New FBI Computer System Exceeds Costs

[Judi Lynn]

New FBI Computer System Exceeds Costs
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Wednesday, February 22, 2006
(02-22) 02:00 PST WASHINGTON, (AP) --

The FBI's latest attempt to modernize its computers is running behind schedule and its budget already has exceeded the cost of the last failed effort.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and other officials have refused to disclose the anticipated cost of the Sentinel program, which won't be fully in place until 2009. But the FBI has set aside $97 million for it this year and is asking for an additional $100 million in the government spending year that begins Oct. 1.

Last year, Mueller scrapped the Virtual Case File, Sentinel's $170 million predecessor, after consultants pronounced it obsolete and riddled with problems. It had been billed as the final piece of the FBI's computer upgrade, an instantaneous and paperless way for agents and analysts to manage all types of investigations.

The computer overhaul became a priority after the Sept. 11 attacks. Members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission said modern computers were critical to enabling the FBI and intelligence agencies to "connect the dots" in preventing attacks.
(snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/22/national/w020001S55.DTL

[Missy M]

1. The amount of government waste of taxpayer dollars is astounding!

Who were the consultants that deemed the current system obsolete. Were they Lockheed Martin and Nortrop Grumman?

[seemunkee]

2. I can build a non-functioning application for a lot less

SAIC are a bunch of pirates.

[0007]

3. The pirates will always be here with us. But the suckers are the

leaders of this country with our money and they got to go.

[bemildred]

4. The government has not the foggiest idea how to do software.

And proves that so every time it tries.

[kineneb]

5. they needed a bunch of geeks

to set up a Beowulf cluster from scrap parts, running Linux...would be faster and cheaper...bet someone is on the take again...

[Xithras]

6. Beowulf wouldn't have worked.

Beowulf is good in certain environments, mostly where you need to do one thing well, but it doesn't have the capability to replace modern big iron where hundreds or thousands of big jobs may need to be run simultaneously.

As for someone being on the take: Big government contracts like this one are 100% politically driven. You have to be pre-approved to even BID on these types of projects, and there tends to be heavy involvement from government officials as they try to get the contracts awarded to companies from their districts under the guise of "bringing jobs home". My ex-boss was a program manager at Lockheed on projects like this one, and the tales he told us about the outright corruption and incompetence were astounding. It was a common occurrence for programs and systems to be installed using outdated technology simply because it was cheaper and increased their profits. On one job just a few years ago, he was telling us about a decision that was made to write an entirely new application in COBOL. When he pointed out that more "modern" languages like C++ would be more maintainable and better performing...and that the spec CALLED for the app to be written in C++, he was shoo'd and told that they HAD the Cobol programmers on staff already, so the app would be written in Cobol. The high-muckety mucks in the government weren't going to get involved in a spat over what language it was written in, so they ignored the change. The resulting application was bloated, slow, and obsolete before they even handed it over.

[MountainLaurel]

7. New?

Isn't this the one that's been in the works for the past 7 or 8 years now?