The FBI Software Upgrade That Wasn't

Davemania writes "Washington Post reports that the FBI's attempt to modernize their department has once again failed. The 170 million dollar Virtual case File system, the agency's second attempt to go paperless is reported to be useless. The finger seems to be pointing at the FBI leadership, greedy contractors and bad software management." From the article: "It appeared to work beautifully. Until Azmi, now the FBI's technology chief, asked about the error rate. Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds, Azmi recalled in an interview. The problems were multiplying as engineers continued to run tests. Scores of basic functions had yet to be analyzed. 'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'"

Comments

I love you

[neonprimetime]

I love helping you /.ers out. Instead of spending painstaking hours clicking thru multiple page news stories, I sit here and quickly provide you with printer friendly links

Re:I love you

[Anonymous Coward]

And gaining lots of karma in the process. How nice for you!

Re:I love you

[coaxial]

I wonder why you saw that then.

Government Inefficiancy

[mulhollandj]

If the anybody can screw up a big project like that it is the government. If it was 170 million of somebody's own money I think that it would have been done a lot better but since it is only the taxpayers money they seem to really mess things up. Perhaps this is one of the many reason we should limit the federal govt to their proper role as given in the Constitution.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[NexFlamma]

I've never understood why the government (whose inefficiency in regards to monetary spending has become almost cliche) doesn't set up a system for these sorts of big projects where the funds for it ARE someone's money.

As you said, there would be much more motivation if it wasn't just taxpayer money, so why couldn't they use a system whereby they have several firms fund and set up different solutions and then the best solution gets a predetermined amount of money from the government?

Since the firms would be initially shelling out their own money on the projects without a guarantee of reimbursement, you had better believe they would be busting their asses to make sure the products did what they needed to do quickly and efficiently.

I'm living in a magical dream world, aren't I?

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[diersing]

Its not just governments, if you have a corporation dedicating a load of money towards some project the same will happen. Although the principles of project management, software development life cycles and security have matured, their adoption (of the processes) has not.

So you end up with directors forcing managers, PMs and the like to adopt the formalized procedures and their unfamiliarity with the process leads to cost overruns and issues. So you outsource it and inevitably (every case I've personally seen anyway), you get cost overruns and finger pointing - outsource company says internal resource aren't responsive enough, internal resources say outsource company wants to dominate their time with daily conference calls and meetings that inevitable forces delays to the work being done. The bottom line, is no one ends up taking ownership of the work - they'd rather talk about it and run the billable hours up.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[lancejjj]

Software problem reports, or SPRs, numbered in the hundreds,

If this software system runs under Windows, they started with a Problem Report baseline in the thousands. If they got it down into the hundreds, Kudos!

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[Silver Sloth]

I used to be a civil servant, and yes, here at the Dept. for I'm Not Allowed To Tell You we wasted vast sums of money. Then we were outsourced to a certain IT company, again, I'm not allowed to say whom, even if it does sound like an ex Englang goal keeper, and they are certainly more efficient, at wasting money.

Yes, I've worked both sides of the fence, and quite frankly, the civil service side wasted less, had fewer penpushers, was more rigourous in vetting suppliers, and brought it's project in nearer budget and deadline (that was nearer, not on!)

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[MECC]

It really sounds as though the FBI needs a real IT department of their own, not the isolated geeks helping out Mulder and Scully. And, if some "CIO" type waddles in and recommends another outsourcing, maybe the sidearm arguement should be used.

Outsource, and this is what you get. They must hire MBA's. Really, sensitive government data projects like this one should never be outsourced, if only for national security reasons.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[Lurker187]

Interesting idea, but then you'd eliminate anyone but the Halliburtons, Lockheeds, and in this case maybe the big tech companies who have the assets to front the funds, especially since if this works and they all do their jobs, there is still no payment to all but one of those who designed a perfectly working system.

Instead, I don't see why companies aren't fined (put it in the contract) or sued for everything the government spent on a system that has to be scrapped. Smaller companies would be run out of business, but rightfully so, and even big companies would have put all that work into it for absolutely nothing. Those are both pretty good motivations to get it right. But that probably doesn't happen because, as someone said, there's no one person ultimately responsible for the money, and those government employees who deal directly with the multibillion dollar contractors may hope to get a VERY lucrative job with them eventually, and so stay cozy with them.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[EatHam]

Parent is hardly flamebait. I have a very hard time thinking of anything at all that this or any government has accomplished that was two of:
On time
At, under, or near budget
Performed as designed.

Mark it flamebait or troll if you want, or just reply with any example.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[punkr0x]

If this software system runs under Windows, they started with a Problem Report baseline in the thousands. If they got it down into the hundreds, Kudos!

This is modded funny but I seriously agree. What perfect world is this guy living in? I've seen software that doesn't even GET tested before it starts shipping.

'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'"

He's got it all backwards!

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[GMontag]

I am a defense contractor, Defense Financial Manager.

Actually, the funds are someone's money. The Contracting Officers are legally "on-the-hook" for the things they sign for. If they authorize payment for something that was not delivered and the government does not get it's money back, then they are supposed to be liable for the money they released.

If they continue working for the government a payment schedule is arranged and they have money deducted from their salary. If they get any other money from the government (ex:retirement) that is used toward the debt.

The rules over here at DoD tend to be much more strict than at other agencies, contrary to what some in the media would lead you to believe.

I hear that one of the problems now, with non DoD activities, is that there are not many prosecutions going on for that sort of thing. Also, the way these stories are written, there may not have been any wrongdoing at all (check my .sig) other than the exagerations by the reporter. It could be a case of a badly written contract that the government accepted, but if the terms for payment were met then nobody is on the hook for the money, but should be losing their job.

In my case, since I am just a contractor and not a government officer, in this role, (in another position I am sometimes in uniform for the Reserves) I am never on the hook for the agency funds, but my customer is and if his error is due to my doing bad work then I am at risk of losing my job, which can happen with no notice.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[indifferent children]

It's common knowledge that government projects are always over budget...

That's true for large corporations as well. I worked as a contractor in the Chicago area (not for Anderson Consulting), and had one customer (pharma) tell me that they brought in Anderson for $3m/month for over 2 years, and got 'nothing' for their expense. I saw the same thing with other companies, including one of the largest building-controls companies in the world. It seems that size is the killer, and the reason that federal govt projects are so expensive and delayed is because of the size (not the nature) of the organization.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[smbell]

I disagree. While large corporate projects can be prone to the same problems, they rarely (if ever) reach the same level of incompetence and are still allowed to run to completion. A big distinction is that when government projects blow out way beyond their scope they are rewarded with more money, when that happens in a corporation the project is usually shut down. The government environment encourages waste while the private environment punishes it.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[electroniceric]

The problem isn't really that it's someone else's money, cause that's true at all companies. How much of your company's market cap did you or your boss or your boss's boss put in? In most cases, approximately 0 - it's Wall Street's money, which means it's millions of pension-payers' money rather than millions of tax-payers' money.

The driving problem is the rigidness and stagnation of the government's bureaucracy. The impulse to build this kind of lumbering bureaucracy was a good one - it's called civil service, and it's basically a way to insulate long-term government functions from short-term politicians, keep government employees from becoming the minions of whichever politician wants to build a personal empire. There's no question that the limitations of that approach are killing government. On the other hand, do you really want a civil service that can be downsized or force to work on producing bogus intelligence so we can invade 17 more countries? Or a government whose job is to buy as many copies of Microsoft Vapor Server as it can possibly cram into an appropriations bill? The idea that the government is fundamentally incapable is a useless one, sorta like existentialism, in that it fails to answer the question of what we DO as a result of that insight. Do you seriously propose that the FBI be run by a private interest? I'd rather not have someone like Verizon or ChoicePoint watching my back, thank you - at least the government has a mandate to protect people and not just make money off of them. And there's a name for the head of an large private armed force: warlord.

