...Juan Gomez Project Management The FBI’s Virtual Case File Project Failure Back in the years between 2001 and 2005, the FBI had started a project called the Virtual Case File. This was part of a larger initiative called Trilogy which was supposed to contain three parts to it: One was to upgrade software and hardware for FBI agents. Another was to be able to upgrade the FBI’s communications network. And the third in which it contained the Virtual Case File, was to significantly upgrade the FBI’s case management system “to enable better access to, and sharing of, case-related information across the FBI.”(WordPress) The first two parts were able to be completed but the Virtual Case File project was faced with high costs and schedule overruns and thus never achieved its goals. This project was compared to the London Stock Exchange’s Taurus Project, where scope creep lead to the termination of the project after huge amounts of cost overruns. The Trilogy program was to modernize the FBI’s information technology infrastructure. The Virtual Case File was intended to replace the FBI’s antiquated case management application, which was the Automated Case Support system. The Virtual Case File was initially designed to improve the FBI’s ability to manage investigative case files, to facilitate data and document resources, and to share information with other FBI offices. In the beginning, The Department of Justice required the FBI to use two contractors for the Trilogy project because the...
Words: 388 - Pages: 2
...Byline: John Foley Can the FBI transform one of the federal government's most problem-plagued IT projects, its Sentinel case management system, into a model of success for other agencies? Sentinel and its predecessor case management system have been a symbol of all that's wrong with government IT--over budget, behind schedule, and short on functionality. Sentinel grew out of an earlier failure, the FBI's Virtual Case File system, started in 2001 and scrapped four years--and $170 million--later. Last September, after a partially completed Sentinel had been put on hold, FBI CIO Chad Fulgham decided to take over management of the project from lead contractor Lockheed Martin. Fulgham, a former senior VP of IT with Lehman Brothers who joined the FBI in December of 2008, outlined a plan to use agile development. For the past eight months, a small team of FBI technologists have been developing "working software" in intervals of a few weeks, then rolling that into bigger releases every two or three months. Speaking at InformationWeek's Government IT Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C., on May 5, Fulgham and FBI CTO Jeff Johnson, another former Lehman Brothers IT manager, explained how they shifted the Sentinel project from traditional waterfall application development--where requirements are established at the beginning and can take years to deliver. Fulgham said a "system of record" will be delivered this summer, with a broader release in September. FBI agents and other employees...
Words: 410 - Pages: 2
...Andrew Colburn and Steven Avery’s relationship go back more than two decades before to Avery’s arrest in 2005. Avery was convicted in 1985 for the assault and rape of Penny Beerntsen. He spent 18 years in prison before DNA evidence released him. Colburn and officer Lt. James Lenk were suspected of discovering evidence which suggested Avery's innocence in the Beerntsen case in the 1990s. A detective called the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department to inform them that they had a suspect in custody named Gregory Allen, who claimed to have committed a sexual assault in Manitowoc County and that "someone else was in jail for it." Sergeant Andrew Colburn, who took the call, allegedly informed his superior officer, Lieutenant James Lenk. No report...
Words: 271 - Pages: 2
...The FBI started to set up a project to build a new Virtual Case File system (VCF). This VCF project was to be let as one massive contract at a total cost of $379m. It was planned as a classic waterfall project - with a grand design being drawn up before work would start on the development of a monolithic system. Testing would be carried out at the end, and the whole system would go live at once - a classic big-bang implementation approach. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) The 9/11 attacks increased political pressure for better homeland security and data sharing between 6 agencies. Responding to this pressure, the FBI made promises to bring forward deployment of the new VCF case management system by 6 months - to December 2002. Then they received an additional $78m of funding and promised to chop off another 6 months from the schedule. The classic symptoms of waterfall project failure started to reveal themselves. Project plans were found to be unrealistic, and the oversight of project spend was inadequate. It became obvious that the project would not meet its accelerated deadlines. A commitment to using unproven thin client technology had been made - and the design for a web-like access to a centralised database was deeply flawed - BUT: up-front contracts with suppliers bound the project to this technology and the testing that could have revealed these flaws came too late to allow a change of direction. After...
