on helping service members successfully transition into civilian life. The scope is pretty substantial, supporting roughly 200,000 transitioning service members each year across hundreds of military installations worldwide. And this effort is not just a training delivery. The requirement includes workforce management, program operations, benefits education, performance measurement, and broader mission support activities. So this is really a workforce development and program management effort wrapped around a veteran services mission. That means the opportunity can appeal to a much wider group of contractors than many people might initially, expect. Another aspect worth watching is the acquisition activity itself. VA released a draft RFP in September 2026 and indicated plans to pursue this effort through OASIS Plus unrestricted, but we haven't seen a final solicitation release, to date. In the meantime, the current effort remains with Calibri Systems under a bridge arrangement, which tells us that the work itself remains important, and VA wants to ensure continuity, while it's work, while they work through their acquisition process. And so from a contractor perspective, this is a good example of an opportunity where understanding both the mission and the incumbent landscape will be important. It's a it's a large in scale. It has a nationwide footprint, and it supports a highly visible VBA program. So the, the combination of a mission's impact and program size is one reason that TAP continues to generate significant interest across the contractor community. Okay. This is enterprise resource planning system integrator. So despite the title, I wouldn't, you know, really look at this as a traditional ERP procurement. The various RFIs and draft requirements and industry day engagement suggests that VA is thinking much bigger than that. The incumbent environment has been supported by Booz Allen Hamilton through VA's enterprise service management information technology, service management effort. That's a mouthful. While the current ERP, requirement appears significantly broader in scope, it does provide insight into how VA has been managing enterprise services, operations, and service management capabilities to date. What we're really seeing for this follow on is a broad enterprise modernization effort that includes sustainment, platform management, service management capabilities, and enterprise integration. And then one thing that's kinda stood out, to me while I was researching this opportunity is just how broad the scope appears to be. And so based on the draft requirements and the acquisition activity, VA isn't simply looking for a contractor to implement or maintain an ERP system or platform. They're looking for an enterprise system integrator that can support license licensing, operations, modernization, and integration across multiple businesses and technology functions. The opportunity has remained very active throughout 2026. VA issued multiple RFIs. They released draft requirements, and they continued engaging industry on the acquisition strategy. And most recently in November, the agency notified, industry that it's assessing the acquisition strategy and requirements while conducting additional research and internal reviews. So as a result, previously released draft requirements remain subject to revision. While that may affect the timelines, it also just suggests that VA is taking additional time to refine what is expected to be one of its larger enterprise modernization procurements. VA isn't simply delaying the procurement. They're taking a step back and they're reassessing the strategy itself. Again, from a contractor perspective, that's important because changes in acquisition strategy can influence everything from teaming decisions to competition and overall scope. At approximately $1,700,000,000 this would rank among the larger IT opportunities currently on VA's horizon, which helps explain the amount of planning and market research the agency has conducted so far. And it aligns with the broader trend we're seeing across the government where agencies are looking for enterprise wide modernization solutions rather than procuring individual point solutions. Taken together, the level of acquisition activity, the scale of the requirement, and the continued engagement with industry, it suggests this remains one of the most significant IT opportunities currently being planned within VA. Next, we have Enterprise Digital Government Enablement or Edge. If you've been following PTIMS 2.0, Edge is probably already on your radar. Many in the market view Edge as the anticipated successor to the PTIMS two point o, which Deloitte currently performs. The current PTIMS effort supports product delivery, low code and no code development, digital modernization initiatives, and life cycle management activities across VA. What's noteworthy is how closely Edge aligns with VA's broader digital transformation goals. Throughout the acquisition planning process, we've seen references to low code and no code development, Cloud adoption, digital services, APIs, SaaS solutions, and emerging technologies. And we've also seen references to human centered design and product delivery method... Methodologies, which suggests VA is looking beyond traditional sustainment and toward modernization and digital service delivery. The VA has, consistently delivered... Discussed this requirement during both industry days and APBI events, which signals a fairly high level of visibility within the office of IT. And the agency has also remained active with industry engagement through source of sought notices, RFIs, and draft requirements. The VA is currently anticipating three BPA awards under Alliance three, which could create multiple avenues for participation beyond a traditional single award environment. So again, from a contractor perspective, this opportunity sits at the intersection of cloud, digital