The FBI has laid out a strategy for a more ambitious computerized case management system than the $170 million project it abandoned because the program was beset by hundreds of deficiencies, reports the Washington Post. Zalmai Azmi, the bureau’s chief information officer, said the FBI has learned its lessons from the failure of the Virtual Case File system and will not repeat past mistakes as it embarks on a new program, code-named Sentinel. Azmi said the new system will do many of the same things VCF would have done, and more, by the time it is implemented in 2009. Azmi denied a report by U.S. News & World Report that Sentinel would cost $792 million, but he declined to give a figure. U.S. News yesterday stood by its report.
John Scofield, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, said investigators will talk with FBI officials about any concerns but that the overall point of a critical committee report remains the same. “I don’t think it changes the fundamental conclusion that the system is broken and we spent a lot of money that we shouldn’t have,” he said.
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/08/AR2005060802329.html