Words: 531 - Pages: 3
...The article that I read was about the FBI and how it blew $170 million dollars trying to modernize the FBI’s technology. They had a $581 million dollar budget on this transformation which they called “Trilogy”. They referred to this project as “Tragedy” because the new software that they were trying to use which is called Virtual Case File, was not in production and was said to probably never be in production. With that being said, the September 11 attacks dropped a heavy load of pressure onto the project and derailed the course that they were taking on it. I think that the information provided was great considering that this was an FBI project. There was some information that could not be released and some details that could not be discussed. Overall the article was presented in a very professional manner and I was actually kind of surprised that any issues that occur in the FBI could be discussed. It was an article that they could make a one hour show about on television. The one thing that kind of had me confused was how they could have IT workers whom they considered “not capable” of doing what they were asked to do as far as modernizing the technology infrastructure. After years of failure they did ultimately decide to take the project in another direction but to think that they wasted so much money on software that did not hold up, is just crazy. In my opinion, this article was very informational but at the same time it gives a little insight as to just how much technology...
Words: 316 - Pages: 2
...FBI Case Study 9/16/14 Saran Voleti Critical Facts: 1. The FBI is “an intelligence-driven and a threat-focused national security organization.” It has both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities. ( http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/quick-facts) 2. The FBI’s mission is “to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners”.( http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/quick-facts). 3. Headquarted in Washington, the FBI has 35,344 employees. It has 56 field offices and 380 other offices in the US .It also has 60 offices in foreign...
Words: 1351 - Pages: 6
...The X-Files is one of the brilliant examples of television series, originated as a cult show and dawned into the renowned show among a wider range of audiences, including the academia. For nine seasons, the show ran for about ten years. After becoming so popular, The X-Files developed two films for dedicated fans across the world. One may wonder what is it that makes a long running show consistently interesting to the general audience, fans, scholars, and even critics. A possibility is the usage of metaphor and genre in order to explore wider themes that are not immediately apparent to the viewer regarding subject matter. To put it simply, The X-Files goes beyond the limitations of horror and sci-fi. The creation of The X-Files emerged when a new and upcoming company called Fox joined network competitors such as NBC, ABC, and CBS. Fox, as a forerunner in showing television where viewers could not find anywhere comparable, embraced the unusual and controversial series based on the paranormal and bizarre phenomena. The show follows two FBI agents who investigate the paranormal from two different viewpoints, a believer and the other a skeptic. The X-Files on the Fox network was beginning nightly hour-long shows directed towards the teen to middle-aged viewers. In order to become popular for such a broad range of viewers, the series needed to attract these masses using a language they understood and meeting their expectations, such as desired genres. The mixture of the target viewer’s...
Words: 2787 - Pages: 12
...Introduction: FBI Virtual Case File project was to build a networked system for tracking criminal cases, designed to replace the bureau’s antiquated paper files. The VCF project was of a larger initiative called Trilogy. A project, started in 2001, which should have taken 3 years, abandoned in 2005 by FBI after spending $170 million with requirements still not met. Discussion: The FBI’s attempt to move from a paper-based to an electronic case management system began in 2001 with the Virtual Case File (VCF), a major component of the Trilogy project. The VCF was supposed to automate the FBI's paper-based work environment, allow agents and intelligence analysts to share vital investigative information, connect the dots and replace the obsolete Automated Case Support (ACS) system because they lacked a central, shared database between applications. However, the outcome of the project was a product consisting of about 730,000 lines of code that didn’t even begin to approach the functionality laid out in the requirements. FBI’s mission evolved over the time along with their technological needs and without complete set of defined requirements, FBI faced various obstacles and the project experienced major cost and schedule overruns and never achieved its objectives. The project demonstrated a systematic failure of software engineering practices. a. Overly ambitious goals: Readjust to a complete overhaul of the system after 9/11 attacks, fully replacing the existing system and to...
