from IEEE -- The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't--$170 Million Boughtan Unusable Computer System

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: SAMUEL CHESSMAN <Samuel.S.Chessman () slma com>
Date: August 19, 2006 5:32:41 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Wash Post: The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't--$170  
Million Boughtan Unusable Computer System

See http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/18/132233.

Story's not new
(Score:5, Interesting)
by orac2 (88688) Alter Relationship on Friday August 18, @10:50AM
(#15934614)
I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum. Spectrum laid out out this story in
September '05 [ieee.org]. (I submitted a link to Slashdot at the time,
but the editors in their Infinite Wisdom rejected it). Despite our story
being prominently featured in google, wikipedia, winning awards, etc,
and using similar sources, and so on, the Washington Post didn't
acknowledge any of Spectrum's reporting, which has prompted Spectrum's
Editor-in-Chief to complain to the Washington's Post's Ombusdman
thusly:

Dear Ms. Howell,

We were startled to see that the article "The FBI Upgrade that Wasn't"
by
Eggen and Witte in today's Washington Post is taken directly from an
article
we did in September 2005 called "Who Killed the Virtual Case File," by
Harry
Goldstein (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455). His article has
won 5
major magazine awards. Neither Harry or Spectrum gets credit or
attribution
in the Washington Post piece.

Your writers reinterviewed all our sources, including Matthew Patton,
whose
only press interview until your story today was in the Spectrum
article.
They filed the same FOIA, etc.

Is this plagiarism? Not exactly. Is it shoddy, lazy journalism? You
bet.

Sincerely yours,

Susan Hassler

> > > David Farber <dave () farber net> 08/19/06 10:45 AM >>>


Begin forwarded message:

From: Steve Goldstein <steve.goldstein () cox net>
Date: August 18, 2006 11:49:46 AM EDT
To: "David Farber [IP]" <dave () farber net>
Subject: Wash Post: The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't--$170 Million
Bought an Unusable Computer System

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/
AR2006081701485.html


The FBI's Upgrade That Wasn't
$170 Million Bought an Unusable Computer System
By Dan Eggen and Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 18, 2006; A01

As far as Zalmai Azmi was concerned, the FBI's technological
revolution was only weeks away.
It was late 2003, and a contractor, Science Applications
International Corp. (SAIC), had spent months writing 730,000 lines of

computer code for the Virtual Case File (VCF), a networked system for

tracking criminal cases that was designed to replace the bureau's
antiquated paper files and, finally, shove J. Edgar Hoover's FBI into

the 21st century.
It appeared to work beautifully. Until Azmi, now the FBI's technology

chief, asked about the error rate.
Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds, Azmi
recalled in an interview. The problems were multiplying as engineers
continued to run tests. Scores of basic functions had yet to be
analyzed.
"A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs," Azmi said. "You're
making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors."
Within a few days, Azmi said, he warned FBI Director Robert S.
Mueller III that the $170 million system was in serious trouble. A
year later, it was dead. The nation's premier law enforcement and
counterterrorism agency, burdened with one of the government's most
archaic computer systems, would have to start from scratch.
The collapse of the attempt to remake the FBI's filing system stemmed

from failures of almost every kind, including poor conception and
muddled execution of the steps needed to make the system work,
according to outside reviews and interviews with people involved in
the project.
But the problems were not the FBI's alone. Because of an open-ended
contract with few safeguards, SAIC reaped more than $100 million as
the project became bigger and more complicated, even though its
software never worked properly. The company continued to meet the
bureau's requests, accepting payments despite clear signs that the
FBI's approach to the project was badly flawed, according to people
who were involved in the project or later reviewed it for the
government.
Lawmakers and experts have faulted the FBI for its part in the failed

project. But less attention has been paid to the role that the
contractor played in contributing to the problems. A previously
unreleased audit -- completed in 2005 and obtained by The Washington
Post -- found that the system delivered by SAIC was so incomplete and

unusable that it left the FBI with little choice but to scuttle the
effort altogether.
David Kay, a former SAIC senior vice president who did not work on
the program but closely watched its development, said the company
knew the FBI's plans were going awry but did not insist on changes
because the bureau continued to pay the bills as the work piled up.
"SAIC was at fault because of the usual contractor reluctance to tell

the customer, 'You're screwed up. You don't know what you're doing.
This project is going to fail because you're not managing your side
of the equation,' " said Kay, who later became the chief U.S. weapons

inspector in Iraq. "There was no one to tell the government that they

were asking the impossible. And they weren't going to get the
impossible."
Mueller's inability to successfully implement VCF marks one of the
low points of his nearly five-year tenure as FBI director, and he has

accepted some of the blame. "I did not do the things I should have
done to make sure that was a success," he told reporters last month.

<snip>

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