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20–668 PDF 2005

S. HRG. 109–76 

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION PROGRAM, TRILOGY 

HEARING 

BEFORE A

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SPECIAL HEARING 

FEBRUARY 3, 2005—WASHINGTON, DC 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

CONRAD BURNS, Montana 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

LARRY CRAIG, Idaho 

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas 

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado 

ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia 

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

HARRY REID, Nevada 

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota 

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota 

MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana 

J. KEITH KENNEDY, Staff Director 

TERRENCE E. SAUVAIN, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, AND STATE, THE JUDICIARY, AND RELATED

AGENCIES

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico 

MITCH MCCONNELL, Kentucky 

KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON, Texas 

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas 

THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi 

(ex officio) 

————— 

DANIEL K. INOUYE, Hawaii 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont 

HERB KOHL, Wisconsin 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

ROBERT C. BYRD, West Virginia 

(ex officio) 

Professional Staff 

KATHERINE HENNESSEY

DENNIS BALKHAM

JILL SHAPIRO LONG

JESSICA ROBERTS

NANCY PERKINS

CHAD SCHULKEN (Minority) 

KATE ELTRICH (Minority) 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Opening Remarks of Senator Judd Gregg ............................................................. 1 

Trilogy Program Software ....................................................................................... 2 

Opening Remarks of Senator Patrick J. Leahy ..................................................... 2 

Possibility of Scraping Key Trilogy Components .................................................. 2 

Assessments of Visual Case Files ........................................................................... 3 

Lessons Learned ...................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared Statement of Senator Patrick J. Leahy ................................................. 4 

Statement of Senator Barbara A. Mikulski ........................................................... 6 

Technology Programs Going Bust .......................................................................... 6 

Statement of Hon. Robert S. Mueller, III, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice .......................................................................... 7 

Zalmai Azmi, Chief Information Officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

Department of Justice ......................................................................................... 7 

Opening Statement of Director Mueller ................................................................ 7 

Completed Phases of Trilogy .................................................................................. 7 

Critical IT Improvements ........................................................................................ 8 

Technology for Street Agents .................................................................................. 8 

Virtual Case File Answers ...................................................................................... 9 

Two-track Visual Case File Plan Adoption ............................................................ 10 

Responsibility for What Went Wrong .................................................................... 10 

Virtual Case File Funding ...................................................................................... 11 

Where Do We Go From Here .................................................................................. 11 

Aerospace Corporation Selection ............................................................................ 12 

Prepared Statement of Robert S. Mueller, III ....................................................... 13 

Quality of Personnel ................................................................................................ 19 

Cost-plus Contract and COTS Products ................................................................ 20 

Enterprise Architecture ........................................................................................... 21 

How Do We Get the Money Back ........................................................................... 21 

Delivery Elements of VCF on Track ...................................................................... 21 

Director Mueller’s Responses .................................................................................. 22 

Federal Systems Integration and Management Request ..................................... 23 

Budget to Complete Trilogy .................................................................................... 23 

Reprogramming ....................................................................................................... 24 

Recouping Funds from SAIC .................................................................................. 24 

Case Management ................................................................................................... 25 

Information Technology Development and Funds Recovery ................................ 25 

Possibility of Scraping SAIC ................................................................................... 26 

Decisionmaking ........................................................................................................ 27 

Evaluating the 2004 Product .................................................................................. 27 

Accelerated Funding and Oversight ....................................................................... 29 

Independent Evaluating Assistive Team ............................................................... 30 

File Management and Wireless Technology .......................................................... 30 

Prepared Statement of Arnold L. Punaro, Executive Vice President, Science 

Applications International Corporation ............................................................. 33 

Prepared Statement of Gary P. Pulliam, Vice President, Civil and Commercial 

Operations, The Aerospace Corporation ............................................................. 40 

Prepared Statement of Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General, Department of 

Justice ................................................................................................................... 60 

Prior OIG Reviews of FBI Information Technology .............................................. 61 

Background on Trilogy ............................................................................................ 62 

Results of OIG Audit of Trilogy Project ................................................................. 62 

Causes of Trilogy’s Problems .................................................................................. 65 

OIG Conclusions Regarding Trilogy Project .......................................................... 68 

