VA's Peter Levin Pursues 'Art of the Possible' in IT Innovation

As chief technology officer of the Veterans Affairs Department, Dr. Peter Levin isn't tasked with making sure that routers are maintained or seeing that the network stays up. Far from it. You could say he's more of a technology conceptualist. Rather than "chief technology officer"--a position at VA to which he was appointed in 2009--he might have been more appropriately titled "chief innovation officer."...

Levin says his aim is to "encourage the culture" at VA to "recognize that it's much better to have tried something silly and know not what to do than to stay in the rut you're in, knowing that you're never going to succeed on the trajectory that you're on,."

"In government, frankly, there's a premium in saying 'no' because if you say 'no,' nobody can hold you accountable for having made a mistake. I'm trying to find the 'yeah sayers,' the ones who say 'I have no idea either but I know how to run an experiment.'" Levin's approach to innovation also encompasses a strategy to keep programs and projects manageable...