Wash Post: The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't--$170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein () cox net>
Date: August 18, 2006 11:49:46 AM EDT
To: "David Farber [IP]" <dave () farber net>
Subject: Wash Post: The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't--$170 Million  
Bought an Unusable Computer System

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/ 
AR2006081701485.html


The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't
$170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System
By Dan Eggen and Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 18, 2006; A01

As far as Zalmai Azmi was concerned, the FBI's technological  
revolution was only weeks away.
It was late 2003, and a contractor, Science Applications  
International Corp. (SAIC), had spent months writing 730,000 lines of  
computer code for the Virtual Case File (VCF), a networked system for  
tracking criminal cases that was designed to replace the bureau's  
antiquated paper files and, finally, shove J. Edgar Hoover's FBI into  
the 21st century.
It appeared to work beautifully. Until Azmi, now the FBI's technology  
chief, asked about the error rate.
Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds, Azmi  
recalled in an interview. The problems were multiplying as engineers  
continued to run tests. Scores of basic functions had yet to be  
analyzed.
"A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs," Azmi said. "You're  
making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors."
Within a few days, Azmi said, he warned FBI Director Robert S.  
Mueller III that the $170 million system was in serious trouble. A  
year later, it was dead. The nation's premier law enforcement and  
counterterrorism agency, burdened with one of the government's most  
archaic computer systems, would have to start from scratch.
The collapse of the attempt to remake the FBI's filing system stemmed  
from failures of almost every kind, including poor conception and  
muddled execution of the steps needed to make the system work,  
according to outside reviews and interviews with people involved in  
the project.
But the problems were not the FBI's alone. Because of an open-ended  
contract with few safeguards, SAIC reaped more than $100 million as  
the project became bigger and more complicated, even though its  
software never worked properly. The company continued to meet the  
bureau's requests, accepting payments despite clear signs that the  
FBI's approach to the project was badly flawed, according to people  
who were involved in the project or later reviewed it for the  
government.
Lawmakers and experts have faulted the FBI for its part in the failed  
project. But less attention has been paid to the role that the  
contractor played in contributing to the problems. A previously  
unreleased audit -- completed in 2005 and obtained by The Washington  
Post -- found that the system delivered by SAIC was so incomplete and  
unusable that it left the FBI with little choice but to scuttle the  
effort altogether.
David Kay, a former SAIC senior vice president who did not work on  
the program but closely watched its development, said the company  
knew the FBI's plans were going awry but did not insist on changes  
because the bureau continued to pay the bills as the work piled up.
"SAIC was at fault because of the usual contractor reluctance to tell  
the customer, 'You're screwed up. You don't know what you're doing.  
This project is going to fail because you're not managing your side  
of the equation,' " said Kay, who later became the chief U.S. weapons  
inspector in Iraq. "There was no one to tell the government that they  
were asking the impossible. And they weren't going to get the  
impossible."
Mueller's inability to successfully implement VCF marks one of the  
low points of his nearly five-year tenure as FBI director, and he has  
accepted some of the blame. "I did not do the things I should have  
done to make sure that was a success," he told reporters last month.

<snip>

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