Obama gives veterans an open source commitment

Most analysts focused on the commitment to a single records system and his advance appropriation of VA funds. CNET's story on this did not mention open source.

But getting there won't be easy.

Defense uses an insurance system called TRICARE managed by a proprietary records system called AHLTA. The Veterans Administration is a single-payer health care system managed by an open source records system called VISTA.

The two agencies have been promising to unite their records for a decade, with work on a transfer system starting in 2004 and architectural work beginning just last year.

But ZDNet Healthcare reported in the summer of 2008 it appeared the military procurement system would win, and a proprietary contract might be signed that would sunset VISTA.

Then in September a Mother Jones report called AHLTA a $20 billion boondoggle, and momentum for implementation slowed through the election season and transition.

Now the push is on again, but this time the connections are based on the National Health Information Network, dubbed CONNECT, which is powered by open source software from Sun Microsystems.

As we reported early this week NHIN-CONNECT features the GlassFish open source application platform, the Java Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS) SOA Platform, and the Sun Java Identity Management suite.

What this means is that, at minimum, the Joint Virtual Lifetime Record now under development will be transferred in a network based on open source.

With the Defense Department itself now moving to support open source tools, even more is possible. But open source advocates will have to keep pressing their case, and will remain under heavy fire, until final decisions are made.