The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s $537 million IT upgrade
— dubbed Trilogy — was successful in providing an updated
infrastructure and systems, but did not succeed in upgrading
the agency’s investigative applications and was plagued with
missed milestones and escalating costs, the Government
Accountability Office has said.
It said the FBI’s review and approval process for contractor
invoices — including a review role for the General Services
Administration as contracting agency — failed to adequately
verify that billed goods and services were received or
appropriately billed.
Through data mining, document analysis, and other forensic
auditing techniques, GAO said it identified $10.1 million in
questionable contractor costs.
The costs included first-class travel and other excessive
airfare costs, incorrect charges for overtime hours, potentially
overcharged labor rates, and charges that contractors could not
support with documentation, according to GAO-06-306.
It said FBI also failed to establish controls to maintain
accountability over equipment purchased for the project,
resulting in some 1,200 missing pieces of equipment valued at
about $7.6 million.
Further, the agency identified 37 pieces of Trilogy equipment
valued at about $167,000 that had been lost or stolen, according
to the report.