Additional OIG Reviews in the FBI ....................................................................... 68 
Page

IV 

Prepared Statement of Senator Charles Grassley ................................................ 70 

Additional Committee Questions ............................................................................ 71 

Questions Submitted by Senator Patrick J. Leahy ............................................... 72 

Virtual Case File ...................................................................................................... 72 

Terrorist Screening Center ..................................................................................... 80 
(1) 

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION 

PROGRAM, TRILOGY 

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2005 

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMERCE, JUSTICE, AND STATE, 

THE JUDICIARY, AND RELATED AGENCIES, 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met at 2:01 p.m., in room SD–192, Dirksen 

Senate Office Building, Hon. Judd Gregg (chairman) presiding. 

Present: Senators Gregg, Stevens, Mikulski, and Leahy. 

OPENING REMARKS OF SENATOR JUDD GREGG

Senator GREGG. The subcommittee will come to order. I appreciate Senator Leahy being here. We haven’t really organized as an 

Appropriations Committee yet, so we do not know who is chairman 

of what and who is ranking where, but for the moment, Senator 

Leahy is serving as the acting ranking member for this subcommittee. It is nice to have my neighbor and friend from across 

the river, as we refer to it, sitting here as the Democratic leader 

on this committee. 

This hearing is called, regrettably. I wish it wasn’t being held. 

I know the Director wishes it wasn’t being held and the Bureau 

does, also, I am sure. 

For a long time, this committee has committed a large number 

of resources, a tremendous amount of effort, on working with the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to try to upgrade the technology capability of the agents on the street and the FBI generally, 

not only within the Bureau but as it integrates with the rest of the 

Government, especially on this core issue of how we fight terrorism. Part of this initiative, of course, has been the famous Trilogy program, which has had fits and starts, which has involved a 

large number of dollars and in which we have made a serious effort. 

The FBI, to begin with, needs to be congratulated. We are 31⁄2

years out from 9/11 and we haven’t been attacked, and that is in 

large part because of the excellent work of the FBI and the men 

and women of that agency who commit their lives to making sure 

that we are secure. I congratulate the Bureau for that and the 

American people thank you for it. 
2 

TRILOGY PROGRAM SOFTWARE

In addition, there have been some successes with the Trilogy program that deserve praise. The bringing online of the hardware was 

done on time and it appears to be well done. 

But the big issue is the software which runs the hardware. Here, 

we have a huge problem. It has been reported that we now have 

independent evaluations and it appears that the Virtual Case File 

(VCF) element, which is essentially the software which would give 

the agents and the FBI the capacity to adequately consolidate and 

track cases from agent to agent, from field office to field office, from 

central command back to field offices, has failed catastrophically. 

And so we have got to address why it failed, first. Second, we 

have to ask the question of who is responsible. I think that is only 

reasonable because there is a large amount of taxpayers’ dollars 

that have produced very little for the taxpayers, over $100 million 

minimum. And then, third, where do we go from here, because this 

is a critical element of having an efficient and effective FBI and especially an efficient and effective deterrent to terrorism. So now 

that we have had this very significant failure, how do we get back 

on track and what is the timeframe, what is the cost, and most importantly, can it be done? 

The Director has kindly agreed to come and testify today. I appreciate his courtesy in giving us time today on this issue. We are 

going to proceed with trying to find out what is going on and how 

we can fix the problem. We are not too interested in spending a lot 

of time on the history of the blame. We are more interested in figuring out how we fix the problem. 

Senator Leahy. 

OPENING REMARKS OF SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY

Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree very much 

with what you had to say. Mr. Chairman, perhaps it is our New 

England upbringing that we get somewhat worried about the 

amount of money that has been put in here and will never be recovered. 

We have an important issue for the FBI in this. I am glad that 

Director Mueller and Inspector General Fine have returned to testify. I appreciate the time Director Mueller spent with me yesterday, he and Mr. Azmi and others. I made very clear to him my concern at that time on this and some other subjects. 

POSSIBILITY OF SCRAPING KEY TRILOGY COMPONENTS

I know Groundhog Day was yesterday, but I think of that movie, 

‘‘Groundhog Day,’’ and the sense of de`ja ́ vu the movie had. It is unbelievable, given the years that have gone by, the advances in technology that have marched on in the meantime, that we are here 

today to discuss whether or not to completely scrap a key component of the Trilogy project, the long-anticipated Virtual Case File. 

