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| The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't |
| 2006-08-21 |
| $170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System "In essence, the FBI has left the task of defining and identifying its essential operational processes and its IT concept of operations to outsiders," the NRC researchers concluded. "The FBI lacks experienced IT program managers and contract managers, which has made it unable to deal aggressively or effectively with its contractors." Daniel Guttman, a fellow at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in government contracting law, said: "This case just shows the government doesn't have a clue. Yet the legal fiction is that the government knows what it's doing and is capable of taking charge. The contractors are taking advantage of that legal fiction." Having wasted $170M on this, the FBI has a new $425M project to try again. "It's gonna be great this time. Really!" And the guy who didn't think to ask about the bug count until a few weeks before delivery is now the FBI's Chief Technology Officer. Sounds a bit like NASA. |
| Posted by: KBK |
| #13 Somebody gets fleeced by con-techies selling pie in sky? No, never |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-08-21 21:58 |
| #12 Their biggest mistake is a refusal to use off the shelf components. Their next mistake is not starting with a small scalable core and then add new features in a later release. They choose to go completely custom and implemented it as one 'big bang' release. It was doomed to failure from the start. For those playing at home, this is their second attempt and their second failure. Anyone want to place bets on attempt # 3. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2006-08-21 19:50 |
| #11 The problems with most large systems like this is that the people who have to use it don't get to say how it's designed, or what it's supposed to do. The military was especially bad about this. The brass has no idea what the worker-bees need, but demand to have a major role in developing it. Silly idea, but take a small PC, let the guy that needs to do the work design what kind of process he's going to use, multiply by 20 or 30, iron out the duplication and inconsistencies, develop an network protocol to tie these 20 or 30 together, and start building up. Believe it or not, it works. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2006-08-21 18:56 |
| #10 Shouldn't have gone with IBM. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-08-21 18:44 |
| #9 I'll do the entire thing for $100m and a pony! |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-08-21 18:21 |
| #8 3dc, Get the NSA system, but then have an FBI Unitary Control Keyhole/Information Technology-Upgrade Program made up of the lawyers. Give them an IT budget and have them develop and approve specifications for and prioritize the budgeted upgrade requests through the FUCK/IT-UP process. Require NSA to sign of on all FUCK/IT-UP modifications before they go into production code. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-08-21 17:41 |
| #7 I will say what I said before they started this last "DESTINED TO FAIL" FBI upgrade. IT WILL NOT AND CAN NOT WORK! The FBI is lawyer types.... not engineers. They should not be allowed to touch one line of the spec. Hollyweed could do better! They should just duplicate what the NSA has. Machine for machine. Program for program. Then let the NSA train people for their IT and run it for the first few years. DON'T LET THE |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-08-21 17:09 |
| #6 we decided a simple wiki could serve as the starting point for their case file system It's true that the FBI is particularly behind the technology curve. It's not obvious to me, however, that they can bootstrap from wikis or any such thing. The legal requirements on them to trace source and provenance of information and evidence are substantial and quite rigid. That's one reason they didn't automate some things more quickly -- the belief (at least partially justified) that they could not afford to wing things. |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-08-21 16:46 |
| #5 Wonder how much the Army has developed in Iraq could be transfered to the functions of the FBI? If its 80%, it a sale. Keep the kiddies figures out of the gold plating business. |
| Posted by: Phunter Ulalet1168 2006-08-21 16:25 |
| #4 Sounds simple, doesn't it? One problem with large systems like this is feature creep. They may start small, but eventually they accumulate more requirements from more stakeholders and eventually collapse under their own gravitational fields. I saw this happen at EDS once, where a work group LAN for a half-dozen engineers grew into a plan to wire up 3 floors of the building before a higher-up canned the project as to expensive. As someone ( Brooks in The Mythical Man/Month?) once said, all large functioning systems have grown from smaller functioning systems. We discussed this project here at the 'Burg in one of its previous failure cycles. At the time, IIRC, we decided a simple wiki could serve as the starting point for their case file system. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2006-08-21 16:10 |
| #3 The FBI lacks experienced IT program managers and contract managers, which has made it unable to deal aggressively or effectively with its contractors. Well then fucking hire some. Geez, do I have to think of everything around here?!?! |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-08-21 15:33 |
| #2 The G-men overpaid. Ida only charged them $150M for an unusable computer system. |
| Posted by: GORT 2006-08-21 15:26 |
| #1 Didn't they essentially bypass this problem by shifting the important work to the National Counterterrorism Center? The traditional way to fix these dysfunctional bureaucracies is to start a new one and leave the old one alone. |
| Posted by: jaded in DC 2006-08-21 14:40 |