A report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector
General cites early “poor management decisions, inadequate
oversight, and a lack of sound IT investment practices,”
as factors that contributed to the Federal Bureau of
Investigations inability to get its virtual case file
system on its feet after three years and $170 million.
The IG report also concluded that this third component
of FBI’s Trident IT modernization project has suffered
from shifting priorities as the bureau has taken on more
of a counter-terrorism role.
The VCF system was intended to replace the legacy case
management application, called the “automated case
support system,” but now that effort could be scrapped
altogether and replaced with an off the shelf solution.
The FBI issued a statement in response to the report,
saying it has improved its “capacity to access, analyze,
and share data internally and externally,” since the IG
report was undertaken and that special agents and
intelligence analysts do “have access to necessary data
through existing systems as well as new capabilities,
including the Investigative Data Warehouse, for searching,
analyzing, and retrieving counterterrorism data.”
“In many ways, the pace of technological innovation has
overtaken our original vision for the VCF, and there are
now products to suit our purposes that did not exist when
Trilogy began,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III.
He added that the FBI’s new approach to IT management had
led to the development of an “intelligence information
reports dissemination system,” and an “information data
warehouse,” which increases FBI’s ability to link data
from multiple sources.