modernization, platform development, user experience, and emerging technologies, that broad scope is likely to attract interest from a wide range of system integrators, Cloud providers, and digital transformation firms. And given the estimated value of up to $1,900,000,000 and the strategic importance of the effort, I expect this to be one of the most closely watched IT opportunities within VA over the next year. Okay. So our last opportunity I wanted to to touch on is fraud, waste, and abuse prevention services. And this title sounds like a fairly straightforward consulting requirement, but it's actually much broader than that. The work supports VBA's effort around fraud prevention, improper payments, risk management, internal controls, and program integrity across multiple benefits programs. So this isn't supporting a single VBA office or program. The work touches multiple benefits delivery functions that helps VBA identify, assess, and mitigate risk before they impact veterans, taxpayers, and program operations. So Booz Allen currently performs the work and recently received a bridge award while the VA continues to, prepare the follow on procurement. And another reason this opportunity stands out is the amount of acquisition activity that we've seen over the last two years. So the VA has completed market research, held industry days, selected an acquisition vehicle, and has continued to refine the procurement, procurement strategy, that level of engagement suggests that the agency remains committed to moving the requirement forward. And we're also seeing agencies place greater emphasis on improper payment reduction, program accountability, and data driven oversight. So that makes this opportunity and ones like this relevant, not only to traditional management consulting firms, but also to organizations with, with strengths like analytics and investigations, business intelligence, and risk management. So, again, from a, contractor per... Perspective, this is another example of a follow on procurement where understanding the incumbent environment, acquisition strategy, and evolving requirements will be important as the procurement moves forward. That concludes my highlighted opportunity section. So, of course, the next question is whether those priorities continue moving forward and how future funding decisions may influence the market. And to help answer that, I'll turn it back over to Tina, to discuss the FY twenty twenty seven budget outlook and what it could mean for contractors pursuing VA opportunities. Thanks, Kevin. Alright. So now we'll shift gears and take a look at the future of VA. But before I begin, I do wanna note that much of the information that you'll see on the next few slides is also contained in some of the reports that the federal market analysis team publishes throughout the year. And within those reports, you'll find a deeper analysis on the information that I'm going to be presenting today. Before jumping into the content directly, there are a few budget and contracting terms I wanna make sure that we are... Have defined. So starting from the top, but I'm referring to the discretionary budget. That is the part of the budget that the president requests on an annual basis, and that must go through an annual appropriations process and be approved by congress to fund the programs and initiatives. And this is different from the mandatory portion of the agency's budget. As of right now, a continuing resolution has passed and is in place until December 11 with f y twenty twenty six program funding levels. Next, contractor addressable budget is more of a Deltek term, and it's the portion of the budget where we estimate what may be available to contractors. We determine the contractor addressability by looking at various resources. This includes certain accounts and categories from the budget request as well as contract spending. And then we couple that with the background knowledge we have to really carve out the dollars that may be there for contractors. Last, our contract obligations. This is a payment commitment made by the government for the purchase of goods and services. However, it does not refer to when the payment is actually made but instead refers to a contractual promise of a payment. On this slide is a ten plus year look at the VA discretionary budget totals stacked against reported contract spending numbers. Looking at the chart, the blue columns represent total discretionary budget figures. The hot pink bars are reported contract spending, and the dotted teal line going across is the percent of contract dollars to budget. Average contract spending to budget over the ten years is 46%. However, in some of the recent years, especially after the COVID era, we see that contract spending is even 50% or more of the budget. The f y twenty six and '27 contract spending numbers are in the gradient fields that you see here, and they are estimates. Even though f y twenty six is in the books, we find that there's still some reporting of contract obligations up to three months after the close of the fiscal year. So that $84,300,000,000 total you see may or may not change. The $76,800,000,000 contract spend estimate for f y twenty twenty seven reflects a three year average from f y twenty four to '26. So given the trajectory that VA contract spending has taken during this time, it's anticipated that the FY twenty seven contract spending figure will be more than what's listed there. Looking at the discretionary budget totals there, there's been some fluctuation especially since 2020, but we still see contract spending holding steady and increasing year over year. It's not matching the ebb and flow of the budget totals even in spite of it some years. Contract spending even stayed strong during the last year despite a large contract review and multiple contract cancellations that were part of the Trump's administration efforts toward government efficiency. So we're looking at