Prerequisites for Access Requests
Last Updated: November 18, 2025
This page outlines the prerequisites necessary for submitting access requests, ensuring that these prerequisites are met helps streamline the approval process and enhances security. Below, you’ll find information on the required documentation and eligibility criteria that must be obtained before access to specific tools, systems, apps, and data can be granted. All items on this page have been alphabetized for ease of reference.
Note: When submitting an access request, you must have a VA email before submitting the request. If there is no VA email, the ticket will be closed. (Some access requires E-Qip or other proof of a favorable adjudication.)
Atlas/Vets.gov-write
Atlas is a comprehensive database designed to store and manage information about employees and their teams within multiple organizations.
Vets.gov-write is a VA GitHub Org team that's the primary source of being able to read and write the repos.
Prerequisites:
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
Team must exist in Atlas
Learn how to get added to Atlas and Vets.gov-write
Note: Access for vets.gov-write and Sidekiq expires every 90 days. To avoid losing your access, we recommend that you:
Set a reminder for yourself a week out before the expiration date
Our team reached out 72 hours prior to access expiration, please make sure you reply to this message and confirm you want to maintain access or you will lose it and our proactive ticket will be closed
Ensure you have GitHub email notifications on so that you are notified when our team reaches out to you about your expiration
This will both ensure that you maintain access to your tools to keep you working efficiently and will avoid unnecessary tickets to our team asking for us to restore access again. More information on requesting access to tools generally
AWS
Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services and tools designed to support software development.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
E-QIP Transmittal
Learn how to request access to AWS
DataDog
DataDog is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform designed to provide visibility into the performance, security, and health of the infrastructure, applications, and logs.
Prerequisites:
PIV Card and/or a temporary PIV exemption
If DevOps an Okta account is required
Learn how to request access to DataDog
Flipper
Flipper is a feature toggle management tool that can be used in both vets-api and vets-website. Use feature toggles to test out new functionality (applications, features, VA.gov content pages, Metalsmith) in the development, staging, or production environments for a set of users.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
E-QIP Transmittal
Learn how to request access to Flipper
Office of CTO@VA
Slack is a cloud-based collaboration and communication platform designed to help teams work more effectively and efficiently.
Prerequisites:
A favorable adjudication is required before access will be granted
Learn how to get added to the Office of CTO@VA
PagerDuty
PagerDuty is an incident management and response platform that enables users to respond to critical incidents effectively. This is also a Office of CTO@VA Slack integration.
Learn how to request access to PagerDuty
Sentry
Sentry is use to track errors in code running VA.gov applications. Sentry allows teams to discover, triage, and prioritize errors in real-time, reducing overall Platform errors.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
E-QIP Transmittal
Learn how to request access to Sentry
Sidekiq
Sidekiq is a framework for managing, processing, and monitoring background jobs via Redis.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
E-QIP Transmittal (Production only)
Learn how to request access to Sidekiq
Note: Access for vets.gov-write and Sidekiq expires every 90 days. To avoid losing your access, we recommend that you:
Set a reminders for yourself a week out before the expiration date
Our team reaches out 72 hours prior to access expiration, please make sure you reply to this message and confirm you want to maintain access or you will lose it and our proactive ticket will be closed
Ensure you have GitHub email notifications on so that you are notified when our team reaches out to you about your expiration
This will both ensure that you maintain access to your tools to keep you working efficiently and will avoid unnecessary tickets to our team asking for us to restore access again.
TestRail
TestRail is a test management tool that helps software development teams organize, track, and manage their testing efforts.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
Limited number of licenses, access may be postponed due to license availability
Learn how to request access to TestRail
VA GitHub Organization
Public resources for building on and in support of VA.gov.
Prerequisites:
A favorable adjudication is required before access will be granted
A VA.gov email address.
Learn how to get added to the VA GitHub Organization
Vets-API/ArgoCD
Vets API is a wrapper around VA data services with utilities and tools that support interaction with those services on behalf of a Veteran.
ArgoCD provides a UI for developers to see the application and manages the deployment by checking the desired state against the deployed state.
Prerequisites:
Needs to be in Atlas and/or on a Platform team roster
Part of the VA GitHub Organization
E-QIP Transmittal
Learn how to request access to Vets-API and ArgoCD
Help and feedback
Get help from the Platform Support Team in Slack.
Submit a feature idea to the Platform.