It has been kind of a train wreck in slow motion, unfortunately, at 

a cost of $170 million to the taxpayers, or a very large part of that. 

We don’t know how much of a cost to the public. 

I don’t want New England reserve to fool anybody to think that 

my reaction getting the initial reports of this was much short of ap-
3 

oplectic, this unraveling of the Trilogy project, or as some FBI 

agents have told me privately, the tragedy project. It would bring 

the FBI’s information technology into the 21st century. That 

shouldn’t be rocket science. Most companies have to do that. It 

should be doable. 

This has been a long and tortured effort. Back in 2000, when we 

began discussions about Trilogy as a way to bring the FBI’s antiquated system into the 21st century, we were warned of dire consequences to our security and our safety if the improvements 

weren’t imminent, if we didn’t give them the money so that it could 

be done right away. Well, we responded. We devoted $581 million 

to the project. 

ASSESSMENTS OF VISUAL CASE FILES

But time and again, it has fallen victim to escalating costs and 

implementation concerns, mismanagement, and so on. The estimated December 2003 deadline for completion of it passed unmet. 

The program was then dubbed unusable. We now know that it is 

being tested as the so-called ‘‘Virtual Case File (VCF/Light).’’ The $170 million seems to have evaporated. Maybe some of this, 

we can get back from those supplying software and hardware. But 

what bothers me is that a lot of the delays in communications, even 

though we asked in different committees—and I am on the authorizing committee as well as the appropriating committee—we never 

seemed—they weren’t communicated to Congress, and it wasn’t because Republicans and Democrats alike weren’t asking. We were. 

The FBI has repeatedly pressed for realistic assessments of VCF, 

but getting straight answers from the Department of Justice and 

the FBI have proved so difficult that we finally turned to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for an independent assessment. It is only in the shadow of that impending Office of Inspector 

General (OIG) report that suddenly this comes to light. We have 

a classic example of too many cooks with the unpredictable results. 

The initial contract for VCF was modified 36 times. During this 

period, the FBI had five different chief information officers, I am 

told 10 different project managers. Beyond that shuffling, several 

teams were brought into the process at various times to help set 

requirements, assess deliverables, and manage costs. Even the efforts of the GAO have been thwarted by changes in personnel and 

trying to get answers. 

Technology changes rapidly, I appreciate that. But the private 

sector has to make these decisions under similar pressures and it 

is not too much to demand the same from the FBI. 

The September 11 attacks did change the FBI’s assessment on 

what is needed. I appreciate that. But 3 years have passed for the 

FBI to regroup. The Congress has responded with the necessary financial resources. 

LESSONS LEARNED

Now, this has been a very, very expensive lesson learned program. Congress paid for something to be built, not for learning 

what has to be built through trial and error. We have to protect 

the American people. To do this effectively, the FBI has to have 

state-of-the-art technology that works. It is a vital task. Now we 
4 

are going to have to spend more money to buy what we thought 

we bought. 

But I think that just simply spending money is not going to be 

enough. We can’t just keep throwing money at the problem. I think 

that the FBI has got to stop hiding its problems. The Department 

of Justice has to stop hiding its problems. You know, you have a 

lot of us up here who have been very, very supportive of law enforcement, very supportive of the FBI. I have done this for 30 years 

in both appropriations and authorizations. But, you know, the camel’s back is broken, and if you think that some of us who have been 

supportive in the past are going to keep on spending money and 

we are not getting answers, or are told all is well when it is not, 

it is just not going to work. 

Mr. Chairman, I agree with you. It is unfortunate we have to be 

having this hearing, but thank goodness we are. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you. 

[The statement follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY

I commend Chairman Gregg for convening this hearing today. This is an important issue for the FBI and its missions in protecting the country, and I appreciate 

the opportunity to serve as ranking member on this hearing. I am pleased that both 

Director Mueller and Inspector General Fine have returned to testify, I welcome 

them and the other witnesses, and I look forward to their testimony. 

