Presented as a partial fulfilment of the requirements of the Management of information system class, summer 2010

1. Who
Killed
the
Virtual
Case
File?
Case analysis By:
Ahmed Coucha
Ahmed Madian
Kamel El-Sayed
Mohamed Shousha
MOIS , Summer 2010

2. Mission
Priorities
Employees
Budget

3. Gasoline and
diesel taxes case .
11/9 attacks.

4. Local and overseas Field
offices .
Long reporting chain .
Hands in many activities
using many forms .
Shift to paperless work

5. HQ in J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington D.C.
23 divisions (counter intelligence, criminal investigations…)
Each division had its own IT budget resulting in 40 – 50 different
DB
12,400 agents and 56 field offices

6. 51 legal attache offices across the globe
Field agent – Supervisor – Assistant special
agent – Special agent
Tons of paper work
100s of standard forms (FD-209, FD-302, FD-
472…)
Entry on ACS (Automated Case Support)

7. Integrate the
5 data base
The Trilogy
management
program systems used
• Purchasing modern
desktop computers
• Developing secure
Sep 2000 high-performance
Congress WAN and LAN
networks,
approved • Modernizing the
379.8M$ for 3 FBI's suite of
years to upgrade investigative
the FBI IT software
applications VCF)

8. Contract went to DynCorp (HW & NW) &
SAIC (SW)
Target completion by Mid 2004
11 Sep attack & the incompetence of the
FBI system
Lack of FBI blueprint (enterprise HW/SW
investment decisions guidance)
They had to characterize all their
processes & needs to SAIC

9. JAD sessions (Joint Application
Development)
JAD sessions for 6 months every 2
weeks
Followed by a 2 week feedback cycle
with no breaks.
Jan 2002 extra 78M$ were approved to
accelerate triology
The flash cutover

10. SAIC broke its team into 8 subs to accelerate the
process
Problems raised as costs escalated & schedules slipping
(lesson learnt: you can get 2 of 3 faster, cheaper, better)
SAIC wanted help in its security team

11. Patton criticized the 800 pages of
requirements as being too much
detailed instead of being high level
Message posting on the web
(InfoSec news) led to the
departure of Patton
December 2002, an extra 137.9M$
were approved bringing up the
cost to 581M$

12.  Dec 2003 VCF was delivered to FBI
 FBI rejected the delivery of the VCF(17
functional deficiencies- ranging from big to
small)
 SAIC was arguing that some are changes
requirements
 Arbitrator was called in
 Both parties are responsible stating 59 issues:
 19 changes problems
 40 SAIC errors

13. “ we have requirements
that are not in the final
product, yet we have
the capabilities in the
final product that we
don’t have
requirements for” AZMI FBI
CIO

15. FBI has no strong blueprint
“With no
detailed
description of
the FBI's
processes and
IT infrastructure
as a guideline
We began to
feel our way in
the dark”
Larry Depew

16. 400 from December 2002
to December 2003
Once they saw the product of the code we wrote,
then they would say, 'Oh, we've got to change this.
That isn't what I meant,'" said SAIC's Reynolds.
SAIC engineers were like a construction crew working
from a set of constantly changing blueprints.

17. Robert J. Chiaradio An accountant by
training and a former special agent
Larry Depew a special agent

18. Louis J. Freeh director
of FBI till 2001
Robert S. Muller III who
geared the project up

19. Robert J. In May 2002, Bob
Dies, the CIO who
Chiaradio had launched Trilogy,
Left left the bureau
Replaced by W. Mark Tanner, held the
position of acting CIO
Wilson Lowery for just three months,
Jr. for a year until July 2002.
Followed by Turning over his duties
Darwin John to Darwin John.

20. Requirements were continually added violating the
first rule of software planning: keep it simple.
"There was no discipline
to say enough is enough,"
Azmi FBI GIO.

21. "They were trying to design the system layout and then
the whole application logic before they had actually
even figured out what they wanted the system to do.“
Patton Mathew
"The culture within the FBI
was, 'We're going to tell you
how to do it.'“
Sherry Higgins

22. Patton also claimed that SAIC was
determined to write much of the VCF
from scratch.
"Every time you
write a line of code,
you introduce bugs,"
noted Patton.

23. which made it difficult
to adopt the system
until it was perfected.

24. The eight teams, working in parallel would later prove
too difficult for SAIC to combine into a single system.
The company had settled on a spiral development
methodology,
• SAIC programmers would write and compile a block of code than
show it to Depew's agents. The programmers tried to incorporate
the suggested changes
• SAIC engineers were like a construction crew working from a set
of constantly changing blueprints.

26. Abandoned the flash cut over idea
Contracted Bearingpoint to construct enterprise
architecture to guide the development of FBI’s IT
systems
Test-drive a pilot version of VCF's electronic workflow
(IOC);
• see how people reacted to the graphical user interface;
• create a way to translate the output from the VCF forms, into the ACS
system;
• check out network performance;
• and develop a training program.

27. "We harvested some of
the good work from the
past.
And now we're in a good
position to move on."

28. Sentinel, a four-phase, four-
year project
Planned to be up and running
in 2009

29. The contract was awarded in 2006 it was going to
cost a total $425 million and take six years to be full
complete and rolled out.
It is now at $451 million and is expected to rise to at
least $481 million and slip possibly several months if
not longer.
On March 2010 FBI Director decided to suspend work
on Sentinel to correct some "minor" technical issues
and make some design changes

30. Organizing is what you do before
you do something, so that when
you do it, it is not all mixed up