But Mulder and Scully never had computer problems!
Wherein Booman tells us about the trials and tribulations of computing at the FBI.
"Most employees had no PCs, now that is just insane. And shared terminals just to access the internet and e-mail?! Uploading documents to the system taking 12 steps?! Was it drunk? At a time when high-end processing behemoths can be purchased for a few hundred bucks, coupled with the purchasing power of an agency the size and power of the FBI, you'd think that they could spring for a CPU for each employee who needed one. And has the FBI never heard of drag-and-drop? I think it took two hours for me to teach my in their 60s parents how to do certain functions having to do with email, certainly the best and brightest this country has to offer can figure a way to upload a .pdf quicker than a 12 step program."
"So the FBI hired Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to do the $170M job. And after many months, in 2003, it was finally ready to be looked at by Zalmai Azmi, then an advisor to Director Robert Mueller and currently the technology chief of the FBI. And it was bad. Azmi had Aerospace Corp. have a look at it and see if it could be saved. "
From the WaPo article:
"In a 318-page report, completed in January 2005 and obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act, Aerospace said the SAIC software was incomplete, inadequate and so poorly designed that it would be essentially unusable under real-world conditions. Even in rudimentary tests, the system did not comply with basic requirements, the report said. It did not include network-management or archiving systems -- a failing that would put crucial law enforcement and national security data at risk, according to the report."
"So where in the hell does that leave the FBI now? Well, with new computers [yay!] but no new system. With the death of Trilogy [the name of the SAIC system], the FBI commissioned Lockheed Martin Corp. to create a new system by 2009. The new system, Sentinel, will cost $425M."
"Most employees had no PCs, now that is just insane. And shared terminals just to access the internet and e-mail?! Uploading documents to the system taking 12 steps?! Was it drunk? At a time when high-end processing behemoths can be purchased for a few hundred bucks, coupled with the purchasing power of an agency the size and power of the FBI, you'd think that they could spring for a CPU for each employee who needed one. And has the FBI never heard of drag-and-drop? I think it took two hours for me to teach my in their 60s parents how to do certain functions having to do with email, certainly the best and brightest this country has to offer can figure a way to upload a .pdf quicker than a 12 step program."
"So the FBI hired Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) to do the $170M job. And after many months, in 2003, it was finally ready to be looked at by Zalmai Azmi, then an advisor to Director Robert Mueller and currently the technology chief of the FBI. And it was bad. Azmi had Aerospace Corp. have a look at it and see if it could be saved. "
From the WaPo article:
"In a 318-page report, completed in January 2005 and obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act, Aerospace said the SAIC software was incomplete, inadequate and so poorly designed that it would be essentially unusable under real-world conditions. Even in rudimentary tests, the system did not comply with basic requirements, the report said. It did not include network-management or archiving systems -- a failing that would put crucial law enforcement and national security data at risk, according to the report."
"So where in the hell does that leave the FBI now? Well, with new computers [yay!] but no new system. With the death of Trilogy [the name of the SAIC system], the FBI commissioned Lockheed Martin Corp. to create a new system by 2009. The new system, Sentinel, will cost $425M."
"2009. That's two full election cycles of false terror alerts."
posted by Clyde at 12:38 AM
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