Following a briefing by U.S. Army officials, Senator Warner pledged to work to help correct many of the systemic mismanagement issues at Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery, including its failure to incorporate modern information technology.

Senator Warner requested the briefing in a June 11th letter to the Secretary of the U.S. Army John McHugh to learn more about the investigation into chronic problems at the cemetery.

Today, after conversations with the Secretary and other top brass in the U.S. Army, Senator Warner reached out and received offers of assistance from leaders of Northern Virginia’s technology community to begin addressing the lack of automation and computer backup of Arlington’s extensive paper records.

During a conference call with reporters, Senator Warner summarized his conversations:

The Daily Press of Newport News participated in the conference call:

The Virginia senator hopes to enlist sharp minds from the Northern Virginia Technology Council to advise cemetery officials on information technology — something that might immediately improve the cemetery's scandal-plagued records system, he said Thursday.

He would like the help to come free of charge. He characterized it as "a short-term patch" until more permanent solutions can be found for a system that still depends on paper trails, Warner said. ...

[Warner] credited Army Secretary John McHugh for making personnel moves designed to put the operation back on track. McHugh reprimanded the outgoing superintendent and appointed a new director to oversee cemetery operations.

But with a record system that still depends on index cards, Warner said the cemetery is "one spilled Starbucks coffee away " from spoiling or damaging another family's record.

He said the Army has spent at least $5.5 million since 2003 on digitizing records and automation, yet it appears no one was responsible for seeing that through.

Warner said an information-technology "tiger team" can go to work immediately. While he acknowledged there are legal issues to work through, "this should be able to be solved relatively easily," he said.

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IT problems at Arlington Cemetery
The Washington Post provides more details about the information technology challenges at Arlington National Cemetery.