The article touches on the fact that government has progressively become a comparatively worse place to work than the private sector, because of the bureaucracy and because the salaries don't keep pace with the private sector. A friend of mine is working on Sentinel, and he's been really surprised to find an FBI-side partner who actually wants to oversee the work. If you do think that police work at the federal level should be the job of government, then how do we go about really fixing the FBI?

Government is what citizens make it. And here's the rub: under the past 25 years of leadership of the small-government zealots, we managed to prevent government from making important investments - e.g.: roads (any idea how many bridges in this country haven't been maintained in decades, and what the long-term maintenance will cost on the vast numbers of roads we've built?), emergency planning, a healthy population, an educated workforce, etc. These investments are the infrastructure on which the economy is built. And this stellar leadership has not only managed to give short shrift to the future, but it's utterly failed to address the real problems they correctly identified with government. Anti-government conservatism is a bankrupt ideology - it's nice to kick the government for it's failures real and perceived, but when push comes to shove, it offers no real alternative for building the public underpinnings of our economy and our lives, just faith that the free market fairy will come fix all our problems. We live in an extraordinarily pragmatic age: one where you can assemble data on a large scale to decide if something works or doesn't. It's time to stop carping and give our government a mandate to do this and find its way out of quandaries like the civil service vs. Tamany Hall problem.

Sorry for the rant. Somebody talk to me about fixing the FBI.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[letxa2000]

Really, sensitive government data projects like this one should never be outsourced, if only for national security reasons.

Right. Like the government builds its own F-15's, right? Really, different organizations are good at different things. The FBI is an investigation organization, not software development. Their expertise is (or should be) investigation and they should outsource those things that are not in the area of expertise. Just like I don't build my own house, I pay someone to do that that knows more about it than I do.

What amazes me is that projects like this can "fail." While it's not within the FBI's area of expertise to develop a computer system, it's not rocket science for those in the field. Heck, give me half that--$85 million--and I'll develop the friggin' system myself.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[Rorschach1]

I have to agree with this. I've worked as a contractor along side civil servants and uniformed military personnel. It's rare for the military folks to stick around more than two years in one place, and one job - in some posts, 9 months was about average. The civil service guys had typically been around for many years, and had a much greater sense of ownership of their systems and processes.

I worked on a system that was developed in-house by civil servants. It was an effective system because it was developed by the people who needed it, and it was relatively inexpensive. I worked on it as a contractor, but I was there long-term (most of a decade), and it was MY system - I was right down the hall from the guys using it, I spent enough time with them to know at least the basics of all of their jobs, and it was MY problem to make it all work. I had a vested interest in making sure it ran smoothly and required as little maintenance as possible. After all, less time fixing things means more time on Slashdot.

But along came a sweeping billion-dollar modernization project, and someone decided it was time to replace the system. That was around ten years ago. Tens of millions of dollars later, they still haven't matched the usability of the old system. But the contractors have no incentive to make it work. Once they hand it over, it's ANOTHER company's job to maintain it and fix it. There's way too much separation between the people doing the work, and the people using the end result.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[hswerdfe]

The Apollo Program...sigh I went back to the 1960's

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[NialScorva]

No, you won't.

The software isn't tricky, it's the politics. The FBI is a feifdom of petty departmental tyrants and ancient practices. Several friends of mine have worked on the case file system in various incarnations, the problem is that the COTRs come in and define the requirements to be "exactly the same thing as this 25 year old main frame, but on a web page". One guy was having problems because his COTR was telling him that it had to be green text on a black background. That may have been an exageration, but based upon my experience it's quite belivable.

I don't care how good of an engineer you are, you can't build a product for a customer can not or will not help you determine what their needs are.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[bunions]

I disagree. I've been on several gov't projects that have been cancelled due to budget overruns, whereas I've been on several projects for large brokerage houses that go far, far over budget and yet are maintained for no reason other than making sure a VP doesn't have to admit they were wrong.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[sgt_doom]

FBI leadership, greedy contractors and bad software management.

Really, it goes far beyond this (not that I don't fundamentally agree with your point). SAIC is simply another war profiteer and 9/11/01 "security" profiteer aligned with this administration. Their profits have soared with the attacks of 9/11/01 and the invasion and bloody occupation of Iraq. One need only look at their personnel roster to get a solid impression of what's wrong with the present fascist regime and globalist congress.

The point is a transfer of wealth (taxpayers' monies) along with money laundering, it has absolutely nothing to do with achieving any goals. Certainly nothing to do with national security - as if anyone in this administration could pull their noses out of their assets portfolios long enough to notice....

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[electroniceric]

Sorry, big guy - dude and spoken for. This is Sausagedot, though, so getting your hopes up is a dangerous thing.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[nettdata]

Not sure what context you're talking about, but I'm talking about things from MY context, as the owner of software development and services companies. Sure, I won't be doing any $170 million dollar contracts any time soon, but I have been involved in many $100 million dollar ones.

Also, I'm not responding directly to the specific case of the story, just the parent's generalized statement regarding software projects.

When you get to be involved in a large Government project, there's not much you can do, as it takes on a life of it's own (usually, I imagine a giant ball of snakes in a very deep pit).

Wouldn't that automatically make him overbudget in any publicly traded company or government, where cost is a concern?

I think you're just taking a short/small/unrealistic view at what "cost" is. Sure, my PM might be out of the normal scale for PM's, but I can easily show business cases that justify his "extra" cost (usually less than 2% of the total project, on projects $.5 - $5 million) vs. being late, over budget, and not having something that works. And, I've never had to sell to the "bean counters". I've sold to the client's management, or champions of the project. Sure, bean counters will go over the estimates and projections and costs, and bitch about a whole bunch of stuff, but then we explain and justify those items, and it's all good. I have YET to deal with any client that didn't get it. Let's face it, if I can't sell a higher-than-normal PM to the project, then I'm not doing my job properly. I haven't had a problem doing so in the contracts we've done. And those contracts are with US/CDN Governments and banks. And we deal in very large, complex systems, predominately in globally distributed Oracle installations.

In government and publically traded companies, you don't get to pick your clients. You work with who they tell you to work with. So I guess you've found the way around it: Pick your consituents/customers carefully enough, and you won't have any significantly complex projects to worry about.

Once again, not sure what context you're talking in... I'll assume that it's the Government as client.

Don't kid yourself, governments and public companies FOR SURE have a say in who they work with. When you get right down to it, there is usually ONE GUY/GIRL that is responsible for the project, and has a huge amount to say in who gets the contract. And they generally have the skills (political) to get their way with any kind of oversight that may be in place. To think otherwise would be very naieve, IMO. I have seen sooo many examples of RFP's/contracts/requirements being worded in such a specific manner that only one particular supplier would meet the requirements, just so that the customer could be guaranteed that that supplier would be picked. (I've been on the receiving end of a few of them). I've also seen a large project broken down into many, many smaller ones so that each piece is within the "arbitrary assignment" limit, allowing the manager to authorize the contract himself, without having to go to tender or oversight.

