Upgrade ordered after 9/11 attacks
By Cam Simpson, The Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- After decades of having agents rely on dictation, typing pools and mountains of paperwork, Dec. 13 was to be a historic day at the FBI.
A new computer system was scheduled to come online Saturday, finally allowing more than 11,000 agents to easily access case files and “connect the dots” from their desks--an effort at the heart of the FBI’s struggle to rebuild itself to prevent another terrorist attack.
The new system is already months behind schedule and more than $200 million over budget, and its backbone component will not be ready this week, senior FBI officials acknowledged Tuesday. One senior FBI official said it might not be launched until the middle of 2004. Another FBI official said there would be additional cost overruns, which are expected to total up to $30 million.
That would bring the price tag for the overall system, known as Trilogy, to $626 million. The original cost was $380 million.
“It’s our responsibility in the bureau to get this done, and no one is more disappointed than [FBI Director Robert Mueller] about missing this date,” said one senior FBI official. “It was a huge disappointment.”
The General Services Administration, the federal government’s procurement arm, quietly announced the newest delays last month but didn’t mention the latest cost overruns or say when the system would come online. A GSA statement said that a private contractor on the project, Computer Sciences Corp., “failed to meet a critical delivery date.”
“It is very clear that they missed the schedule, but we just want to get the job done,” the senior FBI official said Tuesday.
Regardless of who may be at fault, the latest setbacks could anger already skeptical members of Congress who have poured hundreds of millions of additional dollars into Trilogy while expressing doubts about its ability to work and the FBI’s ability to retool itself. It also could be a setback for Mueller.
Although the FBI’s technology woes started long before Mueller took over the agency just one week before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mueller told Congress this year that he accepted personal responsibility for cost overruns and other problems related to Trilogy.
He has said that transforming the bureau’s notoriously antiquated technology is the crucial step in reinventing the FBI and preventing a repeat of Sept. 11. And senior FBI officials have been promising for months that they would meet Saturday’s deadline.
Some of those same officials emphasized Tuesday that agents could still “connect the dots” between separate but related bits of intelligence by requesting information from a small group of key officials who currently have access to an updated database. But that is a far cry from the systemwide access FBI officials promised to deliver by Saturday.
They also said that despite the latest cost overruns and additional delays, the bureau has made huge strides.
For decades, the FBI has collected information from wiretaps, interrogations, seized documents and other methods in paper files that have been difficult for agents and analysts to access.
Some critics suggested these problems contributed to the government’s inability to detect the Sept. 11 attacks.
Couldn’t e-mail photos
The system was so bad that after the suicide hijackers struck, the FBI had to distribute photographs of the suspects to its agents around the world via an overnight delivery service, because it didn’t have the technology to electronically scan and e-mail photos. At the time, many agents were still using computers driven by “386" processors, which were introduced in the mid-1980s and eclipsed by technology available to consumers by 1993.
Before Mueller’s arrival, the bureau was trying to merely upgrade its antiquated systems. But Mueller decided to scrap them and start almost from scratch. The first step, completed earlier this year, was the delivery of 22,000 new computers to FBI agents, analysts and support workers around the world.
The second step also was completed this year--connecting the computers through secure networks.
The final and crucial piece of Trilogy is known as the “virtual case file,” a software package designed to give FBI agents at 62 locations “point-and-click” access to electronic, instead of paper, files. It will also give them varying levels of access to a new terrorism database containing more than 40 million pages of documents, including records seized overseas and files dating to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Mueller has called the virtual case file software the backbone of the Trilogy system. It was that system that was supposed to be running on the new computers this Saturday but will now be delayed until well into 2004.
FBI officials and Mary Alice Johnson, a spokeswoman for the GSA, said the newest problems came because Computer Sciences Corp., the private contractor, failed to complete a major intermediate step that had to be accomplished before agents could start running the software.
New servers key
The intermediate step, scheduled for completion Oct. 31, required the contractor to convert FBI e-mail, file and printer systems onto new servers for all personnel, according to Johnson.
A written statement from the company did not address what was at the root of the problems but said the company “and the FBI are taking positive steps to address the causes of program delays, and meetings are ongoing.”
James Sullivan, a spokesman for the company, refused to comment beyond the statement.
FBI officials said Tuesday that they were close to concluding negotiations on what they described as a “contract modification” necessary to get the job done. Although it noted several positive steps under Mueller, an audit released a year ago by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine found key lapses in the FBI’s management of Trilogy as well as a history of ignoring crucial technology management needs.
Long before the most recent troubles, Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) called Trilogy a “large disaster,” adding that it amounted to “gold-plated” contracts for the private sector with a price tag and schedule that were spiraling out of control.