[IP] F.B.I. Sees Delay in New Computer Network to Oversee Cases
Begin forwarded message:
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: June 26, 2004 6:07:40 AM EDT
To: johnmac's living room <johnmacsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Open Source Intelligence
Network <osint@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: F.B.I. Sees Delay in New Computer Network to Oversee Cases
(johnmac -- In the business world, folks get fired and either a new
team comes in or the project gets outsourced -- hmmm, Osama's guy seem
to have done a good networking job)
From the New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/politics/26FBI.final.html?th
F.B.I. Sees Delay in New Network to Oversee Cases
By JOHN SCHWARTZ and LOWELL BERGMAN
FBI officials said yesterday that they would not be able to fully
deploy a long-awaited computer system to manage the bureau's case files
before the end of the year as promised, and that they could not predict
when the entire system would be in place.
As a result, an important technological component of the
administration's domestic security effort remains in limbo.
The Virtual Case File system, which would allow agents to share
information easily a critical shortcoming of the present system is
already two years behind schedule and one bureau official who spoke on
condition of anonymity went so far as to suggest that the program might
ultimately have to be abandoned.
Other F.B.I. officials denied that the situation was that dire, but
they acknowledged that the program development was far slower than the
bureau had initially expected. In a statement released Friday in
response to inquiries from The New York Times, the bureau stated that
it "continues testing" the system to "work through some remaining
issues."
Officials said that instead of setting up a fully functional system by
the end of the year, they would begin with a version of Virtual Case
File that will have a small set of its planned functions in a small
number of sites, probably including F.B.I. headquarters.
"The program is too large and too complex and too huge to say, `On
Monday, you'll come in and you're going to have V.C.F. on your
desktop,' " said Zalmai Azmi, the chief information officer for the
F.B.I. "You can't do that with 28,000 users."
Only after the initial functions have been used reliably will its
capabilities and network be expanded, Mr. Azmi said. But he insisted
that the program was on track.
Mr. Azmi said that he did not have enough information to predict when
the deployment might be completed, and that it would depend on how
smoothly each stage went. The postponement represents a setback in
replacing an antiquated system with shortcomings that were highlighted
during investigations of the F.B.I.'s failure to detect the Sept. 11
plot.
In the aftermath of the hijackings, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I.
director, told a Senate panel that the bureau's computer system was so
limited that it could not search its files for combinations of terms
like "flight" and "schools," precisely the kind of combination that
might have helped to discern the patterns of activity leading up to the
attacks. Instead, Mr. Mueller said, the system could search for words
like "flight" and "school" only one at a time.
As late as May 20, Mr. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that
it was "my hope and expectation" that the new system would "be
completed by the end of this year."
But in an interview this week, a senior agency official questioned why
F.B.I. employees were now being trained in how to use the system if no
one knew when it would become operational. The official, who declined
to be identified because he was not authorized to comment publicly,
said he thought that the continued delays might lead the bureau to
re-evaluate the project.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has been critical of
the F.B.I.'s progress in developing new technologies and said yesterday
in an interview, "The fact that now the virtual file is not going to be
ready by December is a real disappointment."
"The virtual file is one of the best tools the F.B.I. would have in
fighting terrorism," Mr. Schumer said. "It's taking too long, they've
made many missteps in the past. They're beginning to recover, but this
is an example of how far they have to go."
According to a staff report from the bipartisan commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I.'s primary information
system, which was designed using 1980's technology, was "already
obsolete when installed in 1995." The commission report said that
"field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their
own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on."
In 2000 Congress approved the Trilogy project, of which Virtual Case
File is a part. Trilogy was conceived as a 36-month plan to improve the
bureau's computer networks, systems and software. The Sept. 11
commission staff reported that the technology consultant who was
brought in on the project by Louis J. Freeh, who was then the F.B.I.
director, had told them that "given the enormity of the task at hand,
his goal was merely to 'get the car out of the ditch.' "
Now, more than $500 million into the four-year-old project, the F.B.I.
has received new computers and access to e-mail and the Internet for
agents. Last month in Senate hearings, Senator Patrick J. Leahy,
Democrat of Vermont, held up that example of progress for ridicule.
"I've got a 6-year-old grandson who sends me e-mails," Mr. Leahy said.
"This is not something that we should really say is a great
accomplishment."
A National Research Council report released in May said that the F.B.I.
was "not on a path to success" with the program, though a follow-up
report released earlier this month said that the bureau had taken
important steps to fix the problems and had made progress, but that
"many important challenges remain."
Herbert S. Lin, an author of that report, said yesterday that the
F.B.I.'s more gradual approach to introducing the Virtual Case File
system was one of the most important recommendations of the report, and
that it is, ultimately, "unquestionably good news," since "we never
thought that this big-bang approach is the right way to do it."
Attorney General John Ashcroft argued before the Sept. 11 commission
that the previous administration was to blame for the technology
failings. "The F.B.I.'s information infrastructure had been starved,"
he said, "And by Sept. 11, it was collapsing from budgetary neglect."
But officials in government at the time speak of a technophobic bureau
that neglected its computer systems. Bruce McConnell, an information
technology official in the Office of Management and Budget during the
Clinton administration, said the problem had more to do with the
culture and expertise of the F.B.I. than with money. He said in an
interview yesterday that many F.B.I. agents, like other law enforcement
officers, "are by nature conservative, and are not often the early
adopters of new ways of doing things."
When agents rise through the bureau and become officials, Mr. McConnell
said, their mindset does not change. "We gave them what we believed
that they could spend wisely," he said, and also noted that Congress
could have appropriated more money if it had seen fit.
Mr. McConnell had praise, however, for Mr. Mueller, who, he said, "to
his credit, is spending a lot of time trying to figure out, 'how do I
get my hands around this problem?' " Technology conversions cause
headaches for the private and public sectors alike, he said.
The continued delays are nonetheless an embarrassment for Mr. Mueller,
who has made the technology upgrade a centerpiece of his efforts to
transform the F.B.I. into an organization that can fight modern
terrorists as well as it solves crimes. Even privacy advocates who
criticize the government for its efforts to cast a larger net for
personal data say the F.B.I. needs to upgrade its internal network so
it can make the best use of its own data.
"The F.B.I. needs systems like Trilogy in order to connect the dots,"
said Alan Davidson, associate director of the Center for Democracy and
Technology in Washington. "Why is Congress considering even greater
expansions in data collection, raising real privacy concerns, when the
F.B.I. is struggling to manage the data it lawfully collects today?"
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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