Virtual Case File

Virtual Case File, or VCF, was a software application developed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation between 2000 and 2005. The project was not close to completion when it was officially abandoned in January 2005, having turned into a complete fiasco for the FBI. In addition to wasting at least $100 million, the failure brought widespread criticism to the Bureau and its Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Origins

In September 2000, the FBI announced the 'Trilogy' program intended to modernize the the Bureau's outdated IT infrastructure. The project was originally scheduled to take three years and cost $380 million (although it ended up going far over budget and behind schedule). The project had three parts: purchasing modern desktop computers for all FBI offices, developing an secure high-performance WAN and LAN networks, and modernizing the FBI's suite of investigative software applications. The first two goals of Trilogy were generally succesful despite cost overruns. Replacing the Bureau's Automated Case Suport, or ACS, software system, proved difficult. ACS was a system developed in-house by the Bureau, used to manage all documents relating to cases being investigated by the FBI, enabling agents to search and analyze evidence between different cases. ACS was considered by 2000 a legacy system, comprised of many seperate stovepipe applications which were difficult and cumbersome to use. ACS was built on top of many obsolete 1970's-era software tools, including the programming language Natural, the Adabas database management system, and IBM 3270 green screen terminals. Some IT analysts believed that ACS was already obsolete when it was first deployed in 1995.

VCF Launch

Bob F. Dies, then the Bureau's Assistant Director of Information Resources and head of the Trilogy project, prepared initial plans in late 2000 for a replacement to ACS and several other outdated software applications. In June 2001 a cost-plus contract was awarded for the software aspects of the project to SAIC, the network aspects were contracted to DynCorp. Dies was the first of five people who would eventually be in charge of the project. The software was originally intended to be deployed in mid-2004, and was originally intended to be little more than a web front-end to the existing ACS data.

Problems and failure of the project

Robert Mueller was appointed Director of the FBI in September 2001, just one week before the devasting September 11 attacks. The attacks highlighted the Bureau's information sharing problems and increased pressure for Bureau to modernize. In December 2001 the scope of VCF was changed with the goal being complete replacement of all previous applications and migration of the existing data into an Oracle database. Additionally, the projects deadline was pushed up to December 2003.

Initial development was based on meeting with users of the current ACS system, SAIC broke its programmers up into eight seperate teams, which struggled to communicate. Many developers complained about the lack of an overall plan for the project, and the project's schedule slipped throughout 2002.

In reaction, a team of managers came up with an 800-page document of specification of the project. One SAIC programmer Matthew Patton, posted the document on the internet on October 26, 2002, attempting to be a whistleblower against what he saw as crippling mismanagement of the national security-critical project. Patton was quickly thrown off the project and left SAIC.

In December 2002 the Bureau asked Congress for increased funding, seeing it was well behind schedule. Congress approved an additional $123 million for the Trilogy project. In 2003, the project saw a quick succession of three different CIO's come and go before Zal Azmi took the job, which he still holds. Despite development snags throughout 2003, SAIC delivered a version of VCF in December 2003. The software was quickly deemed inadequate by the Bureau, who lamented multiple inadequacies in the software. SAIC claimed most of the FBI's complaints were changes to the specifications they had been given. After months of argument, an independent arbitrator determined that both the FBI and SAIC were at fault.

On March 24, 2004, Robert Mueller testified to Congress that the system would be operational by the summer, but most of the project's managers knew this would not happen. SAIC claimed it would require over $50 million to get the system operational, which the Bureau refused to pay. Finally, in May 2004 the Bureau agreed to pay SAIC $16 million extra to attempt to salvage the system, and also brought on Aerospace Corporation to review the project at a price of $2 million. Meanwhile, the Bureau had already begun talks for a replacement project beginning as early as 2005. Aerospace Corp.'s damning report was released in Fall 2004, at which point most observers knew the project was doomed. Development continued throughout 2004 until the project was officially scrapped in January 2005.

Reasons for failure

The project demonstrated a systematic failure of software engineering practices:

• Lack of a strong blueprint from the outset led to poor architectural decisions.
• Repeated changes in specification.
• Repeated turnover of management, which contribute to the specification problem.
• Micromanagement of software developers.
• The inclusion of many FBI Personnel who had little or no formal training in computer science as managers and even engineer on the project.
• Scope creep as the requirements were continually added to the system even as it was falling behind schedule.
• Code bloat due to changing specifications and scope creep. At one point it was estimate the software had over 700,000 lines of code.
• Addition of more people and resources to the project as it was falling behind, a violation of Brooks' law.
• Planned use of a flash cutover deployment which made it difficult to adopt the system until it was perfected.

Implications

The Bureau faced a great deal of criticism following the failure of the VCF program. While the Bureau claimed in testimony to Congress that the program lost $104 million in taxpayer money, some analysts believe the true figure is at least twice as high. In addition, the Bureau continues to use the woefully antiquated ACS system, which many analysts feel is hampering the Bureau's new counter-terrorism mission. In March 2005 the Bureau announced it is beginning a new, more ambitious software project code-named Sentinel to replace ACS, expected to be completed by 2009.