Veterans News

The Department of Veteran Affairs in the U.S. is planning to do the trials of facial recognition tools at VA hospitals in 2024. The plan is to implement face biometrics and replace personal identity verification cards for authenticating healthcare workers and other VA clinical settings.

Approximately 95% of the VA workforce uses Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards to access the VA network. However, employees providing direct care to veterans face challenges with this system, as they need to manually remove and insert their PIV card into their workstation for identity verification, which can be cumbersome during tasks like administering shots or exams.

Moreover, it may not be feasible for workers to get to their workstations to verify their identity if the patient is experiencing a mental or physical health crisis. It will benefit both workers and patients.

The pilots are mainly efforts to modernize access management across VA and improve cybersecurity standards over the next three to five years.

VA Deputy Chief Carrie Lee said, “We’re looking at our single sign-on experiences for both internal and external users, making sure that we are using multifactor [authentication], and making it compliant, making it an easy experience for the users”.

The VA is shifting to Login.gov and moving away from traditional username and password authentication to enhance cybersecurity standards. At present, about 30,000 VA employees still access the network using only usernames and passwords.

Some of its systems are also being shifted to a continuous authority to operate.