a strong market for contractors at the VA. Now with the president's budget request each year, the Office of Management and Budget or OMB releases budget total outlays for federal agencies with estimated totals for the next four years. So in the VA's case, the OMB estimates the budget will total about a $159,700,000,000 by 2031. You can find these numbers in table 5.2 within the OMB historical table section of the budget. I also wanna note that the OMB total also includes some mandatory, reimbursable, and other account totals rather than just strictly discretionary. So that might account for why the total seems so much higher. So here we'll take a closer look at the VA's f y twenty twenty seven budget request. At the top right is the VA's discretionary total for 2027. Note that the discretionary total does not include the medical care collections fund, MCCF, with $4,200,000,000 in FY 2027 or the recurring expense transformational fund, RETF, with $554,000,000 in 2027. That budget total is also about 9% or a $10,500,000,000 increase over the 2026 inactive total at the VA. The agency also requests advanced discretionary appropriations of 138,200,000,000 for f y twenty twenty eight. Additionally, VA also requests $53,800,000,000 in advanced twenty twenty appropriation to cover the cost of war toxic exposure fund, which includes $600,000,000 in appropriation enacted through the PACT Act for major medical facility leases. Now below the budget figure on the slide is a chart with a breakout of VA's budget by category. In parentheses within this chart is the percent difference from the total budget from f y twenty twenty six to 2027. And then a similar breakout of the budget by category is also displayed in the pie chart at the top. As we can see, medical programs that, like Kevin mentioned, make up the largest portion of VA's budget and IT makes up about 4% of that with an increase of about 2% in FY 2027 and I'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. The bullet points on the slide depict key highlights from the department's FY twenty twenty seven budget documents. Medical care activities face an increase of $8,600,000,000 in 2027 and purposes to distribute funds among two new account categories for f y twenty twenty eight. Those are the direct care and community care categories that Kevin also mentioned earlier. We also see a large emphasis on veteran suicide prevention and ending veteran homelessness in the budget with a $13,000,000 increase for veteran suicide prevention outreach and a 531,000,000 increase towards stopping veteran homelessness. Now this $531,000,000 increase includes 500,000,000 to build additional facilities and $30,000,000 to augment services at the West LA West LA VA Medical Center. There's also funding to establish a new Warrior Independence and Self Sufficiency Ethos or WISE program office under the office of the department of secretary. Within the relaunch of the department's electronic health records modernization program, the FY 2027 budget provides an additional $840,000,000 in FY '27 to deploy the system to 26 additional sites. Also, to sustain the operations of 19 live sites and then provide infrastructure readiness and program management activities for the initiative. VA also requests $3,900,000 for construction activities which amounts to about a 3% increase over FY twenty twenty six funding And that includes $3,000,000,000 for major construction projects and $861,000,000 for minor construction initiatives. Lastly, the VA is looking to streamline all contracting functions so that contracting staff report to the principal executive director for the office of acquisition, logistics, and construction, also known as the OALC. Here, we're looking at parts of the budget that our team has identified that may be contractor addressable in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. This identification is done based on object classes within the budget. So OMB define those object classes as categories in a classification system that present dollar figures based on the items or services actually purchased by the federal government. What we're really trying to do here is carve out what part of the f y twenty twenty seven budget may be available for contractors based on the budget request. So for f y twenty twenty seven, looking at the relevant object class categories at the VA, Deltek identified a $133,000,000,000 of the agency's total discretionary budget as contractor addressable. That's about 9% more than f y twenty twenty six. The pie chart on the right breaks out that $133,000,000,000 into segments. Listed with each category in the pie chart is the total that has been identified for 2027 with a dollar difference from f y twenty twenty six in parentheses. Here, we see that for VA, the other services from nonfederal sources takes up a large piece of the pie. It's kind of a catch all category and is defined as purchases from other federal government agencies or accounts that are not otherwise classified. So in the last several years, we've seen that the VA transition contract contractual services to what I'll continue to refer to as this catch all category. For example, the department used to list funding under a medical care category, but we no longer find that breakout under the department. However, we do know that these types of services exist at the VA so we assume that they've been tucked under this catch all category. We're not really sure why the department is reporting, its object classifications in this manner. And then we see the rest of the contractor addressable budget for VA among categories such as supplies and materials, land and structure, equipment, and so forth. So this year, the White House again released only its top line IT budgets for each agency. In years past, civilian IT budgets were released with more detail and included a breakdown of the IT budget figures among the IT investments with their respective descriptions. Since