Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, returned from a recent visit to Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., alarmed that the Department of Veterans Affairs might have made a bad decision last June to replace its legacy electronic health record system, VistA, with the same commercial off-the-shelf system that the military is adopting, starting with Pacific Northwest bases.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis broke with tradition last month to impose a first-ever “universal retention policy” across the four service branches.