I know that Groundhog Day was actually yesterday, but the subject of today’s 

hearing—problems the FBI is having with its computers—calls to mind the sense 

of de ́ja` vu that the film of the same name captured so well. It is unbelievable given 

the years that have gone by and the advances in technology that have marched on 

in the meantime that we are here today to discuss whether or not to completely 

scrap a key component of the FBI’s Trilogy project—the long-anticipated Virtual 

Case File. This program has been a train wreck in slow motion, at a cost of $170 

million to American taxpayers and an unknown cost to public safety. And sadly, 

VCF is but one of many Trilogy problems at the FBI. 

Apoplectic would be too mild a description of my reaction to the unraveling of the 

Trilogy project—or the Tragedy project, as some FBI agents have taken to calling 

it. Bringing the FBI’s information technology into the 21st Century should not be 

rocket science; it is a complicated process, but it is certainly doable. 

The history of the FBI’s efforts to upgrade its information technology has been 

long and tortured. Back in 2000, when we began discussions about Trilogy as a way 

to bring the FBI’s antiquated systems into the 21st Century, we were warned of dire 

consequences to our security and our safety if the improvements were not imminent. 

The picture was bleak. The Bureau had no functional e-mail system at the time, 

and over 13,000 desktop computers that were years old could not run basic software 

packages. Congress responded by devoting $581 million to the effort. 

These deficiencies had real-world consequences, hampering the FBI’s ability to 

share important and time-sensitive information internally and externally with other 

intelligence and law enforcement agencies. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary 

Committee, 9/11 Commissioner Slade Gorton noted: ‘‘[I]nformation technology 

problems... have hampered the FBI’s ability to know what it knows for years’’ 

and led to the now infamous incident of the Phoenix memo on terrorists and flight 

schools that never made it to the attention of top officials who should have seen it. 

Time and again, the project has fallen victim to escalating costs, imprecise planning, mismanagement, implementation concerns, and delays. The necessary network, hardware and software upgrades were not delivered in a timely manner. Consequently, the estimated December 2003 deadline for completion of VCF passed 

unmet. The program was then dubbed ‘‘unusable,’’ and we now know that what is 

being tested is a significantly scaled-down version, a so-called ‘‘VCF-lite.’’ And in 

keeping with the past disappointments and delays, we have recently learned that 

the future of this ‘‘lite’’ version remains in question. 

Congress was led to believe that VCF was progressing on track despite some 

delays and cost overruns on the project. Yet now we hear that VCF may never be 

completed at all. In effect, that means for Congress, for the FBI and, most impor-
5 

tantly, for the American taxpayer, this has been $170 million in ‘‘vaporware’’—widely advertised, but never actually available for use. 

There has been no shortage of opportunities for straightforward reporting to the 

oversight committees of Congress as things began to come off the tracks, including 

numerous hearings, punctuated by several damaging reports from OIG, the Government Accountability Office, and the National Research Council. These delays and 

disappointments were never communicated to Congress, and it is not because Congress failed to ask. The FBI was repeatedly pressed for realistic assessments of 

VCF. But getting straight answers from the Justice Department and the FBI proved 

so difficult that Congress finally turned to the Government Accountability Office for 

an independent assessment. It was only in the shadow of an impending OIG report 

that the reality of the situation has come to light. 

Director Mueller testified before the Judiciary Committee last May and was specifically asked about the status of VCF. He testified then that ‘‘we are on track to 

deliver elements of virtual case file capabilities by the end of this year. We are in 

negotiations with our contractor on finishing out that last part of the Trilogy 

project... But I do believe that when we are concluded this year, we will have 

the foundation for cutting-edge technology for an organization our size.’’ 

What was not presented in this hearing was any acknowledgement or even any 

hint that progress had halted and the project was, in fact, falling apart. This was 

an opportunity for Director Mueller to show some accountability and be upfront 

with Congress about the problems with the project. The FBI missed another opportunity to come clean three months later when the Committee convened a hearing 

on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations. 

It appears the FBI bears the brunt of the responsibility for this derailment; a classic example of too many cooks, with the predictable results. The initial contract for 

VCF was modified 36 times. During this period, the FBI had five different Chief Information Officers and, reportedly, 10 different project managers. Beyond all that 

shuffling at the top, several teams were brought into the process at various times 

to help set requirements, assess deliverables and manage costs. Even the recent efforts of the GAO to audit the project have been thwarted by repeated changes in 

the personnel responding to auditors’ inquiries. 