we do not have that information again this year I want to at least highlight a few other initiatives the VA detail within the budget request documents. So the department's IT budget number provided by OMB is $12,100,000,000 for FY 2027. The numbers in the chart represent the top line budgets for FY 2025 to 2027 and are listed in millions of dollars. Now alongside the top line IT budget figures, OMB also releases top line cyber budgets for each agency. VA's FY 2027 top line cyber figure is $1,100,000,000 and represents about 9% of VA's total IT budget. VA's IT value proposition for fiscal year twenty twenty seven as it is listed in the budget. As it is listed in the budget documents, it's ready, secure, and faster. And to convert prior year IT investments into veteran facing improvements. So let's see what that looks like as far as the IT initiatives go in the budget. So the department has requested $6,300,000,000 in discretionary IT system resources, and the budget advocates for two changes to IT systems appropriations. One, to delete three sub accounts, development, operations and maintenance, and pay and associated costs, and to provide a three year period of availability for appropriated funds. The department is also looking to scale execution ready mission delivery providing programmatic growth to several veteran facing systems such as appointment scheduling, telehealth, and clinical care delivery system, administrative systems that reduce clinical burden, and platforms that extend across and extend the access through the remote patient monitoring and the community care coordination. On the cyber front additional funding is provided for security and compliance and zero trust implementation to improve enterprise visibility, detection, containment, recovery, and auditability. The VA is also increasing obligations centered on the financial management business transformation or FBMS or FBMT and on the IFAM's implementation and expression. In particular, funding supports configuration, data migration, interfaces, class infrastructure, automation, and change management. Now this slide depicts some executive orders in the past year in which VA and in particular IT at the department play a role. So starting from the top left, last year the White House introduced the Genesis Mission, a whole of government initiative that utilizes AI to bolster scientific research. For its part, the VA is providing electronic health records and genomic data to the Department of Energy who is heading up the mission and utilizing AI on the data to improve research on early detection of health risks and disease. Next, last April executive order 14,401 was issued to accelerate research and innovation into mental health and in particular to increase access to psychedelic drugs. The EA's role is to work with h s... HHS Health and Human Services and in particular the Federal Drug Administration to increase clinical trial participation and share data on a veteran related mental health illnesses. Lastly, the recent EO entitled Accelerating Access to Veterans Benefits and Employment Opportunities and as the name suggests its purpose is to unify veteran services and help transition service member to civilian life. This EO outlines various actions from the VA including things like reviewing existing policies and IT systems to ensure interoperability between the VA and DOJ, employing new digital tools to streamline veterans benefit applications, and ensuring the immediate transfer of data from the DOD to the VA. A running theme for the VA among the policies listed here is that data accessibility and interoperability will be key to carrying out these policy objectives. So taking everything into consideration that we've covered so far and more, this slide we examined the VA's contractor addressable IT market from f y twenty six to 2029, which is material pulled from the Federal Market Analysis Team's IT forecast report that was published at the end of this past June. The chart at the top of the slide provides both VA's total IT forecast as well as a breakout among bureaus for the f y twenty six to twenty twenty nine period. While our forecast totals naturally incorporate core activities, we also incorporate in our forecast IT work that we know exists in larger departmental programs and that we refer to as embedded IT. So for FY twenty twenty six Deltek anticipates the contractor addressable IT market to total about $8,900,000,000 and then increase 9% to about $9,700,000,000 by f y twenty twenty nine. The increase will will largely be propelled by several areas in IT and this slide shows you an example of some of those market drivers. Cybersecurity will be a large propeller of IT spending at the VA especially as the department continues to protect sensitive veteran and mission information. The department is following a cyber dominant strategy with zero trust principles incorporated into its system. Micro segmentation across networks, and prioritizing secured attack services and eliminating threats. Interoperability and accessibility of data is also another core IT market at the VA that I mentioned on the previous slide. The f y twenty twenty seven budget requests a $106,000,000, which is a $2,000,000 increase over f y twenty twenty six, and this is for data... Enterprise data services. AI use cases are also increasing at the department. In fact, the VA's reported use case inventory shows that the the department reported 229 use cases in 2024, but then increased to three hundred and sixty three hundred and sixty seven by FY 2025. And we don't see any signs of the BA slowing this pace at all. Sample use cases include reducing clinical burdens such as launch and ambient listening capabilities for AI captures and processes conversations between the clinician and patients to reduce the clinician time in writing and reviewing notes. Another example includes an AI enabled intelligence document processing solution that will