F.B.I. Ends a Faltering Effort to Overhaul Computer Software

[paineinthearse]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/09/politics/09fbi.html

March 9, 2005
F.B.I. Ends a Faltering Effort to Overhaul Computer Software
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, March 8 - The Federal Bureau of Investigation declared an official end Tuesday to its floundering $170 million effort to overhaul its computer software and said it would take at least three and a half years to develop a new system. The F.B.I. had been signaling for months that the Virtual Case File system, a software project considered critical in helping agents investigate terrorism, was on the verge of collapse. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., delivered the official death notice in testimony Tuesday.

"I am tremendously disappointed that we did not come through with Virtual Case File," Mr. Mueller said before a panel of the House Appropriations Committee. "But by the same token, I see this as an opportunity," he said, because the F.B.I. now hopes to develop a more modern, flexible system - largely using off-the-shelf software - to allow investigators to search case files and databases more easily.

Mr. Mueller took personal responsibility for the collapse of the project, which was riddled with technical, management and scheduling problems that made it outdated even before it was completed. "Our ability to handle a project like that was not what I thought it was," he said. "It's my fault for not having put the appropriate persons in position to review that contract and assure that it was on track."

The Virtual Case File project was to have been the third and last phase of a $581 million effort to overhaul the antiquated computer systems. The project's failure has frustrated many members of Congress after years of substantial investments, and Representative Frank R. Wolf of Virginia, the Republican leader of the appropriations panel that oversees F.B.I. financing, announced Monday that his staff was opening a formal investigation into why the project failed. At Tuesday's hearing, Mr. Wolf sought assurances that the F.B.I. would put the best people on the latest incarnation of the project and that the new effort would be "absolutely and completely sound, that it'll be successful" before Congress invests still more money.

more.......

[msongs]

1. get DIEBOLD and Sequoia voting systems to do the new one.......

bush owes them BIG TIME!

Msongs
www.msongs.com/liberaltshirts.htm

[Toucano]

2. Is this CYA for the next attack?

"Well if only we had better computers! We would have seen it coming."

[ixion]

3. so, 581 million later, they decide they can go with something

off the shelf.

Which they should have done in the first place, rather than to pay a bunch of hacks to try and craft that together.

581 million... more than half a billion.

"Ah, my bad", says Mueller. End of story.

Must be nice to not have to worry about the repercussions of wasting taxpayer money. :grr:

[July]

5. But "we're safer," right?

Unbelievable.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. Who received a half a billion for this failure?

Where'd all that money go? Were there subcontractors involved? Who are they?:shrug:

(I ask because I'm sure whomever it was, they're probably tied to this admin in other ways)

[hootinholler]

6. I *think* it went to EDS

As the primary, you can be sure there were many subs providing programmers. This is the result you can expect when a project looks at holding a degree before looking at the capabilities of a candidate.

As a SW engineer in the DC market looking for work, this is bad news for me if they lay off the people working on the project.

-Hoot

[GregW]

7. I want to know who the SI was ...

So they can never be awarded a gov'mint contract again.

I want to know who the PMs were on the project, so they can be fired.

I work in IT where we regularly work on 7 and 8-figure projects. If this happened to one of us, we would be out on the street before you could say, "How many offshore developers were on the project".