As to the case where I'm the supplier to the client, I guess I'm just used to being at the top of the org chart of a smaller company, because I do exactly that... I pick my clients very, very carefully. As it is, I've declined probably 40% of our potential contracts over the past 2 years because of the potential risk to my company. Unless you're a monster company, like Anderson or IBM, you have to take a serious look at any project you're going to be involved in and evaluate the risk and return on investment. Even then, pick wrong, and it can kill you off. (Enron/Anderson?) And not just the financial ROI... your reputation can make or break you. Go see how well Pangaea is doing around the BC Government these days... their reputation is killing them, slowly but surely.

And it's not about picking the "easy" contracts... we enjoy pushing ourselves as much as anyone who is good at their job. I just wan

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[starseeker]

Fixing the FBI is not possible in general - without very good people there is simply no way to make a good organization. Specific issues might be addressed, however:

1) First step, IDENTIFY THE REQUIREMENTS of a new system. Create use cases. Observe what actually is done day to day for at least three to six months (this will need people with security clearance out the wazoo). Be sure to follow some issues beginning to end. Also, identify relevant policy and law that the FBI needs to observe - the system should be build to help ensure that proper steps are taken, both by making it easy to do the mundane work and hard to do things that will have a big negative impact on people (make the latter tracable to individuals in ALL cases - build accountablity into the system.) And for goodness sakes, don't throw out ideas in the old system if they are good, just because they're part of the "old way".
2) Second step, design and implement a small scale trial in one or two offices, working in parallel with the existing system. Identify and correct problems.
3) Gradually scale up, and in each new introduction have people familiar with both the FBI's old system and the workings of the new help with the transition. Be resigned to huge amounts of grunt work, figuring out where old files are, cataloging and re-entering info, etc. etc. etc. Because this is a matter of law enforcement, all old materials should be retained in case of mistakes. Budget for all this annoying, unsexy, but essential work. The framework must be strong enough to handle what will be put in it, but putting the content into it will be a huge task and that should be part of the design stage.

I personally think this is one situation where things like provably correct software are needed - law enforcement doesn't need any more problems, and lawyers don't need to get a chance to play around with "computer glitch" gotchas or problems.

Large systems are often hopelessly overweight and complex, so they should not be involved with the technical design. Such organizations ARE, however, very good at following regulations, instructions, and systems. Those traits should be utilized as much as possible.

One other design feature should be that all records, when updated, should have a printed record be automatically generated and stored somewhere (or several places). Computer data is too easy to change - the poster who mentioned tracibility is absolutely correct. A hard copy is MUCH easier to work with, and automatic organized printed records should be a part of the design from the get go.

Re:Government Inefficiancy

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

under the past 25 years of leadership of the small-government zealots

What country are you referring to again, and who are these small government zealots that have been leading it for the past 25 years?

Paranoia!

[Enoxice]

Personally, I'd prefer the FBI not go paperless. Because (a) paper trails are nice in investigations and such (y'know, when the FBI finally goes up against the Supreme Court) and (b) stuff that doesn't have a hardcopy tends to get lost more often than physical objects...especially embarassing things...especially by government agencies.

Yes. I'm slightly paranoid.

Re:Paranoia!

[acroyear]

y'know, when the FBI finally goes up against the Supreme Court

Actually, all the unconstitutional crap is being done by the NSA. The FBI got warrents (over 120) through the FISA courts for every single aspect of the British plane bombers investigation that they participated in.

which goes to prove that the NSA warrentless program is utterly unnecessary to stopping terrorism.

Re:Paranoia!

[Enoxice]

All the unconstitutional stuff that we know about is being done by the NSA.

Re:Paranoia!

[computational super]

Personally, I'd prefer the FBI not go paperless.

Everybody who has to use the bathroom at FBI headquarters agrees.

Oblig. 'Fight Club' quote:

[TripMaster Monkey]

'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'

Can I get the icon in 'cornflower blue'?

Re:Oblig. 'Fight Club' quote:

[magixman]

That quote was just too funny. In any huge huge huge project the state of play a month before is usually going through the thousands of trouble reports, deciding which features you will turn off so you can ge the release out, figuring out work arounds for the rest of them, discovering that the analysis was flawed on some functions and of course by now you ditched many other features because the analysis was not done at all. And yes you change a few icon colors to keep key users happy and get your sign-off. This is for a successful 1.0 implementation.

Re:Oblig. 'Fight Club' quote:

[Just Some Guy]

That is so not funny. I worked for a little CLEC headquartered in Las Vegas, and somehow ended up being picked to manage the trouble ticket system. So, I fly out to Vegas to meet the people who will be using the system and the consultant we'd hired to install it.

To put it bluntly, the guy in charge of the NOC was (is?) an incompetent jackass. He'd used the same trouble ticket system at his last job and hated it - not because it was bad, but because the admins at his old company had no idea how to run the thing. Long story short, he had one absolute demand before he'd let it be used in "his" NOC: the consultant had to change the window background color from green to blue, because green reminded him of the last installation.

He was serious.

And he actually scheduled a formal compliance test where he would run through the system to make sure he didn't see green anywhere, and informed the consultant and me that if he did, he was rejecting it forever. I was amazed to find that he actually had management backing on this; it's apparently difficult to find managers with obsolete product knowledge, or something like that. So, the company spend a fair number of kilodollars to make the software blue (to the endless delight of the consultant, who drove a nice Corvette and took me to good expense account dinners - which are the best kind!).

Government Contract$

[Billosaur]

But the problems were not the FBI's alone. Because of an open-ended contract with few safeguards, SAIC reaped more than $100 million as the project became bigger and more complicated, even though its software never worked properly. The company continued to meet the bureau's requests, accepting payments despite clear signs that the FBI's approach to the project was badly flawed, according to people who were involved in the project or later reviewed it for the government.

And that is how you get rich doing work for the government. The government agency comes up with a half-assed plan, you put in a low bid, they accept and start handing you checks, and you make things look pretty, all the while hiding the flaws. In then end, you've become rich, the goverment runs a deficit, and the American taxpayer foots the bill.

Re:Government Contract$

[LordKazan]

that's why government contractors that do this kinda shit (fail to deliver product) should be required to return all the money to the government, and if they don't they can rot in jail and the government will SEIZE their assets

Re:Government Contract$

[mgblst]

Sure, I think we all feel that way after reading this story. But the error could also lie with the Agency. If they are constantly asking for changes and new additions, what can the programmers do.

And this would make it very difficult to get companies to do government contracts in the future.

Perhaps they should have taken in past history as well as cheap price, when deciding on contractors.

Re:Government Contract$

[grassy_knoll]

And that is how you get rich doing work for the government. The government agency comes up with a half-assed plan, you put in a low bid, they accept and start handing you checks, and you make things look pretty, all the while hiding the flaws. In then end, you've become rich, the goverment runs a deficit, and the American taxpayer foots the bill.

You seem to have left out a step: The government agency changes the requirements after the bid is awarded, usually in the user interface. If you're a smart bidder, your low bid was only to cover the original specification... and any modifications are extra.

This might be a case of a contractor sucking at the government teat, but lets not forget that clueless PHBs and design by comittee can also run up the cost of a project without producing results.

Re:Government Contract$

[climbing]

I have some experience in Government acquisition management and some of these /. rants (when temperred) are TRUE:
  - some contractors can bid low and get well on mods.
  - some large programs are constantly overrun.