reduce review time of veteran benefits claims. And then using AI on VA datasets such as the military... The million veteran program to improve health care delivery and improve diagnostic accuracy. Lastly, the relaunch of the VA EHRM, electronic health records management program, has prompted increased support in areas such as cybersecurity, data management and hosting, and cloud services. So at this time, I'll turn it back over to Kevin, and we'll go through some of the the conclusions that we have identified through the presentation. Thanks, Tina. If I had to summarize everything that I covered today, I have four key takeaways. First, health care spending remains dominant. Health care remains the foundation of the VA market and continues to account for the largest concentration of contract spending. Next is modernization efforts continue to advance. And at the same time, I'm sorry. I skipped one. No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. At the same time, opportunities like Edge, ERP, SI, and Omega demonstrate VA's continued investment in modernization and digital transformation. Next, major opportunities are still taking shape. Several of the opportunities we discussed remain in the acquisition planning, making continued monitoring of RFIs and draft requirements, and industry engagement activities especially important. Then early positioning will be critical. Because most of these are follow on opportunities, understanding incumbent relationships and identifying teaming opportunities will be, very key for your success with these. And Tia? And just sort of reiterating what we've already gone over, we noticed that, VA contract spending continues to grow. And although the the budget totals have fluctuated, they've ebbed and flowed, contract spending at the department has risen year over year since twenty twenty seventeen and frequently accounts for half of the department's discretionary budget. And FY 2027, the priorities, are such that VA is requesting a $144,900,000,000, which amounts to a $10,500,000,000 increase over the FY 2026 inactive level. Top priorities include things like increases in medical care activities, community care activities, focusing on ending veteran homelessness and veteran suicide prevention, bolstering the cybersecurity capabilities, and continued rollout of the EHRM which has seen a lot of industry visibility in the past few weeks. The Trump administration policies continue to influence budgets across the board including the VA. These policies are elevating the importance of the VA data accessibility and interoperability which are featured prominently in several of the executive orgs issued over the past year. And that goes hand in hand with the continued implementation and integration of AI products. The contractor is addressable IT market, between fiscal year 2026 and 2029. Deltek forecast this market to grow from the $8,900,000,000 in f y twenty twenty six to 9,700,000,000 in f y twenty twenty nine. And factors that contributed to this growing market include things like ongoing White House policies, relaunching that EHRM program, data management integration, and increasing use of AI. And we can't leave out the cybersecurity that's associated with all of that. So at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Alex, for a brief poll, and, then we'll go into the question and answers. Hello, everybody. Just real quick before, we get into the questions. We're going... We have a quick poll question. Would you like to speak with a Deltek sales representative to access a free trial of GovWinIQ? That poll question is gonna be open in your polls tab. And, if you go ahead and answer that, that would be great. Thank you. And then we can go ahead. Tina and Kevin, you wanna address some of the questions? Yeah. Kevin, I'll let you start. Do you want me? Okay. No problem. So we're... I was going through some of the questions that were submitted during, the presentation. I see one that says, please define OALC. Sorry about that. I was just kinda rattling off some of the department's, abbreviations, but that's Office of Acquisition, Logistics, and Construction. Then I think I also said NCA, which is the National Cemetery Administration. This is just two that I think I probably just said the abbreviation for. And then I saw a lot of things about t four and g two coming through, and then we also had a presubmitted question about what's the plans for task orders under t4 n g two. Someone said they heard it was going away. As of today, there has been no task orders issued under t4 n g two. Ng2. If you don't know, t4 ng was a huge IT vehicle for the VA, and then they moved on for the follow on t4 ng2, and that was awarded. It was... The solicitation was out. It was awarded, and then it went through a massive amount of of protests. And then it finally got out of the courts in March, and then there was a final appeal, and that was dismissed in August. We have not seen any task orders awarded yet. We have been in contact with the contracting office. There is no updates. There's no no timeline where they want to release a new task order. There's been no information basically given out. We are monitoring it and we are tracking any type of task order. We had the initial ones that were made, but once those start rolling in, they're going to be reflected in our task order award database. I don't have any thoughts or concerns about it going away. It's a massive IT vehicle for the VA. I do not see that being the case. A lot of questions on t four and g two. Then I saw We had a couple about the VA's priorities focused on improving veteran outcomes, which upcoming IT modernization and AI driven automation initiatives offer strongest opportunities for small business contractors, and what contract vehicles or acquisition strategies should they be positioning for? So from an opportunity stand for... Standpoint, so small businesses, you need to pay attention to AI