New FBI Software May Be Unusable (After $581 Million Spent)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi13jan13,0,4698242,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

A new FBI computer program designed to help agents share information to ward off terrorist attacks may have to be scrapped, the agency has concluded, forcing a further delay in a four-year, half-billion-dollar overhaul of its antiquated computer system.

The bureau is so convinced that the software, known as Virtual Case File, will not work as planned that it has taken steps to begin soliciting proposals from outside contractors for new software, officials said.

The overhaul of the decrepit computer system was identified as a priority both by the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and by members of Congress, who found that the FBI's old system prevented agents from sharing information that could have headed off the attacks.

Since the attacks, Congress has given the FBI a blank check, allocating billions in additional funding. So far the overhaul has cost $581 million, and the software problems are expected to set off a debate over how well the bureau has been spending those dollars.

[ogradda]

1. i suppose they got a raise for this.

or a medal:eyes:

[aikido15]

2. No doubt!

And rob the educational or some other social program to replace system. ugh!

[Robert Oak]

3. ridiculous

Probably they are more concerned with smoozing dinner parties and if
anybody has every smoked marijuana that obtaining competent
US citizens who can design the thing.

I've noticed this quite a bit, millions spent via "contracts"
awarded to political insiders who can't engineer their way out
of a paper bag...

meanwhile the private sector outsources the jobs and competent Americans
go unemployed.

Accenture, who can't engineer their way out of a paper bag as well
as is incorporated in Bermuda to avoid US taxes managed to land
a 10B dollar contract from homeland security.

Tell me there weren't some payoffs in that award and I can hardly
wait until the money is gone and there is no system.

[Dover]

4. Somebody is getting rich off this "mistake". An accident?

All this purported incompetency seems a bit at odds with truth.

[lovuian]

5. Why don't we take a bucket and poor Millions down the

drain!!!

[RafterMan]

6. Almost $20,000 per FBI employee

Pathetic.

[EFerrari]

7. Grown ups call this graft. n/t

[0rganism]

8. click on the wrong hyperlink, and watch as your e-mail reader fills w/spam

yet somehow the FBI is unable to produce reliable information-sharing software for $581 million? I am not impressed.

Damn straight they need to look for outside contractors. They can start by hiring those same soulless motherfuckers who serviced the "direct marketing" industry.

[Cronus Protagonist]

9. I could do it and make it work for less than a couple of million

Think of all the software engineers, DBAs and programmers that are currently unemployed in the US due to outsourcing that could have made a stellar software product.... while the yahoos that wrote that crap will probably get medals and a lifetime pension.




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[fob]

32. Cronus, Cronus, Cronus. Make it work for less than a couple million?

Didn't you see where it said the FBI had a blank check to spend BILLIONS? How are the corporatists gonna earn enough to put food on their families if you wlatz in and finsih the project AHEAD of schedule and that far BELOW budget?

Now if you submit a proposal that says it will take 10 years, not 4, and cost $23 billion, not 2 or 3 billion, you could probably get the contract! Of course a substantial portion of the $23 billion would have to funnel back to the "correct" persons and you just may wind up with a few million to do the actual job, but you should plan on returning for additional funding somewhere around the 6-8 year mark. Oh and right up until you return for funding you should MAKE SURE to issue annual projections that show the project ahead of schedule and under budget.

[Cronus Protagonist]

34. Sadlty, you're right

I would never get the job. They don't reward excellence.




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[Cronus Protagonist]

10. Check this part out :)

The prototype's main feature allows users to prepare documents and forward them in a usable form.

Eventually, the FBI expects to have software with added features for managing records, evidence and other documents, along with the ability for users to collaborate on documents and share information online.


HAHAHAHAHA!

It's a fucking store and forward system. We call that EMAIL here on the Internet!

"Eventually" they'll ADD features for management? Eventually!

HAHAHAHAHAHAA!

Oh, stop it. STOP IT! I can't live with the pain in my sides from laughter!

Lotus Notes salesmen must all be salivating at the thought of getting a slice of the "new" system! Especially since their software already DOES all of that!

HAHAHAAAA!

Damn. *cough* must. stop. laughing. must.

[nashville_brook]

11. all they need is a skid of Macs loaded with iLife, iCal

the sad postmodern truth is our make-believe governments on teevee are more efficiently imagined than the real thing. corrupt people are stupid and stupid people are unable to get their shit together enough to manage their consultants.

[Rose Siding]

19. The Internets; The Final Frontier

They could soak us for billions more. All they have to do is throw in techie language as the Congress nods in feigned understanding.

[papau]

20. Lotus Notes would seem a solution

:-)

[TahitiNut]

21. God help them!

What an unmitigated piece of proprietary trash!

[papau]

23. Granted the email side is only a B-, but the working together with others

is the best out there!

But I do get tired on closing an email and finding I've closed Lotus!

:-)

[PeterPuck]

26. just use the 'Esc' key to close your email

Not sure exactly why you are closing Notes when you mean to close the email message. Is it possible you are clicking on the 'X' in the top right corner of the window and closing the application.

I agree totally with your statement. The email client sucks but the workflow and collaboration functionality notes offers is unmatched. Not to mention the ease of which users can post/manage data to the web using secured web applications.

Lotus Notes has a bad reputation because a lot of users have only been exposed to the email client.

[TahitiNut]

28. No. I base my opinion on doing internal support and development.

I don't base it on mere use. My experience, however, is over 6 years old - but I doubt the abominable internal 'engineering' has changed all that much. :shrug:

[papau]

29. yep - but in the extremely lazy group - my group - hitting esc is not a

mouse function and therefore requires more effort that it should.