And sure you can say this or that should be outsourced and the people managing these programs need to be smarter, but here are the real problems IMHO:
  - the requirements generation and acqusition processes are BROKEN. It takes literaly years to document and approve the need, the capability, performance parameters, etc until you are eventually allowed to let a contract. the buerocracy pendulum is currently pegged. it's just too slow.
  - the user reps often end up documenting "solutions" instead of "requirements" (e.g. i want a U P-38 I saw at a trade show instead of I want a handheld unit with these constraints capable of...). or worse *sigh* a congressmen sets aside money in your agency's budget for his/her favorite company irregardless of agency need. that's always fun.
  - the financial management processes are BROKEN. The budget is on a 4 year (new starts) / 2 year (tweaks) cycle. Right now you are setting the final budget for FY2010/08. more importantly, there are no incentives for the purchasing command to save money. In fact there can be penalties. E.g. 10M per year program. You get crafty and get it all done for 8M + 1M incentive bonus = 9M in year one. It will be incredibly difficult to avoid having your budget cut at the miodyear or year end reviews because you will be way behind in your "obligation and expenditure benchmarks." Expect at least a $1M recurring cut per year thereafter. The system incentivizes full or over-spending; not savings.

Reality check:
  - there are some very hard working people in the government... swimming upstream. the succeess stories rarely make the headlines. here's one. we put together a 5 year global telecom contract for an agency that saved 10%-20% per year and brought the system availability from ~90% with many single points fo failure to 99% with prioritized redundant failover. um, well no... it wasn't at the FBI.

Maybe it's just me, but...

[TopShelf]

Wouldn't it make sense to go for a more basic application as a first run, to at least provide a unified collaborative work environment, and use the working experience therein to define a more strategic, long term technology plan for the FBI? As I understand it, today's world involves many separate stores of information, electronic and not. Simply bringing those together in the crudest of fashions could provide significant gains in a relatively short time frame.

Project management in outer space

[j.leidner]

'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'"

'A month before delivery,' Professor Knuth said looking up through his spectacles 'you can start implementing it if your correctness proofs are complete.'"

Ha! Welcome to the real world, guys.

Obligatory Chief Wiggum Quote

[novus ordo]

"I'll just file this case in my Virtual Filing Cabinet"

Sounds like the client was the primar one at fault

[MikeRT]

Call me crazy, but it sounds like the FBI didn't know what it wanted and SAIC was too scared and proud to play contractor hardball with its client to get the job done. The FBI is legendary for its fractured leadership, fiefdoms (makes most agencies look like a single organism it's so bad) and crap like that.

FBI Too Busy

[faqmaster]

What do you expect? They don't have time or resources for testing because all the agents are too busy listening in on my calls to my grandmother.

Why not just hook it all up to a search engine?

[cryfreedomlove]

They should have just started by picking a decent directory structure for the documents and then hooking up a decent search engine like the Google Appliance. Then the users could simply use web browsers instead of a weak, buggy, and expensive custom application.

Non CS people who commission custom software development often have no clue how expensive their ego driven non-standard features can be.

Re:Why not just hook it all up to a search engine?

[cryfreedomlove]

According to the Google Search Appliance FAQ, it will index PDF. Of course, that'll only work where PDF is comprised of text documents instead of images.

ObSimpsons

[Rob T Firefly]

The finger seems to be pointing at the FBI leadership, greedy contractor and bad software management.

The owner of said finger, one N. Muntz, was quoted as saying "Ha-ha!"

Perfect Solution for the FBI paperless office

[flajann]

I have the perfect solution for the FBI's IT woes.

It's called WOM, or Write-Only Memory system. This system has near-infinite storage capacity, and can be implemented across the entire enterprise.

Document retrival in the WOM? Not a problem! Just create imaginary documents! Isin't that the way it's done, anyway?

Oh, and if you need a record expunged, not a problem! In fact, it requires almost no effort at all!

Write-Only Memory Virtual Filing System. It was good enough for Nasa, it ought to be good enough for the FBI.

Security Advisors

[Doc Ruby]

"You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors."

That's the FBI policy: they're part of Homeland Security, so their job is mainly to tells what color today is. Otherwise terrorists might have trouble knowing which days we're not checking everyone or paying closest attention.

What world does this guy live in?

[Chelloveck]

'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'

Wow... I have never, ever seen a software product that wasn't working on QA bug reports right up to the minute the gold disc is burned. And afterwards, of course, working on all the pre-release bugs that had been classified as 'known issues'.

Re:What world does this guy live in?

[bigpat]

Wow... I have never, ever seen a software product that wasn't working on QA bug reports right up to the minute the gold disc is burned. And afterwards, of course, working on all the pre-release bugs that had been classified as 'known issues'.

Seconded. Clearly this guy either doesn't know what he is talking about or is just playing politics (office and/or party). I've personally encountered bugs or (incomplete features) in past releases of Oracle. I don't recall the specifics of the feature I was trying to use, but it was a documented feature that should have been available and according to Oracle's own knowledge base the function should have worked a certain way, but only to dig a little deeper to find that it was just a stub function that hadn't actually been written yet. This was an enterprise product used by thousands of big businesses and it simply didn't do what they said it did.

To say that you are just changing colors on a software product a month before delivery is a rediculous thing to say, and really this guy shouldn't be in his job if he actually believes what he said, vendors are working on bugs for years after delivery on anything as complex as this would need to be.

Hell, even NASA even built in a way to update the software on the Mars landers, when they were on Mars. That isn't to say that this FBI software project has been well managed, well specified, or even well coded, but a certain amount of imperfection must be understood in any project management and design.

Project Managers

[Epeeist]

Spit.

The trouble with project managers (and security people) is that they have a checklist mentality.

PM: Have you done this as yet.

You: No, there is no need for it

PM: But I need to get it checked off on my plan

You: It shouldn't be on the plan in the first place

PM: But it is on the plan, so I need to get it checked off. When are you going to do it.

And so on.

Re:Project Managers

[jweller]

Oh, I see you've met my former boss. She was even worse.

her: have you completed X?

me: not yet, but I have Y and Z completed and tested.

her: but X is on the schedule to be complete today.

me: It made more sense to do Y and Z first, X will be trivial now that Y and Z are complete.

her: but X is on the schedule to be compete today. Y and Z are not scheduled to be done until next month. now we are behind schedule.

honestly, I can't make this stuff up. She actually said that as I stood there in slack-jawed amazement.

Re:Project Managers

[soft_guy]

One company I worked for promoted the receptionist to be the project manager for my project (I was the lead developer - and no, they didn't promote me to dev lead from janitor.)

The bad thing about this girl was that she didn't know shit about fuck. The only good thing was that she did realize how ignorant she was, so she didn't question anything I did - just tried to report it to her bosses. And she was good for fetching coffee and ordering stuff (and nice to look at).

Re:Project Managers

[swillden]

her: but X is on the schedule to be compete today. Y and Z are not scheduled to be done until next month. now we are behind schedule.

And what you didn't know, and didn't bother to ask about, was that X had to be done this month because, Q, R and S were all depending on X, and they're major subprojects that are pushing the end date. So the fact that X will be delayed for a couple of weeks will push the entire project end date out, even if it gets Y and Z done a little sooner than planned

Or maybe not. It's also possible that there was no dependency, but if you don't ask, you can't know.

The key is not to make decisions like "I'll do Y and Z now because they'll make X easier, even though X is on the schedule to be done first" without talking to whoever decided that X must be done before Y and Z. If there aren't any dependencies driving X to be done first, that conversation just makes you look really smart, and lets you do the work in the order you wanted to. If there are, however, that conversation keeps you out of hot water.

In general, it's a good idea to get approval before you change task priorities.