Words: 734 - Pages: 3
...testify before the Subcommittee as it examines the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Trilogy information technology (IT) modernization project. The Trilogy project was designed to upgrade the FBI’s IT infrastructure and replace its antiquated case management system with the Virtual Case File (VCF). Successful implementation of the Trilogy project is essential to modernizing the FBI’s inadequate information technology systems. The FBI’s systems currently do not permit FBI agents, analysts, and managers to readily access and share case-related information throughout the FBI. Without this capability, the FBI cannot perform its critical missions as efficiently and effectively as it should. In March 2004, this Subcommittee held a hearing on the status of the Trilogy project, and I testified about the schedule delays and cost increases of the Trilogy project. At that time, I stated that I was skeptical about the FBI’s proposed schedule to deploy a fully functional, complete version of the VCF before the end of calendar year 2004. Shortly before the hearing, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) initiated a follow-up audit to assess the FBI’s management of the Trilogy project. Today the OIG released the results of this follow-up audit. Our audit found that the FBI successfully has completed the Trilogy IT infrastructure upgrades – albeit with delays and significant cost increases. However, the FBI has failed to complete and deploy the...
Words: 7841 - Pages: 32
...(Virtual Case Files) IT project is one of the most highly publicized software failure in U.S history. The main goal of the FBI’s VCF project was to automate the FBI's paper driven work environment, allow agents and intelligence analysts to share vital investigative information, and replace the obsolete Automated Case Support (ACS) system. The FBI outsourced the code writing for the VCF project in the year 2001 to contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) based out of San Diego,CA. SAIC delivered 700,000 lines of code that was overly bug ridden, and functionally off target from what the FBI expected, that the FBI had to terminate the $170 million project which included $105 million worth of unusable code. Various government audits and independent reports show that the FBI did not have the proper IT management and technical expertise, and should share the blame for the VCF project failure. At the termination of the project in 2005, Glenn A. Fine, the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general, described the main factors that contributed to the VCF's failure. His list included the following factors: poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements; overly ambitious schedules; and the lack of a plan to guide hardware purchases, network deployments, and software development for the bureau. The FBI announced that it would buy off-the-shelf software to be installed in phases over the next four years from 2005-2009. The FBI will have...
Words: 8240 - Pages: 33
...Case Study ERP Implementation Failures ERP systems are an integrated software solution that is typically offered through a vendor as packaged software that supports the organization’s supply chain and other business functions, such as, receiving, inventory management, customer order management, production, planning, shipping, accounting, and human resource management. The use of ERP is very widespread across a multitude of industries. As a matter of fact, a report by Computer Economics Inc. states that, “76% of manufacturers, 35% of insurance and health care companies, and 24% of Federal Government agencies already have an ERP system or are in the process of installing one.” Over 60% of Fortune 1000 companies have implemented ERP systems (Hawkins & Stein, 2004). It is not just large firms that are implementing ERP systems, small and medium size companies are making use of ERP systems as well (O’Leary, 2004). ERP systems have expanded across the globe and many of world’s leading companies consider Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems an essential information systems infrastructure to survive and prosper in today’s economy. There are many advantages to ERP systems. Companies that have successfully implemented ERP systems report improvement in management decision making, improvement in efficiency, improvement in information exchange, improvement in performance and productivity levels and improvement in customer service and customer satisfaction, just to name a few. So...
Words: 1570 - Pages: 7
...Name: Xi Liu Case: THE FBI This case is about the FBI VCF project. The CIO of FBI offered a project, “Trilogy”, by using VCF system. This system’s goal is to provide an electronic means for agents to access files, documents or some evidence to preform faster. This project cost U.S. government $170 million. But, it turned out to be a failure, due to the misalignment of IS strategy and organizational strategy. The development of VCF is based on a simply concept that the FBI needs a modern case management system. However, technologists don’t have a complete set of defined VCF requirements. Also, they don’t have a concept that how to manage the whole contracts which are time-cost and money-cost. These technologists lack of personnel skills, like software engineering, program management and contract management. These all relate to a failure in developing VCF. In addition, FBI agents are familiar with paper work, even if VCF is implemented, they may also fail to use the system. Several points are alignment between the IS strategy and organization strategy. VCF is meant to replace the old heavy paper work to a modern system used to check files, documents. Moreover, the CIO insisted on developing a bureau used information system to share information. The misalignment point is the whole organization is a decentralized organization, while the VCF is trying to build an integrated information system. This is the main misalignment part. If I were the CIO, I think the first thing to...
