CASE STUDY

Case Study- Failure of FBIs Project of Virtual Case File



Case Study- Failure of FBIs Project of Virtual Case File

Project Complexities FBIs Project of Virtual Case File

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had announced the Trilogy Program in September 2000, which was meant to modernize the outdated infrastructure of Information Technology. It was aimed at accomplishing the following tasks,

The up-gradation of hardware and software systems for all the FBI agents and officers by the modern desktop computers

The up-gradation of the communication network of BFI to the highly efficient LAN and WAN networks

The modification of the applications related to the Investigative Software of FBI's suite

Most importantly the up-gradation of current case management system of FBI named as Virtual Case File for enabling improved access to, and sharing of, the information related to the cases.

The project was initially planned to take3 years in its deployment with the cost estimation of about 170 million dollars. However, the project has failed even after 4 years as the desired requirements were not met. This project has set an example of a failed engineering project, which was managed poorly. It had experienced cost issues and overrunning of schedules, which resulted in the failure of achieving the objectives. It was abandoned in 2005 as the cost had crossed the range of 170 million dollars with no outcomes.

The Virtual Case File system was meant to comprise of case management system, records management system, and an evidence management system to provide effectiveness to the FBI's system.

The complexities of the project were mainly the related to the handing and the managing strategies of it. The efforts were definitely for the right purpose with true intentions, but still the FBI found itself with an unplanned and improvised infrastructure of IT. The complex nature of the project is revealed from the fact that the FBI had worked to initiate more than 50 application systems of an independent nature. All these systems were managed and evaluated in terms of different programming languages, which made it more complex to be used on, unlike platforms. These all complexities were provided the budget of almost 379.8 million dollars in the name of that VCF project. The FBI management had no CIO, no documentation of the existing system with a plan of renovation.

The FBI was under pressure with the 9/11 attack in 2001 as its information systems were proved to be inadequate because of the terrorists attack. This happening was entirely the result of intelligence lost with the increasing advancement in technology. The FBI was under intense pressure from the public and congressional side, so it decided to run the project and deploy it before the expected period of 3 years. At this time, the executive assistant director of administration was hired to manage the fast pace of the project. The problem was that only a web interface was provided for the whole FBI agents. The old Automated Case Support (ACS) System, which was capable of storing millions of ...