It is not clear to me even yet what the FBI truly knew and whether the Bureau 

articulated what it needed, though initial reports suggest the FBI made an art form 

of redefining and changing its requirements. The project’s contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, has said it received changes on almost a daily 

basis—some small, but many, significant. Unbelievably, the OIG reports that the 

process for defining the requirements and baselines for the VCF continues to this 

day. I look forward to hearing from Inspector General Fine on this matter. The Trilogy project is reminiscent of other FBI technology failures where the Bureau has 

ambitiously tried to build the latest and greatest without properly assessing its 

needs. The FBI custom-built the Carnivore system on the basis that it was ‘‘far better’’ than any commercial product, but after very little use, recently scrapped it for 

an undisclosed commercial product. 

Technology changes rapidly, and I appreciate the FBI’s efforts to keep pace. But 

the private sector has had to make these hard decisions with similar pressures, and 

it is not unreasonable to demand as much from the FBI. The September 11th attacks did change the FBI’s assessment of what it needed. But three years have 

passed for the Bureau to regroup, and in that time Congress has responded with 

the necessary financial resources to assist the Bureau in adapting in these tasks. 

This has been an outrageously expensive lessons-learned training program. Congress paid for something to be built, not for learning about what to build through 

trial and error. 

I am aware of the concerns that have also been raised about the performance of 

SAIC, the project’s contractor, and I do expect SAIC to account for any failures in 

its work product. 

Our highest priority must be to protect the American people. To do its job effectively, the FBI must have state-of-the-art technology that works. This is a vital task, 

and now Congress will have to provide still more funding to get the job done. But 

throwing money at this chronic problem alone will not fix it. The FBI must stop hiding its problems and begin confronting them. The FBI needs to engage in a full 

working partnership with the authorizing and appropriations committees to which 

the Bureau is accountable to for programs like this. Doing that will better protect 

the public, conserve tax dollars, and save everyone’s time. 

The camel’s back is broken. For a course correction to succeed, there must be a 

true accounting, and it is going to start today. We want to hear what went wrong, 

who was responsible, and how we are going to move forward. 
6 

Senator GREGG. Traditionally, we haven’t had opening statements beyond the chairman and the ranking member, but obviously, participation today is by folks who are really interested in 

this and I didn’t know whether you wanted to make a statement. 

STATEMENT OF SENATOR BARBARA A. MIKULSKI

Senator MIKULSKI. Just very briefly, Mr. Chairman. First of all, 

I want to thank you for holding this hearing. You have always 

stood sentry over getting taxpayers’ value for taxpayers’ dollar, and 

you were the first to hold public hearings on the issue of terrorism, 

so we thank you for your leadership. 

Also to Senator Leahy, in the absence of a permanent Chair of 

CJS, we thank you for filling in. It is also very possible that if the 

draconian restructuring program of the House would ever go 

through, I might Chair this subcommittee, which—— 

Senator GREGG. Or be ranking. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Or just be ranking. 

Oh, no, that is another restructuring. 

Senator LEAHY. I wasn’t going to say a word. 

Senator MIKULSKI. I am sorry. 

Senator LEAHY. I am just staying out of this one. 

Senator MIKULSKI. I am sorry. I was so excited. That was regime 

change, not restructuring. 

But I also wanted to be here as a member of the committee. I 

am a member of the Intelligence Committee. We went through the 

9/11 inquiry and we were absolutely very clear that our FBI needed 

to modernize itself. We are proud of the FBI and we are proud of 

the fact that we have asked them to retool their mission, retool 

their people, and retool their technology. And now, as we have 

moved forward to the reform necessary for both intelligence and 

FBI, I think the Director is working very hard on this retooling of 

the mission. The people that he has hired have helped him do this. 

Now we have to make sure that we have the right technology to 

do this. 

TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS GOING BUST

Right after 9/11, we found out that the FBI had 13,000 desktop 

computers that were outdated and dysfunctional. We also saw that 

that whole idea of watch lists talking to each other, offices talking 

to each other, and so on was outdated. We have got to get this back 

on track. 