Words: 320 - Pages: 2
...in the FBI. [10 pages] 2. Use 10 chapters (episod Throughout history the federal beeeeee life using technological advances. Although some people believe that modern technology influences our everyday communication, transportation and media by making life convenient , Others believe that technology can lead to a life of greed , disparity and corruption. The unitsd state governments spends x amount a year on technology . the question is does this teccnology make life more assescible. IN Ron Kess;ers the secrets of the fbi the fedral bearu of intelligence sector called tack opps uses tecnoloy to create diversions , break into criminals and mob bosses houses to inplant bugs to spy on them and listen to their conversations. specif gadgets to break into houses For tack opps breaking into house most important thing is not to set of alarms or dogs . they use things like tranqulizers Planting bugs in French drug dealers house mc devit and micrutoro used repplers to get in drug dealers house Chapter 2 Tack opps equipped with night vision googles to look for cat in operation that got out of the house Case in tampa used a tractor trailer Mc devit and technical angent installed cameras and bugs Installing fbi tramits...
Words: 519 - Pages: 3
...Failed Strategic Information Systems By Grace Ceniza A report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For CIS370-05 In Computer Information Systems School of Business and Public Administration California State University, Dominguez Hills Spring 2012 Table of Contents I. Hershey Food Corporation o Background 3 o Implementing ERP 3 o Expected benefits 3-4 o What went wrong? 4 II. Denver Airport Baggage System o Background 4-5 o Expected benefits 5 o What went wrong? 5 III. United Kingdom Passport Agency o Background 6 o What went wrong? 6 IV. FBI’s Trilogy Terminated o Background 7 o What went wrong? 7-8 V. Reference 10 Hershey Food Corporation Background Milton Hershey founded Hershey Food Corporation in 1894. Hershey was famous for a lot of innovations and was credited for several chocolate variants like chocolate syrup, chocolate chips, Krackle Bar, ice cream toppings, hot fudge and a lot more. By 1895, Hershey Corporation was manufacturing more than 114 different varieties of chocolates. Their most popular products are Hershey’s kisses, Kit Kat, Reese’s Peanut butter cups and more. Their sales went up from US$334 million in 1969 to $4.94 billion in 2006. Most of their sales that was 40% of their profit came from sales...
Words: 1652 - Pages: 7
...insurance, customer service, and advertisements. Not in this case. Dr. Bander worked for Gambro as a chief medical officer from 1995 to 2000 (Vitale, 2011); he stated that Gambro was defrauding Medicare and Medicaid out of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Savat, 2011). Dr. Bander had to pay lawyers and filing fees in order to get the case moving (Savat, 2011). The lawsuit was filed in 2001 (Vitale, 2011). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to investigate. This threw Gambro way off track they began to panic. Federal prosecutors said at the time of the 2004 settlement that Gambro overbilled Medicare and Medicaid by setting up a shell company to inflate the billings. The shell company pleaded guilty to a felony charge of execution of a health care fraud scheme (Patrick, 2011). Gambro did what any business would do, if guilty, they paid the plaintiffs off. In an agreement three-and-a-half years later, 2004, Gambro paid $350 million in civil and criminal penalties to settle claims it defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of hundreds of millions of dollars (FBI, 2010). This agreement, made in December 2004, remains the largest fraud settlement in Missouri history and, at the time, was the sixth largest in the country (FBI, 2010). This lawsuit remains the largest settlement in Missouri history (Savat, 2011). Under the federal whistle-blower law, Dr. Bander received a $56 million share of the settlement (FBI, 2010). With his settlement amount, Bander started up a new foundation...
Words: 1309 - Pages: 6