Note that there certainly are circumstances in which that doesn't work. I once worked for a PM who was afraid of his own project planning tool, so he basically refused to ever change the plan no matter how much sense it made (even when major requirements changed!). In that case, your best bet is still to do everything just as though your PM weren't a complete fool, and take notes on all of the obviously stupid decisions he makes so that when it all goes down in flames you can make sure he takes the heat, not you. If you have a good line to senior management, you might be able to take your concerns to them early enough that the project doesn't self-destruct, but be very, very careful with that approach. It can screw you in a heartbeat, particularly with a lousy PM who is also a very good political operative.

BTW, in the case of the PM I mentioned, he ultimately got canned. He was going to do something supremely stupid, something that would have serious external repercussions. I took it to his boss, who ordered him not to do that stupid thing. He did it anyway and then tried to cover himself by blaming me, which just compounded the error (duh!).

How is this news?

[EnderGT]

The FBI abandoned the VCF program in 2005. The replacement program, called Sentinel, is being led by Lockheed Martin. It is budgeted at $425 million, and won't be ready until 2009.

Rereading the summary, the submitter has it wrong - "FBI's attempt to modernize their department has once again failed" implies that Sentinel has failed - which is definitely not the content of the article. Even the snippet quoted is about VCF having problems, not Sentinel.

Re:Most IT Projects Fail

[cluckshot]

I would like to discuss this in some detail. Congress Critters are you listening?

The issue here is simple and almost sinfully so. If you are to get a job working for the Government, it doesn't matter which agency, you have to provide your quailification credentials. We see them on looking for a job as a list of qualifications. This applies to contractors who supply the government as wee. This becomes a list that looks like a laundry list of the history of the agency. We programmer types will know these very well. The list goes like this:

Programmer with 15+ years Experience in Matlab.

Must have 15+ years in Military Logistics with US Army SMDC

and the list goes on. There are only two problems with this listing. Both of these cannot exist. The only person who can qualify with these "pseudo credentials" is somebody who has just retired from the army and frankly even then it is a fiction. The result is that old unqualifed failure that was just booted out of the ranks for incompetence is now the only person qualified for duty.

In the FBI this is worse not better. The results are that the FBI remains unable to respond because it cannot recruit new blood to infuse it. The situation in contracts is even worse since the bureaucrats in the Government reserve the right to pick and choose the people who will work with them on contract. The contractor doesn't get to pick his people! This makes absolutely sure that in the post 9/11/2001 world only those who failed us before 9/11/2001 can ever be "Qualified" to do any work. They are the "Experts" we hire to do our work. The resulting situation is from top to bottom the agency fails ever worse and costs ever more.

The solution is pretty simple. There needs to be a wholesale cutting from the top of the dead wood of the agencies. We need to fire about 99% of the people in management and start at the bottom rebuilding. The GS system is built the reverse of this. Bumping needs eliminated. GS people need to have manditory retirement at set ages and terms of service. The legislative support of contractors needs changed towards performance controls and away from managing personnel of contractors. Frankly the US agencies excepting where sensative data or methods are involved should have no influence over hiring of contractors. Even then it should only be security issues and not the qualifications at issue. Contractor companies should have to be performing based on results and paid accordingly.

Had the FBI contract had a penalty of $250,000 per day for failure to perform the results would be in hand and done now. This by the way is typical contracting rules in the civilian arena. I have worked on such civilian contract rules for years. It gets work done and on time.

As it sits it is typical for contracts to demand 10 years experience in .net. (Programmers will have to laugh their heads off on this one. .Net isn't that old itself)

That wouldn't surprise me at all.

[pb]

I heard a story a while back about a three-letter government agency who wanted a new air conditioning system put in. So the company doing it said, ok, I'll need to know how many people will be working in the building on average, etc., etc., and they were told that that's all classified, so they were forced to make a guess. Later, when the system didn't work so well, the same agency wanted to sue them, but it didn't get anywhere, due to the lack of fundamental information provided which was required for the optimal operation of the system in the first place. Typical.

Low bids the root of all government screwups

[porkThreeWays]

I hate the lowest bidder system. It seems like the root of all screwups in the government. It's not as black and white as you are competeing for model number 00120 of product X. All but the simplest of cases shouldn't have to go through the whole lowest bidder system. Quality is extremely important and low bids don't take that into account. This story didn't really mention whether this was a low bid deal or not, keep in mind.

Look at pretty much any government building that was built on the lowest bidder system. I can pretty much guarantee it has mold or leaking issues.

Going paperless

[Guanine]

It would be nice if, sometimes, large organizations realized that applying computers to solving the problems of a paper trail is going to cause many many problems before any benefits are seen. In working with my university, I've seen time and again the tendency of higher-ups to see computers as a panacea to any/all problems an office might confront in keeping records on things.

For example, our housing lottery system was, until this past year, an in-person process where people were assigned times, showed up, claimed rooms, and was a fair system that worked. Then, the university got all fancy pants and replaced that lottery with this unbelievably crappy system called Residential Management System. To use: kill ad blocker, only use it in IE for Windows, ensure javascript settings are correct, and then wait until the clock allows you into the online lottery system. Attempt to use a non-intuitive UI that is completely new because you couldn't look at it before while time ticks away and other people claim the rooms you wanted. Even though I got the room I wanted, the experience was horrifyingly bad.

For these large organizations, I think less can be more. Keep your paper trail, but create a highly efficient system for digitizing documents. That way, you start to have some advantages of computers (search, organization, cross-referencing) without the liability of a completely paperless system. From here, you can slowly make a transition from leaning on paper to leaning on machines. But that would be the sane way of doing things, and we're talking about a governement organization here.

Re:Sounds like the client was the primar one at fa

[ChrisC1234]

You won't understand this until you've worked as a government contractor. When you are a contractor, the government employees are god (or at least that's what they think). In 90% of the projects that I have worked on for the government, it's the government employees who cause most of the problems. You are not given the authority to tell them "NO", and you must live with their idiotic decisions, even when you know that it will just cause more problems.

Insanity

[adavies42]

The new project is even worse than the old. No software, with the possible exception of truly safety-critical stuff like missle-control or nuclear power plants, needs to cost $425 million and take four years. You could have a custom OS written in pure assembly for a quarter of that!

Re:Insanity

[jafac]

You could have a custom OS written in pure assembly for a quarter of that!

Not from a CMMI-Level 5 organization (given all the paperwork, change management, formal testing, etc. that the Government Requires). - worse still - when you're talking about a DoD contract, add DISA STIG, and IA compliance, etc. etc. etc.

And this is different from the norm because?

[pvera]

What TFA describes is the current state of general software development for hire, which has changed very little in the 18 years I have been programming.

It doesn't matter how well planned the project is, or how well educated the customer is, or the proper allocation of project champions on the client side, we all end up getting hit with b.s. look-and-feel complaints that end up taking higher priority than fixing bugs.

If you give the client the option between tweaking a template to a report, and tweaking the queries that feed the damn report so it runs 10% faster, the client will ask you to first make it pretty, then worry about the queries. If you dare ask them why, they will give you a b.s. explanation that it is all about perception. That the pretty page looks more "professional" and it looks like more work and care was put into it.

A word of warning to those of you that are new to for-profit programming: whenever somebody uses the "it looks more professional" gambit, it usually means he has no excuse and is hoping you will drop it. He asked you to do it simply to please himself. HE wants the damn color of the page changed, or that heading two pixels taller, etc.