As someone who has looked at these big technology programs, 

whether it was in transportation, whether it was out of the VA/ 

HUD Subcommittee, they have always been a bust. I think maybe 

we have to reexamine that rather than inventing things, that we 

need to look at how to buy things off the shelf, how we can move 

quicker, faster, cheaper, and save a lot of heartache, a lot of heartburn, and a lot of taxpayers’ dollars. 

But I know today is the day for getting the FBI and its financial 

and computer programs back on track and I look forward to working with you in any capacity in which I might find myself. 

Senator GREGG. I look forward to that, also. 

Senator MIKULSKI. I am ready to retool if I have to. 
7 

Senator GREGG. Mr. Director, we are ready to hear your thoughts 

and explanations. 

STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT S. MUELLER, III, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL 

BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

ACCOMPANIED BY ZALMAI AZMI, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

OPENING STATEMENT OF DIRECTOR MUELLER

Mr. MUELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Mikulski, Senator Stevens. I do want to thank you, believe it or not, for the opportunity to be here today to discuss this issue because it is important. It is important to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 

it is important to the country, and I know it is important to the 

Congress. 

I do want to spend some time discussing the questions that you, 

Mr. Chairman, have raised. As all of us know, the Virtual Case 

File is a case management system constituting the third prong of 

the FBI’s mission technology program and is known as Trilogy. It 

was first developed in 2001. 

COMPLETED PHASES OF TRILOGY

I want to point out at the outset that the first two phases of Trilogy have been successfully completed and, as the chairman pointed 

out, have been deployed and have greatly enhanced our information technology capabilities. We now have deployed a high-speed 

network enabling our FBI offices around the country and around 

the world to share data, including audio, video, and image files. 

Our new IT infrastructure also provides for secure communications 

with our intelligence community partners. 

We have replaced those outdated computers with more than 

30,000 new desktop computers with modern software applications, 

and we have replaced nearly 4,000 printers. We have 1,600 scanners, 465 servers, and as important, 1,400 routers that have been 

installed. 

As a result of the implementation of the first two prongs of Trilogy, FBI personnel can now utilize a uniform suite of software that 

enables our agents and our support to share information quickly, 

reliably, and securely. 

These efforts have also provided a foundation for a number of 

new capabilities to support the FBI’s counterterrorism mission. I 

will point out at the outset that after September 11, while Trilogy 

and bringing Trilogy home was tremendously important, it also at 

that time was critically important to us to take our 

counterterrorism information throughout the Bureau, information 

from elsewhere on counterterrorism, and place that information in 

an updated investigative data warehouse. We now have that information, that investigative data warehouse, that has that information and provides to special agents, intelligence analysts, and members of joint terrorism task forces a single access point to more 

than 47 sources of counterterrorism data that was only in the past 

available through separate stovepiped systems. 

We have new analytical tools used across multiple data sources, 

providing a more complete view of the information possessed by the 
8 

Bureau. Users can now search up to 100 million pages of international terrorism-related documents and other structured records, 

such as addresses and phone numbers, in seconds. They can also 

search rapidly for pictures of known terrorists and match or compare the pictures with other individuals in minutes rather than 

days. 

CRITICAL IT IMPROVEMENTS

Other critical IT improvements have enabled the FBI to proceed 

with unprecedented connectivity with our partners in the intelligence and law enforcement communities. The SCION network 

gives FBI personnel the ability to electronically receive, disseminate, and share compartmented sources of intelligence information 

amongst our various operating divisions and with the intelligence 

community. 

But despite these significant improvements, the Virtual Case 

File, which is a case management application for improving efficiency and records management, is not yet available to our personnel. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, as I have expressed in private 

to yourself and Senator Leahy, there is no one who is more frustrated, no one who is more disappointed than I at the delays we 

have encountered in deploying VCF. I do believe, however, it is important to the American people to understand what the failure to 

deliver VCF means, and what it does not mean, to the FBI agent 

on the street. 

TECHNOLOGY FOR STREET AGENTS

I want to point out that the FBI agent on the street has the 

state-of-the-art technology when it comes to surveillance. Without 

getting into sensitive and classified information, I can assure you 

that our ability to intercept and decipher communications and to 

otherwise monitor criminal activity and gather intelligence is 

among the best in the world. The FBI agent on the street is able 

to communicate and share data securely, whether by telephone, 

computer, or teleconference with our partners, not only in the FBI 

but also in the law enforcement and intelligence communities in 

the United States and around the world. 

