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FBI's New Info-Sharing Software Project Fails
Spy Handler writes "After 4 years and half a billion dollars, FBI's attempt to create new information sharing software - called Virtual Case File - simply didn't work.
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I actually read the FA (Ok, scanned it), and I didn't see anything that the FBI required that isn't commonly available now. Get a robust DB, have information decrypted at the user's computer, do not have any portion of this network on the Internet - instead use VPN/SSH connections physically secure the boxes, etc. Why they went to a third party in SD who blew through 130 MILLION of our tax dollars with nothing to show for it is beyond me.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Sounds just like the TIERS Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System software my agency has been trying develop. The Texas Department of Human Services, now the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, has contracted to Deloitte to develop a web based system similar to what is described in the article. $3 million a month (according to some) has been spent on this for a couple of years now and it is a HORRIBLE excuse of a system. I know case workers that are being forced to test the software that say it takes at LEAST twice as long to work a case now than it did with the old system that was developed in the 80's. This has been a boondoggle in the worst sense and any Texas taxpayer should be pissed off about it.
It gets to be depressing working for the government because you see so many contracts like this awarded simply because some higher up gets his palm greased. Another example of this is the fact that I had to pay Banctec (the company that has our hardware support contract) the standard fee of $340 to replace a CPU FAN in an old machine the other day. So sad.
P.S. - I'm having to post this anonymously because anyone that has even begun to criticize the TIERS software, even internally, has been officially reprimanded or worse.
"Science Applications has received about $170 million from the FBI for its work on the project. Sources said about $100 million of that would be essentially lost if the FBI were to scrap the software."
Hold on, isn't Science Applications (also known as SAIC) also that company that was so incompetent in creating Pro-U.S. propaganda in Iraq that their contract was pulled from them?
http://www.corpwatch.org
http://www.prwatch.org
Why does the government keep giving them contracts when they suck?