Committee chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) expressed disappointment at the hold-up and expressed his hope that the issue would be resolved swiftly.

"So now we have the Secretary and Undersecretary seeking compliance and they can't do so because of a class action lawsuit. That is a sad state of affairs," he said at the hearing Thursday.

Despite the delay in updating VA laptops, the agency plans to move ahead with a planned IT reorganization under which it will integrate all operations, maintenance and application development under a central IT organization reporting to the office of the CIO. As part of that transition, Nicholson said he had also issued a memorandum granting more direct enforcement authority to the CIO.