FBI computer system: late and over budget

[December 20, 2008]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- An FBI computer system to manage investigative case files will be finished late and over budget, a Justice Department audit reported Friday.

Three years ago, the FBI scrapped a botched $170 million project to build a paperless case management system. Now, the Justice Department's inspector general is raising concerns about the FBI's new system, dubbed Sentinel, over whether its construction is being properly supervised.

Originally, Sentinel was expected to cost $425 million and be completed by December 2009. The inspector general's audit reported Friday that it will now cost $451 million and be finished by June 2010.

The higher cost and later deadline will update Sentinel and let FBI agents use parts of it before the whole project is done, the report said.

However, "the FBI needs to improve the risk management process it uses to identify, monitor, control, and mitigate risks before they negatively affect Sentinel's cost, schedule, and performance," the report concluded.

Sentinel is being built by Lockheed Martin contractors in four phases.

Justice's inspector general did praise the FBI for fixing problems identified in earlier audits of Sentinel, and issued 10 recommendations to ensure the system works well going forward. The FBI said it agreed with, or had already completed, all of the recommendations.

In 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller abandoned the earlier paperless case management project, called Virtual Case File, after consultants said it was obsolete and riddled with problems.

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The report can be found at: http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0905/final.pdf

[Associated Press; By LARA JAKES]

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