Actually just clicking on the mail icon brings you back without closing.

Now to discuss doing an operation on multiple emails at a time ..sigh...

:-)

[DS1]

27. one could build a better system with php, a sql db, and apache in a day

:eyes:

I gotta get in on this government work!

[TahitiNut]

30. Unless they create and enforce ...

... a viable, open, non-proprietary "Network Architecture" (an architectural strategy definition) that ensures longevity, adaptability, and maximal immunity from proprietary obsolescence, their repeated huge-systems investments are doomed to be a mega-money-pit.

This is, of course, the major failing of government bureaucracies - not taking firm control of their long-term information management strategies. Enterprises of such scale and criticality cannot expect to plug-and-play some ad hoc hodgepodge of proprietary crap as the basis of their information systems. For such enterprises, I'm a big advocate of roll-your-own and non-OCO (source access obligatory) approaches, based on a living, long-term, detailed technical strategy.

[DS1]

36. Right, and with good reason, but my point was the capabilities

described come right out of the box when you set up a free linux box running free apache and free mySql and free php, and then you could download the free 30 day trial of Dreamweaver MX 2004 - run a couple wizards and you've got those core requirements DONE.

Of course, I charge $20,000 a minute, so you might want to find someone else to do it :7

[Cronus Protagonist]

31. If the article is accurate, a typewriter and a fax machine would be better

I would sell them that system for only a few million dollars, too.




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[screembloodymurder]

12. I assume there was a contract

that specified performance. Why would you pay for software that didn't perform as specified? The vendor should give the money back or go to jail. It's as simple as that!

[Cori Cycle]

13. they shoulda asked

uncle bill to build one for them. when things don't work, his friends in redmond always comes out with "bill's quick fix patch," and everything would be just fine and dandy.

who are the shumack came out with unuseable software anyhow.

[Jose Diablo]

14. Do you suppose they could outsource the software

to India to find competent software engineers? Or maybe they already did, and thats why it's crap.

You know, $581M is getting into what I would call serious money. Screwing the Cops, LOL, how ironic.

[makhno]

15. The usual suspects: SAIC and CSC

I wonder what positions former FBI IT executives occupy with these companies. The revolving door is a wonderful thing.

http://www.gcn.com/23_11/news/25934-1.html

[librechik]

25. Aha

institutionalized graft & piracy--in secret! How convenient!

[dbt]

16. On behalf of the Tinfoil Contingent, permit me a word:

Disinformation. It could well be that this software works just fine and we're supposed to think the FBI will scrap it.

I'm not saying that this is the case, but one must always allow for such a possibility when the Regime says anything.

We now return to our regularly scheduled pogrom.

:evilgrin:
dbt

[Bigmack]

22. Good thinking!

Everything this mis-administration does/says is a lie, so why not this. These guys would lie if the truth would save them.

I was ready to accept the "dumbshit" explaination on this mess, but when I read the original post to my wife she said "What makes you think the FBI is telling the truth now?"

[Solly Mack]

17. so where did the money really go?

[hunter]

24. Dogbert has it.

Sadly, United States Citizens are probably better off for that.

If the FBI or the Homeland Security still had the money, they might be spending it on something far, far worse than crappy unworkable software.

[McDoomfook]

18. Diebold

probably developed the software.....

[sweetheart]

33. Sounds like the name is wrong and should be: "Viral Case Flu"

It seems to infect stupid public agencies, and cause them to waste
massive amounts of public resources due to incompetence in the
white house.

[newscott]

35. Didn't Ross Perot do the same thing

When Nixon was in the White House? Sold the government a computer system that was totally unusable?

[TrustingDog]

37. isn't Marvin Bush into software? Sure I read something about

some sweet deal he got in Florida, thanks to bro.

this whole thingssure smells like a filthy bush to me.

[Johnny_Ramone]

38. When the petroleum runs out

...and the electricity is turned off, nobody will care...

[Supersedeas]

39. what was our Homeland Security Director doing...coordinating???

Dirty money!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bpilgrim]

40. ain't OPENSOURCE much cheaper?

and MORE SECURE these days?

November 24, 2004: mi2g Intelligence Unit (London) reports that Mac OS X and BSD Unix are the "world's safest and most secure 24-7 online computing environments". Their conlcusion? ...

"More and more smart individuals, government agencies and corporations are shifting towards Apple and BSD environments in 2004," according to DK Matai, Executive Chairman, mi2g. "For how long can the truth remain hidden that the great emperors of the software industry are wearing no clothes fit for the fluid environment in which computing takes place, where new threats manifest every hour of every day. There is an accelerating paradigm shift visible in 2004 and busy professionals have spotted the benefits of Apple and BSD because they don't have the time to cope with umpteen flavours of Linux or to wait for Microsoft's Longhorn when Windows XP has proved to be a stumbling block in some well chronicled instances."

more...
http://www.mi2g.com/cgi/mi2g/press/021104.php

the block-heads where i work are going into their 2nd year of migration to MS nirvana though not that deep, yet :crazy:

peace

[burrowowl]

41. From the article you cited:

Most breached computing environment - Governments

In a remarkable switch in top rank within the Government computing environment over the last twelve months, the most breached Operating System for online systems has now become Windows (57.74%) followed by Linux (31.76%) and then BSD and Mac OS X together (1.74%). This is in stark contrast to the situation six months ago, when Microsoft Windows was significantly lower in terms of recorded government server breaches in comparison to Linux. The number of recorded breaches against government online computers running BSD or Mac OS X worldwide remains very low.

Interesting!

[burrowowl]

42. This may point to

graft.
Who is the contractor?