Every couple of years we get hit with new programming methodology fads, but those don't help us with dealing with difficult customers. When you are pulling millions every year from the same two or three government contracts, the last thing your project manager wants is to piss off any of the primaries for the contracts. Extreme programming won't suddenly make your client listen to you.

Why the hell do you think that programmers are so rabidly enthusiastic about working for free for a specific open source project? These same programmers will drag their feet and hate life in general when working at their salaried jobs. At the free project a hell of a lot of the people involved in running the project will actually have a clue, while at the projects at the salaried job the norm is a lot of the people in charge won't have a clue.

Re:And this is different from the norm because?

[Scarblac]

Although this is true, it is also true that most programmers deliver crap looking, uncomfortable to use, half-assed interfaces if left to their own devices. I know I do...

The same is true of a lot of Open Source software. Fun to do, very powerful, but much of it does look unprofessional or at least unreasonably hard to use, except for other programmers who share the same mindset as the maker.

The tragedy is on one hand that the people who complain about the interface issues are themselves also totally untrained and unqualified to say what exactly needs to be changed, and on the other hand that of course a solid, great looking interface design should be made up front, in the design phase, by professionals. I don't think that ever happens.

But we programmers can start by looking a bit more critically at our own work. A bit. While bitching about those irritating users who think looking professional matters more than actual function. Right?

Story's not new

[orac2]

I'm an editor at IEEE Spectrum. Spectrum laid out out this story in September '05. (I submitted a link to Slashdot at the time, but the editors in their Infinite Wisdom rejected it). Despite our story being prominently featured in google, wikipedia, winning awards, etc, and using similar sources, and so on, the Washington Post didn't acknowledge any of Spectrum's reporting, which has prompted Spectrum's Editor-in-Chief to complain to the Washington's Post's Ombusdman thusly:

Dear Ms. Howell,

We were startled to see that the article "The FBI Upgrade that Wasn't" by
Eggen and Witte in today's Washington Post is taken directly from an article
we did in September 2005 called "Who Killed the Virtual Case File," by Harry
Goldstein (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455). His article has won 5
major magazine awards. Neither Harry or Spectrum gets credit or attribution
in the Washington Post piece.

Your writers reinterviewed all our sources, including Matthew Patton, whose
only press interview until your story today was in the Spectrum article.
They filed the same FOIA, etc.

Is this plagiarism? Not exactly. Is it shoddy, lazy journalism? You bet.

Sincerely yours,

Susan Hassler

Why don't they use a Wiki?

[Erore]

Seriously, I have no idea all of their needs requirements, but it seems like a big one is cross-connecting one set of data with another. The intricate connections of intelligence data probably defies anyones ability to design a system that could capture it all. But, a Wiki, which automatically creates links can do it for you, on the fly. So, create some Wiki templates for information about people, cases, incidents, whatever, and create Wiki links on the keywords when you fill out the templates (names, dates, code names, case numbers, and so on) and let the Wiki link everything together for you.

With a lot of data already entered, in no time you'll be typing in a routine report and find out that the name you just typed already has a Wiki page, and lo and behold! some agent in Nebraska is looking for that exact person for a child abduction. Case closed. All praise the Wiki.

Old News and No News?

[Nerd_52637]

From the original post: the FBI's attempt to modernize their department has once again failed

Failed once again? The article (you have to read the whole thing) says it's on track.

The article is 90% about the Virtual Case File system ("built" by SAIC) and it's eventual demise in early 2005, almost 2 years ago. At the end, they discuss the FBI's replacement for VCF, saying:

"Last year, FBI officials announced a replacement for VCF, named Sentinel, that is projected to cost $425 million and will not be fully operational until 2009. A temporary overlay version of the software, however, is planned for launch next year. The project's main contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., will be paid $305 million and will be required to meet benchmarks as the project proceeds. FBI officials say Sentinel has survived three review sessions and is on budget and on schedule."

Typical of Large Projects

[sheldon]

We've learned this over and over again at my company. The likelihood of scrapping the whole thing because you've got nothing is logarithmic to the cost. That is, the more the costs go up, the more likely you scrap the whole thing.

The project has to be bitten in chunks. Lay out the functionality, and then start implementing it one small piece at a time, integrating as you go along. The Big Bang approach is always doomed to failure, or explosive costs, especially when you get to the reality that to deploy you need to shut down the business for two weeks to manage the data conversion. Lot's of small $1 million projects are more likely to succeed and be at budget then one big $20 million project.

This isn't news. It's the whole momentum behind a lot of modern development techniques such as Agile, or architectural such as SOA.

There's also a corrolary that any project involving a big consulting company like EDS, CSC, Anderson(or whatever the hell their name isnow), etc. is more than likely going to cost double what it should.

Re:Typical of Large Projects

[rcw-work]

Amen. From Wikipedia's Systemantics article:

15. A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
16. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

IMHO, John Gall's observations on political systems are incredibly apropos to technical systems.

Re:Safety First

[Doc Ruby]

If you make $12 TRILLION a year, then you have the bigger problem. If you need to borrow more next year, and the year after that, and I can afford to let you slide if you just give me more control of the world you dominate, then you have the bigger problem.

The US is no deadbeat - it's doesn't fail to pay its debts. It's among the best investments ever in the world. And its collateral is by far the best to seize.

Besides, China cares nothing for shame. Its mafia government cares only for power. Power that Bush has handed it in unprecedented amounts. In exchange for lots of Chinese bribes to Bush's Republican Party

Sometimes the problem is the specs.

[Richard Steiner]

If the specifications for the system were imprecise or constantly changing (as often happens), that would limit the ability of ANY software developer to create a stable functional system on time and within budget.

I'm not going to criticise the folks who were trying to implement the system until I know a lot more about the actual conditions in which they were trying to work...

Not New Story sheds no new light

[porslap]

full disclosure: I wrote the "Who Killed the Virtual Case File" story for Spectrum, which ran last September.

Here's some more food for thought about the "reporting" behind the FBI story:

What's the news angle that warrants front page attention in the Post? That the Post reporters obtained the "unreleased" Aerospace report? Not news: the report was released to Spectrum at the end of April after nine months of litigating a Freedom of Information Act Request.

All the Post reporters had to do was google "virtual case file" and voila! the story pops up as number 1, right there for them to rewrite!

But say they are too lazy to bother googling. They just want the summary. The Spectrum article is the basis for the Wikipedia Entry on the Virtual Case File and the only external link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Case_File

The Spectrum article was the first and until the Post article, the only one to mention Matthew Patton, who was unearthed by dint of investigative reporting nowhere acknowledged in the Post article.

The Post article purports to turn a spotlight on SAIC, in part by quoting David Kay, the Iraq weapons inspector, who was a former SAIC VP--but who had absolutely no firsthand knowledge of the VCF project.

The Post article uncritcally takes FBI CIO Azmi's word that the follow up project Sentinel is on-budget and on-time, when other news outlets have recently reported about a growing sense within the FBI that this project is doomed to a fate similar to the VCF's.

I love you-and your money too.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I love helping you /.ers out."

Can I borrow $50 from you?

The real question is...

[BillGod]

Did anyone else pick up on this. from TFA: David Kay, a former SAIC senior vice president who did not work on the program but closely watched its development.... "SAIC was at fault because of the usual contractor reluctance to tell the customer, 'You're screwed up. You don't know what you're doing. This project is going to fail because you're not managing your side of the equation,' " said Kay, who later became the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. A couple things here i dont get. 1. work for a company that contracts out to the US government. A company that as screwed the pooch since day 1. Then get a JOB from the US government. 2. what the hell does being a VP of a software company give you ANY ability what so ever as a weapons inspector??

