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Why the FBI Can't Build a Case Management System

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Why the FBI Can't Build a Case Management System PERSPECTIVES Why the FBI Can’t Build a Case Management System Jerome W. Israel A review of the problems that haunted the FBI’s Virtual Case File and Sentinel case management programs and an examination of the techni- cal reasons for these failures provide the basis for recommendations to help avoid their repetition. pic software engineering failures are nothing new busy tending to cost and schedule that we failed to reckon in the federal government, but for the FBI, they’re with these issues. In addition, the project was simply too particularly bitter. large, too complex, and too unruly for an organization with E From about 2001 to 2004, the bureau spent $171 minimal engineering expertise. million on the failed Virtual Case File, and it has struggled Unfortunately, the FBI isn’t alone. Many federal agen- for nearly eight years after VCF to deliver Sentinel, a $451 cies undertake large IT projects and frequently end up in million program for which the chances for success and trouble. This cannot continue. In an era of soaring budget fulfilling the original requirements grow bleaker by the deficits, government must build IT differently. day. The plan was to automate the paper processes admin- istered by the FBI’s special agents. Instead, their hopes have EARLY WARNINGS been crushed twice, forcing them to continue managing In November 2004, just as we were driving the last nails cases and evidence in ways that haven’t improved dramati- into VCF’s coffin, FBI Director Robert Mueller invited Chief cally since the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Information Officer Zalmai (Zal) Azmi, Program Manage- How does something like this happen to the world’s ment Executive Dean Hall, and me to a meeting that also greatest law enforcement agency? What can possibly included Deputy Director John Pistole. The subject: a follow- be done? Much of what went wrong isn’t new, the usual on to VCF. My heart beat in my throat throughout most of fare that Frederick Brooks documented decades ago in the meeting because of fresh memories from my experi- The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering ence at the National Security Agency, where we worked (Addison-Wesley, 1995). But apart from that, the FBI en- doggedly on programs designed to convert a technology countered complex technical issues on Sentinel, several base focused on the Soviet Union into capabilities that of which had remained unresolved after VCF. We were so could manage the massive volumes and variety of commu- 0018-9162/12/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE Published by the IEEE Computer Society JUNE 2012 73 PERSPECTIVES nications emanating from the Internet. These were NSA’s flag then. Both proposals were generic and lacked creativ- proud turn-of-the-century transformation programs, but ity; they definitely weren’t equal to the effort the FBI had they all failed, including our flagship program Trailblazer, put into the RFP. With numerous public lessons learned on which cost more than $1 billion.1 VCF, we were surprised that neither proposal contained a Based on that dismal experience, it was no stretch to coherent plan that addressed the FBI’s most challenging conclude the following: technical problems. The FBI’s evaluators were split on whether to move for- t because of their enormous complexity, large IT pro- ward with a contract award. We were disappointed that grams rarely succeed; so few companies had bid on Sentinel and guessed that t large government contractors, “IT cartels” as former many were concerned about getting bogged down on the Obama administration CIO Vivek Kundra called them,2 project and then landing on the front pages of The Wash- are usually only out for money; and, ington Post. In the end, we moved forward and selected t program managers have a tendency to put a rosy spin Lockheed Martin. on projects even when they’re clearly in trouble. THREE WICKED PROBLEMS Moreover, the FBI’s engineering strength was weak—we Several wicked problems haunted us during Sentinel, didn’t have the engineering talent to pull off a major project and they will continue to haunt any case management like Sentinel. system development until they’re finally dealt with. Ocean and islands Mitigating our risk by demonstrating The “ocean-and-islands” problem was undoubt- some of the key technologies first edly the worst. The FBI operates in a vast ocean of data, would have given us confidence as we which agents can freely access in the legacy mainframe tackled building production versions Automated Case Support (ACS) system to advance their of these new capabilities. investigations. But in this data ocean are islands, which are restricted to only a few. For example, a counterterrorism case might contain data that agents can freely access and But the FBI wouldn’t be denied. We moved forward ag- view. But if the case agent were to upload newly acquired gressively early in 2005 to deliver a request for proposal healthcare information on a US citizen involved in the case, (RFP) by the end of the summer. But before the contract access to the case would suddenly be severely limited be- was even signed, harbingers of doom should have deterred cause the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability us. What Alan Wade, the CIA’s CIO, said when he addressed Act (HIPAA) contains strong provisions protecting the se- senior- and midlevel FBI IT managers in April 2005 was curity and privacy of healthcare records. Hospitals and stunning in light of the path we were on. The CIA was doctors must protect the privacy of these records, and the through with large IT programs, he told us. They just didn’t FBI must do so as well. The counterterrorism case now work. The agency had experienced countless setbacks on becomes an island. massive IT projects. The CIA’s new approach, he said, was There are vast numbers of islands in FBI case manage- to break them into smaller pieces, build momentum, and ment, hundreds of archipelagos. The FBI is required to achieve incremental success. In hindsight, we should have restrict access to grand jury proceedings and individual paid closer attention. IRS tax records. Also, if an agent were to upload a tran- We also should have built prototypes. We faced many script, or any other student records, the case would become mind-bending business and technical problems—“wicked” an island because the information is protected under the problems as technology executives described them in regu- Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. lar meetings with the director. It seemed prudent to mitigate Nobody knew how many islands there were. Every time our risk by demonstrating some of the key technologies first. a new access control was needed, the Natural programmers This would have given us confidence as we tackled building wrote one in ACS. Some in the mainframe unit claimed production versions of these new capabilities. there were more than 20,000 such controls. This became a In November 2005, the CIO’s external board of advisors huge technology issue because we planned to use commer- strongly recommended that we build prototypes for Sen- cial software in Sentinel, but in 2005, we weren’t aware of a tinel. But under pressure to move forward, we didn’t take commercial solution that offered such fine-grained access the time or allocate the money to engage in this important control. At one point, we consulted NSA’s database research early step. experts about Oracle Label Security, a database security When the FBI sent the RFP to industry in August, we program that could protect records at the row and column received only two proposals. We should have seen a red level. We were hopeful about OLS, but the research experts 74 COMPUTER believed that it wasn’t “expressive” enough to handle the problems such as names, addresses, and phone numbers ocean-and-islands problem. not matching the format specified in Sentinel’s database. The access control issue was also a business problem. Migration promised to be very costly and time-consuming. If we were going to succeed, the operations organizations When the CIO executives discussed the problem in (the divisions specializing in counterterrorism, counter- August 2008, we debated one proposition—not to migrate intelligence, crime, and so on) had to reduce the number the data at all. This would require agents to work in two of access controls. This was difficult for the FBI because databases—ACS and Sentinel—but in five years, so the in 2001, Robert Hanssen, a career FBI employee who had argument went, the number of agents using ACS would access to some of the bureau’s most sensitive secrets, was be minimal. Besides, we had already determined that we arrested after 22 years of spying for the Soviets. This rocked couldn’t shut ACS down completely because a large amount the bureau and was a factor in VCF’s failure. of personnel and case information was stored on tape. If In February 2005, in a statement to the US Senate Ap- a Freedom of Information Act request came in, and the propriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, requested data was on tape, we would have to use the ap- and the Judiciary, Department of Justice (DoJ) Inspector plications on the mainframe to retrieve the data. General Glenn Fine noted that in the Trilogy project, the At the end of our discussions, however, we decided third phase of which was VCF, there “… was a lack of firm that we couldn’t expect agents to work with two different understanding of the design requirements both by the FBI systems. So we continued down the data migration path, and the contractors.
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