What the agent on the street does not have is a user-friendly format for inputting investigative and intelligence information into 

his or her computer. Instead, the agent faces a cumbersome, timeconsuming process of preparing a paper record of that information, 

seeking the necessary approvals, and then uploading that document into an existing database. If the agents had the Virtual Case 

File capabilities we had envisioned, they could directly input information into their computers, receive electronic approvals, and with 

the push of a button upload information into the database where 

it would be immediately available to others who need to access it, 

whether it be an agent, an analyst, or other Federal employees and 

State and local officials. 

And by saying this, Mr. Chairman, I do not mean to say that this 

does not affect our capacity to protect the United States. To the extent that we are delayed, to the extent that we do not have this 

Virtual Case File, we are not as effective or efficient as we should 
9 

be in protecting the people of the United States, whether it be from 

terrorism or criminals within the country. 

VIRTUAL CASE FILE ANSWERS

Mr. Chairman, this afternoon, I would like to take this opportunity to answer the three basic questions about Virtual Case File 

which you elucidated in your opening statement. First of all, what 

went wrong? Second, who is responsible for what went wrong? And 

third, where do we go from here? 

What went wrong? The development of the VCF application 

started with a relatively simple concept that the FBI needed a 

modern case management system. As the FBI’s mission evolved, 

particularly over the past 3 years, so did our technological needs. 

And as a result of these changes and other issues, the FBI faced 

obstacles in a number of key areas relating to the VCF program. 

We did not have a complete set of defined VCF requirements 

when the original contract was signed in June 2001, and we did 

not have a finalized set until the summer of 2002. 

The contract which we entered into was based on hours worked, 

a cost plus award fee, and we now know that these types of contracts are difficult to manage. 

But from our perspective, we also lacked skill sets in our personnel, such as qualified software engineering, program management, and contract management. 

We underestimated the complexity of interfacing with our legacy 

systems, of addressing our security needs, and of establishing an 

enterprise architecture. 

Recognizing many of those internal limitations originally, we did 

decide to outsource the development of VCF, including contract 

management and technology development. The contractor responsible for delivering the user applications component, including 

VCF, was Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). I 

know you are to hear from them today, as well. 

Following the establishment of the solid requirements in November 2002, the original target date for completing VCF was December 2003. I personally received a demonstration of the VCF software in November 2003, and was impressed by what I saw at that 

time. I anticipated that we would be moving forward expeditiously 

to the installing of that VCF on our agents’ support computers in 

the relatively near future once we had upgraded all of our computers from a Windows 98 operating system to a Windows 2000 operating system. I, at that time, believed that we were on the right 

track to deliver that which our employees were seeking. 

When SAIC delivered the first product in December 2003, we immediately identified a number of deficiencies, 17 at the outset. That 

soon cascaded to 59 and ultimately to 400 problems with that software. In April 2004, we provided SAIC with a document outlining 

the corrections we felt were needed and SAIC ultimately agreed to 

remedy the deficiencies and deliver full functionality, but only at 

a cost, an additional $56 million, and a timetable, an additional 

year, which at that time we had problems with. 
10 

TWO-TRACK VISUAL CASE FILE PLAN ADOPTION

So in June 2004, I decided to adopt a new two-track plan for 

VCF, an initial operating capability, or IOC, and a full operating 

capability, which is denominated as FOC. My goal with the IOC 

was to identify and utilize some portion of the product developed 

by SAIC since the fully functional case management system as we 

had anticipated had not been delivered. The portion of Virtual Case 

File currently being piloted is the automated workflow process. 

Last month, several hundred employees in the New Orleans field 

office began using the system as their document routing system 

and will continue to do so through the end of March. 

The purpose of this pilot is to test drive the workflow concept, 

validate the human-computer interface, create an electronic interface to our legacy systems, access the network performance, and 

develop and deliver an enterprise-level training curriculum. The 

IOC, the initial operating capability, is on track to accomplish 

these objectives. 

As part of two-track plans, the FBI contracted with multiple 

independent vendors to perform the following tasks: Examine the 

Virtual Case File application delivered by SAIC in December 2003, 

to determine if this software, as designed, would meet the FBI’s 

operational, security, and performance requirements. Aerospace 

Corporation was tasked to determine if the Virtual Case File application is scalable and can be maintained and enhanced easily. 