The Santa Monica bridge reconstruction

[edremy]

The I-10 bridge rebuild following the Northridge earthquake: details here

This is how big government projects *should* be done. Hire a good contractor, set a minimum and then give bonuses for good performance and penalties for bad. Did the final tally cost a lot in bonuses? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes- they fixed a major problem in amazing time and did it correctly, plus they had a bunch of blue-collar folks make serious coin working triple time, all of which got plowed back into the local economy.

You can argue it wasn't on budget due to the bonuses, but it was assumed from the beginning they'd be paying out. Since the daily economic loss to LA was higher than the daily bonus for finishing early, I'd argue it was actually under budget.

Small potatoes

[etresoft]

730K for $170 million? For the government, that is nothing. It is actually a pretty good price for that amount of code. It also seems like it was a pretty quick project too. And hundreds of SPRs a week before release? Not bad!

From my government contracting experience, none of this sounds that bad. Hopefully there is much more to the story that they aren't talking about. But from the examples they are using, SAIC's performance sounds distinctly "above average." It may have been a disaster, but TFA does not give us enough accurate information make that judgement.

This is 2005 news!

[SysKoll]

This came up last year alreaady, when the Virtual Case system was officially written off. Why on Earthis it news? It is ONE YEAR OLD, for crying out loud. Are they that slow at the Washington Post?

More likely, they are just tools for the FBI's PR branch. As in:

FBI IT boss: "We need a new IT budget for a project that will really work, this time, we swear."
FBI director: "Errr, that's risky. The previous two were embarrasing failures."
PR manager: "Let's revive last year's VCFS story and put a "lesson learned" positive spin on it!"
FBI director: "Positive spin??? On a $170 million piece of crud? Come on! Who would be stupid enough to print it?"
PR manager: "You obviously haven't opened the Washington Post recently..."

complex or simple?

[geoff lane]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if 90% of the functionality could not be provided by secure web servers and good quality wiki.

But that would be cheap and quick to implement and not much chance of making a vast profit.

They don't know what they want

[Kadin2048]

Heck, give me half that--$85 million--and I'll develop the friggin' system myself.

You'd probably think so, but I bet after the first few months of totally contradictory change requests, specification creep, and an utter lack of hard-and-fast acceptance criteria, that you'd throw up your hands, too.

You can blame the contractors all you want, but I've worked on a bunch of projects like this, and they almost always fail not because the developers weren't good or didn't know their stuff, but because there wasn't somebody on the client side who had the political (internal/office-politics, not Democrats/Republicans politics, although within the USG they're often related) capital to get all the little fiefdoms that exist inside a big organization and sit them down and say "Okay, Fuckheads: this is the system we're going to be using, this is how it's going to work, and you will use it."

Projects like this fail when you let every Tom, Dick and Harry start pushing features into it. I've seen situations where software is in the final stages of testing, and somebody decides that it would be fun to bring down the Big Boss to show them where all these millions of dollars have been spent. And the Boss will come down and take one look at the software, and immediately demand that something get changed. Often I don't think that they really care about what they're demanding, they just want to show off that they have the power to change shit, so they do.

It's stuff like that which pushes projects into failure, even if they look dead simple on paper. The problem isn't a software-engineering one, it's a customer-relations one. It's a problem of the people hiring the developers probably not having a good idea of what they wanted in software, and not having a single person in charge of it.

You can tell that happened with this FBI project, because it's obvious just from the summary that the CIO wasn't involved in the project throughout its lifecycle. He just seemingly walked in on it when it was a month away from deployment, at which point I'm sure everything was totally FUBAR. The way to have prevented this would have been to get somebody like that on board from the very beginning, who could have kicked ass and taken names and kept things under control.

Without good leadership on the client side, and a clear set of business processes, requirements, and acceptance criteria, it's not surprising that these large software projects fail as often as they do. However, as long as the failures are equally profitable to the development contracting companies as the successes, they have no problem taking on a contract even though they know the client is going to drive it into the ground and has no idea what they want. /rant

Eliminating Software Bloat

[mcrbids]

Sure, I think we all feel that way after reading this story. But the error could also lie with the Agency. If they are constantly asking for changes and new additions, what can the programmers do.

It seems to me that the idea of doing software as a project is purely fiction. Everybody knows that software has bugs, everybody knows that new features are needed as the landscape changes, and everybody knows that software can be made better. So why do people insist on this flawed idea of a project?

I've come to realize that properly specifying software in advance is unrealistic. People have a tough time thinking through what they actually need a system to do - nobody really knows what they want until they realize that what you have is not it. Then, they'll gladly whine about what's missing.

So I've come to embrace Agile software development as my strategy.

At my small, ASP software company, we don't sell software, we sell its utility. We manage information for school districts, and take all the work out. We do backups, upgrades, maintenance, etc. so the school district can get back to what they do best - teach.

We do upgrades very rapid-fire - often releasing more than once per week. We have a big, huge list of stuff we'd like to do, and as we move forward, we develop whatever's the next most important thing on the list. The list comes primarily from customer whines. We charge hourly rates for development, and basically refuse to bid by the job.

This lets us be VERY flexible as we learn more about the actual needs of the districts we work with - often changing specifications as development is happening. We don't focus on making things "bug free". We focus on fixing bugs rapidly, particularly when they cause a problem for the end user. This lets us get to what's actually needed by the customer FAST. And they LOVE IT!!!

An interesting side-effect of this methodology is that "feature creep" basically disappears - unnecessary features get pushed off because, even if they're cool, they're not what's "needed next" and so get filtered out.

When a change is needed, there's a simple evaluation of "is this important enough to do next?", and this evaluation filters out the crap ideas. Thus, problems like feature creep, bloat, and design by committee, effectively disappear as problems.

The basis for problem is Multi-faceted

[gatesvp]

Let's face it, there are lots of problems here:

• Public Money: money with no accountability will lead to overruns and failures.
• Project Scope: this type of project is huge, the next project is more huge. Large projects are more prone to mistakes, this type of project should consist of several short-term deliverables.
• Security Issues: the FBI requires security clearance, when contractors are involved, this type of red-tape will cause serious issues.
• Internal Management: the project is managed internally, but then outsourced. Any contracting firm is only accountable to deliver on its promises. If the system is failing testing then it is project management's job to ensure that promises are met. Right now, the only accoutable bodies are FBI's Internal Management, that's their job. Of course (by my first point), they're rarely accountable, so all of this money just gets flushed.

So what's the solution? Fire the Management responsible for this project.

Management is paid specifically for successful delivery of the project. If they do not deliver the project, they have failed. If they have not been fired, what incentive do they have to make this project succeed? If they cannot be fired, then we've found the fundamental flaw.

You reap what you sow here. If you the taxpayers want union-protected workers who are nearly impossible to fire, then you will get workers who will not be accountable. As long as the rules in government are focused on survival then government workers will continue to CYA (cover your ass), defer decisions and blow money to protect their current position/empire.

And don't blame the government employees here, they're playing the game. The public set the rules and employees play by the rules. People are fired for not playing by the rules. If you feel that the wrong people are (not) being fired, then request that rules of the game be changed. You reap what you sow.

For all those that bungled ...

[Van Cutter Romney]

... they should distribute copies of "The Mythical Man-Month".

I love love in the air

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to see a collection of /. posts containing nothing but sweet love, instead of all the bitter hatred, cursing, and anger that I typically see.

