Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS <SUBJECT>Privacy Act of 1974; System of Records</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of a modified system of records. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> Pursuant to the Privacy Act of 1974, notice is hereby given that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is modifying the system of records entitled, “Caregiver Support Program—Caregiver Record Management Application (CARMA)-VA” (197VA10). This system is used to administer, monitor and track services delivered through VA's Caregiver Support Program including documentation of calls to the Caregiver Support Line. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments on this modified system of records must be received no later than 30 days after date of publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . If no public comment is received during the period allowed for comment or unless otherwise published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> by VA, the modified system of records will become effective a minimum of 30 days after date of publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . If VA receives public comments, VA shall review the comments to determine whether any changes to the notice are necessary. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments may be submitted through <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov</E> or mailed to VA Privacy Service, 810 Vermont Avenue NW, (005X6F), Washington, DC 20420. Comments should indicate that they are submitted in response to “Caregiver Support Program-Caregiver Record Management Application (CARMA)-VA” (197VA10). Comments received will be available at <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov</E> for public viewing, inspection or copies. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Stephania Griffin, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) Chief Privacy Officer, Department of Veterans Affairs, 810 Vermont Avenue NW, (105HIG) Washington, DC 20420, <E T="03">stephania.griffin@va.gov,</E> telephone (704) 245-2492 (Note: This is not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> VA is modifying this system of records to identify changes that will more accurately describe the records maintained in the system. Modifications have been made to the following titled sections: System Manager; Purposes of the System; Categories of Records in the System; Record Source Categories; Routine Uses of Records Maintained in the System; Policies and Practices for Retrievability of Records; Policies and Practices for Retention and Disposal of Records; Physical, Procedural, and Administrative Safeguards; Record Access Procedure; Contesting Record Procedure; and Notification Procedure. VA is republishing the system notice in its entirety. The System Manager is being updated to replace Deputy Chief Officer, Patient Care Services Office (10P4C), with Colleen M. Richardson, Psy.D, Executive Director, Caregiver Support Program (12CSP). The Purpose of the System is being modified to include the explanation that this system may also be used for improving health care operations, such as producing various management and patient follow-up reports; program monitoring for epidemiological research and other health care related or program impact studies; statistical analysis, resource allocation, and planning and process improvement; providing clinical and administrative support to patient medical care and services; determining entitlement and eligibility benefits; processing and adjudicating benefit claims; and general program oversight activities. The Categories of Records in the System section has additional language regarding VA Form 10-305, “Your Rights to Seek Further Review of Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC) Decisions.” The Record Source Categories section has been expanded to include the Board of Veterans' Appeals and other VA staff offices. The section for Routine Uses of Records Maintained in the System for this VA system of records notice has been amended. Standardized Routine Uses #16 through #18 have been added to this system of records notice. The following standard routine use is added and will be Routine Use #16, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC): To the EEOC in connection with investigations of alleged or possible discriminatory practices, examination of Federal affirmative employment programs, or other functions of the Commission as authorized by law. The following standard routine use is added and will be Routine Use #17, Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA): To the FLRA in connection with the investigation and resolution of allegations of unfair labor practices, the resolution of exceptions to arbitration awards when a question of material fact is raised, matters before the Federal Service Impasses Panel, and the investigation of representation petitions and the conduct or supervision of representation elections. The following standard routine use is added and will be Routine Use #18, Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB): To the MSPB in connection with appeals, special studies of the civil service and other merit systems, review of rules and regulations, investigation of alleged or possible prohibited personnel practices, and such other functions promulgated in 5 U.S.C. 1205 and 1206, or as authorized by law. Routine Use #19 is added to promulgate the use of information for VA research which states, Researchers, for Research: To epidemiological and other research facilities approved by the Under Secretary for Health for research purposes determined to be necessary and proper, provided that the names and addresses of Veterans, their dependents and caregivers will not be disclosed unless those names and addresses are first provided to VA by the facilities making the request. The Policies and Practices for Retrievability of Records section is being modified to exclude the Social Security number as an identifier to retrieve records on an individual. The Policies and Practices for Retention and Disposal of Records is being modified to state that CARMA records are disposed of in accordance with the schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States, VHA Records Control Schedule (RCS) 10-1, Item Number 7900, Temporary; Destroy 75 years after enrollment. Physical, Procedural, and Administrative Safeguards has been amended to include Amazon Web Services as a procedural safeguard for sensitive information. The Record Access Procedure, Contesting Record Procedure and Notification Procedure have been modified to reflect standard language across VA systems of records. The Report of Intent to Modify a System of Records Notice and an advance copy of the system notice have been sent to the appropriate Congressional committees and to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as required by 5 U.S.C. 552a(r) (Privacy Act) and guidelines issued by OMB (65 FR 77677), December 12, 2000. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Signing Authority</HD> The Senior Agency Official for Privacy, or designee, approved this document and authorized the undersigned to sign and submit the document to the Office of the Federal Register for publication electronically as an official document of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Kurt D. DelBene, Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and Chief Information Officer, approved this document on December 18, 2023 for publication. <SIG> <DATED>Dated: January 29, 2024.</DATED> <NAME>Amy L. Rose,</NAME> Government Information Specialist, VA Privacy Service, Office of Compliance, Risk and Remediation, Office of Information and Technology, Department of Veterans Affairs. </SIG> <HD SOURCE="HD2">SYSTEM NAME AND NUMBER:</HD> “Caregiver Support Program—Caregiver Record Management Application (CARMA)-VA” (197VA10) <HD SOURCE="HD2">SECURITY CLASSIFICATION:</HD> Unclassified. <HD SOURCE="HD2">SYSTEM LOCATION:</HD> The Caregiver Record Management Application (CARMA) system is hosted in the Salesforce Gov Cloud. The Salesforce's corporate address is 1 Market Street #300, San Francisco, CA 94105. <HD SOURCE="HD2">SYSTEM MANAGER(S):</HD> Official responsible for policies and procedures: Colleen M. Richardson, Psy.D, Executive Director, Caregiver Support Program (12CSP), 810 Vermont Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20420, <E T="03">colleen.richardson2@va.gov,</E> telephone number (202) 461-1635 (Note: This is not a toll-free number). <HD SOURCE="HD2">AUTHORITY FOR MAINTENANCE OF THE SYSTEM:</HD> Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010, Public Law 111-163; 38 CFR 71.40; and 31 U.S.C. 3321. <HD SOURCE="HD2">PURPOSE(S) OF THE SYSTEM:</HD> Records in this system of records are used to administer, monitor and track the services and benefits, sought and delivered through VA's Caregiver Support Program, including the documentation of telephone calls to the Caregiver Support Line. The system and data contained therein is used to fully support the Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers (PCAFC) and allows for data assessment and comprehensive monitoring. The CARMA workflow management system is being used for Social Security number matching and other data field requirements. In addition, information in this system of records is used to respond to Congressional and/or internal and external stakeholders on the performance of the VA Caregiver Support Program. This system may also be used for the purpose of improving health care operations such as producing various management and patient follow-up reports; program monitoring for epidemiological research and other health care related or program impact studies; statistical analysis, resource allocation, and planning and process improvement; providing clinical and administrative suppor ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 25k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━