intelligence, automation, healthcare and clinical IT modernization, cybersecurity, zero trust, data management, enterprise modernization. And then from a contracting perspective, you know, businesses should monitor vehicles like t four and g two when those task orders start to be released. And then I I did see someone say that, you know, how how do you get on to these vehicles? Can companies not not on the vehicles gain sub work to prime on the vehicles? So you can sub, to a prime that has a t four n g or any of the vehicles that we talked about. You can sub, with any of the primes. Some of them have on ramping or, times where they accept a subcontractor or a teaming agreement. It depends on the vehicle. You have to go through and see when they allow those teaming agreements to be made. We had a pre submitted question about, what are they doing about any ops from Q4 twenty six that slipped? Are they still initiative in FY '27? So, historically, it's been... If if something in... Was supposed to be released in, fourth quarter, that's very common, for that to get slipped into, like, the next next fiscal year. You know, hopefully, first quarter, second quarter, but, you know, fourth quarter is a busy time for contractors and the government, alike. They're both going through a lot of requirements, and so it is common for something to slip. Yeah. I would just keep an eye out if there's an opportunity in particular that you're interested in, just focusing on that, and watching it, hopefully with GovWin IQ. If not, we can help you track those. Then I had a lot of questions pre submitted about VA RISE and the VA vision realignment and what that means. For those that don't know, the VA is moving from 18 VISNs or territories down to five VISN regions, and they're doing this to simplify the regions. For contractors, the key is to follow those facilities and the buying organization. It could be janitorial services for a certain location was under one visit and now it's under a new one. A medical center can move into a new visit and then the VA can separately decide what contracting office will handle the project. For visits, you want to just follow that medical center and then track the the facilities and locations that way. The second half of that question was, which vision will the majority of AE projects be located? There's not a specific, vision. It... It's based on where the the facility is located. So there isn't any one visit has more AE projects than the next. It's just, which location has the AE projects you may be interested in. One presubmitted question was, how do you connect with buyers and decision makers to introduce our services to the VA procurement officials? So gov one IQ can help you with finding the decision makers. They... We can provide you information on how to contact with them. And, again, Alex showed the free demo or talked to our... One of our reps on how that... We can help you there. And the next one that was submitted was the best place to track construction projects at the vision level. And, again, GovWinIQ, we track those construction projects at the vision level. You can look for projects specifically for a vision or a region. Trying to go through these as quickly as possible. Tina, did you have one before I take over all the time? Yes. So there was one presubmitted question. What is the direction of data standardization for the VA? So aside from the policies we've already discussed in the presentation, that's going to push the data standardization efforts as well as the interoperability components and opportunities at the VA, some of the department's other data centric initiatives are going to prompt further standardization in the VA. For example, VHA is working with the Office of Information Technology, OIT, on the new corporate data warehouse, which is consolidating data from the VA and the other national data systems into a single enterprise data model in order to research the veteran health trends. So it's those data centric projects at the department that's going to drive the standardization efforts. And, of course, as the VA expands its use of AI, data standardization needs will be a natural result of that. So I recommend looking into the team's federal big data market reports that we, report that we published just last month for more examples. And, also, the the forecast IT report, the cybersecurity report, the cloud report. There are multiple federal market analysis reports that have been published since June that really digs into these components of this whole presentation. And then. I see. there's one that says, how do you compete in the VA world if you are not a t four contract holder? Well, with the government's prioritization of category management and contract consolidations, don't limit yourself to just a t four contract. Look at the multiple award schedule and other GWACs, government wide acquisition contracts that you might... Can onboard on, OASIS and and things like that. So don't just limit yourself to the t four. There are multiple avenues that you can take to get your foot in the door, so to speak. That's all I have, Kevin. Okay. I know we... We're running out here on the, end of our time. So I'll... If I didn't get to your question, I will receive these afterwards, and I can send you a message, try to answer as many questions as I can afterwards. But, Alex, I'll pass it back to you. Alright. Thank you, Tina and Kevin, very much. And before we officially conclude, just a quick reminder that you will get the on demand recording, and the slides from today's presentation, via email within twenty four hours. I've launched a very short survey. So, if you could just fill that out before you x out, that would be great. We'd love to hear feedback so we can, give you guys the most inform... Information filled content that we possibly can. And with that, thank you again for joining us. Please visit deltech.com for more upcoming Deltek events. Thank you.