Um, yeah, it's called "matching"

[Howzer]

How long have you worked in journalism, Susan?

If someone else does a story, especially a big story like yours, a magazine/newspaper has two options:

1. Reprint your story. Credit you. Pay your organisation money. Look, to their readers, like schmucks because they missed a big story.

Or, and here's what usually happens:

2. Match the story. Re-interview the same sources. Go over the same ground. And then publish a very similar story. This way you not only VERIFY that the original story is true and well reported, but you appear to your readers as if you're out there getting the news.

Shoddy lazy journalism? No. That would have been uncritically reprinting your original story.

They just "matched" it. That's the industry term. As a stringer for many years (a "stringer" is a type of freelance journalist) I was called by editors many, many times to "match" stories.

You've worked in journalism for, what, a week now? Welcome to the industry. You may want to check with some people in your organisation who've been around the block a few times before firing off embarrassing (to you) letters to the Post Ombudsman.

Re:Um, yeah, it's called "matching"

[orac2]

Actually, Susan is my boss, but I'm going to assume you paid attention to where I indicated that in my original post, and are addressing your comments rhetorically. For the record Susan's been in journalism for decades, is a frequent judge for journalism awards, lectured at NYU's journalism school, etc, etc., and been the EIC of Spectrum for over six years. So drop the patronizing smarm. Finding your own angle on a story that's going around is one thing: failing to give adequate attribution is another, and is violation of, e.g., the Washington Post's ethics policy:

Attribution of material from other newspapers and other media must be total. ... It is the policy of this newspaper to give credit to other publications that develop exclusive stories worthy of coverage by The Post.

Certainly, for example, digging up Matthew Patton was an element of the VCF story that was exclusive to Spectrum's coverage, as Patton had not appeared in other media outlets before or since Spectrum's coverage until today.

Even when publications are chasing the same story, when one publication gets something unique it is normal to see lines such as "As first reported in the New York Times..." etc in stories in other outlets. A similar attribution in passing in the text was all that would have been required: instead the only attempt at attribution by the Post article is buried in the credits list for the accompanying timeline graphic, where the "Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers" is credited as a source, which is a) insufficient and b) wrong (the source was "IEEE Spectrum Magazine". Crediting the IEEE is like crediting General Electric for information taken from a "Today Show" segment.)

As a concrete example, let's look at the recent Sony-BMG DRM rootkit controversy. I did a story on that, interviewing many of the people involved, people who got interviewed by a lot of media outlets at the same time, but when I found a nugget that had been exclusivey reported by one other news outlet--a video of a DHS offcial talking to a local buisiness group about the issue--I gave credit where credit where was due. To the Washington Post in fact: "One party that cares is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes cybersecurity as part of its portfolio. On 10 November, as reported by the Washington Post, Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for homeland security, made a pointed reference to the Sony BMG protection system..." [Emphasis added]

Speaking personally as someone who hires freelancers, and who's been a staff journalist and editor for somewhat more than a week myself, if your post is indicative of your grasp of the ethical standards of journalism, you can be sure this is one editor who wouldn't call on your abilities as a stringer, or anything else.

Re:Um, yeah, it's called "matching"

[BroncoInCalifornia]

Shoddy lazy journalism? No. That would have been uncritically reprinting your original story.

They just "matched" it. That's the industry term. As a stringer for many years (a "stringer" is a type of freelance journalist) I was called by editors many, many times to "match" stories.

You've worked in journalism for, what, a week now? Welcome to the industry. You may want to check with some people in your organisation who've been around the block a few times before firing off embarrassing (to you) letters to the Post Ombudsman.

You help me understand why the mainstream press is in such bad shape these days. Shoddy Lazy Journalism is accepted as standard industry practice.

Re:They just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to agree with this. The similarities to a project I was once involved with are astounding. Millions of dollars were spent over nearly a decade building a system that didn't work. When it became clear that the large companies that had been hired to do the work couldn't get it to work, the people responsible actually did look to a smaller company and highly skilled group of programmers to fix it. In less than a year, for less than a million dollars, a team of 3 people was able to completely rewrite the application. It functioned as it was meant to, was much more efficient than the original design, and IT WORKED. There were a few small bugs that were fixed over the next few years, but they were not critical, workflow impeding issues.

Oblig. InfoWorld link to help out, too

[PCM2]

I'd just like to point out that InfoWorld covered this story extensively last year.

FBI Agent Writes Own Database, Becomes CIO

[littlewink]

While it sounds like a success story for FBI agent Depew, the IEEE Article about the VCF system underscores two gaping problems in the FBI's approach to IT:

"Unfortunately, the FBI couldn't provide him with a database program that would help organize the information, so Depew wrote one himself.

- Here we have an FBI agent with so little investigative work to do and so much time on his hands that he can write a DBMS! Why wasn't he prosecuting crimes and chasing the BGs? If indeed there was no software product available on the market, at worst he could have paid a programmer to do the job. This was a bored FBI agent who didn't want to do FBI work - he wanted to write software. But that's not his job! Depew should have been fired for writing a DBMS instead of doing investigative work. That's why specializations exists and that's why the FBI has software specialists.

Since Depew was skilled enought to write his own PC -based DBMS, the FBI decided that he should be put in charge of a multi-million dollar project. This also was a SNAFU. Writing a PC program doesn't qualify you to manage a huge software project.

One of the least known problems in law enforcement is keeping officers and agents focused on their work. They'd much rather take classes in programming, set up websites, build Access databases for the Captain, or in general do anything rather than get out on the street and do policing or legal work. The problem is, no matter what they do, they get the same pay. Policing or tracking down leads requires footwork and is physically demanding, so most veteran agents prefer a desk job.

Aha!

[stunt_penguin]

'A month before delivery, you don't have SPRs,' Azmi said. 'You're making things pretty. . . . You're changing colors.'"

So that is what Microsoft are doing with Vista. We should have known!

Third time's a charm

[bobinorlando]

The failure of a effort with the scope of an enterprise-wide project like this in an organization that is clearly "immature" from a project management, technology-management, and IT systems, processes and development standpoint should surprise no one. Never mind achieving enterprise application integration.

Every Fortune 1000 company has hurtled down this obstacle course and has the scars to prove it. It is an expensive journey, but there doesn't seem to be any way around it. As some say, "Pay now or pay later." Multiple iterations of large projects are the norm, not the exception and I believe are an inevitable learning curve that can't be avoided - a rite of passage so to speak. The only disconnect in the FBI's project was thinking that it could be done right the first time at any cost or in any timeframe.

Why? Because half the issues are cultural and derive from the dynamics of the organization which needed to change after 9/11. No vendor or project manager or JAD team can solve for that - they were caught in the middle of a paradigm and culture shift that they had no control over and may not even have been fully aware of or able to articulate and document. The fact that their JAD sessions lasted 6 months is surely proof enough that the organization wasn't ready to talk to IT developers.

Setting aside the lapses in personal competence (e.g. great effort to collect trinkets and souvenirs for scrapbooks while putting a value judgement on valid criticism and calling it "disruptive"), at the end of the day, you can't design what you can't conceive. They didn't know what they didn't know. Now, somewhat older and wiser, perhaps they know quite a bit more, but I doubt they (the FBI organization) know enough to get it right.

One of the "graybeards" in the IEEE article predicts it will be 2010 or 2011. But that will only be the second time. I say it will be more like 2015 for a third try before they will really know with any confidence what they actually knew about the hijackers before 9/11 and have enterprise application systems that are world class and interoperable both within the FBI and externally with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.