They were also asked to examine the current technologies and 

vendors as well as available commercial off-the-shelf or COTS, 

products. They were also tasked to look at those products designed 

for other agencies to determine the best combination to meet the 

FBI’s needs. This effort was conducted jointly, not only with ourselves and the Department of Justice, but also with the Department of Homeland Security, to ensure our case management efforts 

would be interoperable. In many ways, as several of you have 

pointed out, the pace of technological innovation and the need for 

information sharing has overtaken our original vision for Virtual 

Case File and there are now products to suit our purposes that did 

not exist when Trilogy was first envisioned. 

We have also asked a different contractor to review and revalidate our users’ requirements because the mission of the FBI has 

evolved and there are new requirements for information and intelligence sharing among different entities. 

Last week, we received the final version of the Aerospace report 

and provided copies to this subcommittee and to the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Justice. 

RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT WENT WRONG

Question number two, who is responsible for what went wrong? 

Mr. Chairman, I am responsible, at least in part, for some of the 

setbacks experienced with Trilogy and Virtual Case File. I agree 

with the OIG’s findings that FBI management did not exercise adequate control over the Trilogy project and its evolution in the early 

years of the project. 

Let me also add that I agree with the OIG’s finding that with 

the new organizational structure and authority given to the Chief 
11 

Information Officer (CIO), Zal Azmi, in July 2004, project management has now been given the attention that was needed throughout the Trilogy project. Zal Azmi is here with me today. He started 

with me as a special advisor on technology issues when I first saw 

problems in the fall of 2003. He became the Chief Information Officer in spring of last year, and through his leadership, the FBI has 

implemented a coordinated strategic approach to information technology. My prepared statement outlines a number of the steps that 

Mr. Azmi has taken as CIO and some of the accomplishments of 

him and the people with whom he works. 

I also will say, and I think it is shared in the testimony from 

SAIC, that in addition to our shortcomings in overseeing the Trilogy project, the contractor also bears some responsibility. As discussed above, we retained a not-for-profit federally funded contractor, Aerospace Corporation, to conduct an independent 

verification and validation review of the Virtual Case File, the VCF 

software as delivered by SAIC in December 2003. 

Aerospace in its report concluded that, and I quote, ‘‘lack of effective engineering discipline has led to inadequate specification, design, and development of VCF.’’ In the course of their review, Aerospace could find no assurance that the requirements were satisfied 

nor that the architecture concept of operations and requirements 

were correct and complete. When we received this report recently, 

we were indeed disappointed. 

VIRTUAL CASE FILE FUNDING

With regard to the funding of Virtual Case File, this committee 

has been supportive of our efforts and has generously provided the 

funding we have needed to overcome obstacles and attempt to move 

forward. Mr. Chairman, you and other members are undoubtedly 

concerned, as am I, about losses we have incurred as well as future 

investments we will need to make in Virtual Case File. 

We have invested approximately $170 million in VCF to date. It 

is my understanding that our vendors have delivered services and 

reusable equipment worth $53.3 million and that we have $12.2 

million in unspent obligations on our VCF contracts. This results 

in a loss of approximately $104.5 million. I do not take that lightly. 

It is $104.5 million that we will not have to spend on other things. 

It is $104.5 million of the taxpayers’ dollars and I am tremendously 

troubled by that and that is an understatement. I am disheartened 

by this result, but remain confident in our ability now to deliver 

a case management system to our employees’ desktops in the future. 

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE

Last question, where do we go from here? The development and 

deployment of an investigative case management system remains 

the top priority of the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Some 

components of VCF that have been developed will be incorporated 

into the long-term solution. We will leverage the permanent interface that has been established with our legacy data systems. We 

will assess the impact of an automated workflow system on a field 

office and headquarters structure as well as the performance of a 

case management system on the new Trilogy network, during, and 
12 

at the end, of the pilot testing period. We will take with us a number of valuable lessons learned in contract management, project 

management, policies and procedures, modular development and 

deployment, data security, and records management. 

Not surprisingly, the pace of technology has overtaken the development of unique software applications for the Bureau and we may 

turn to commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS-based products, to give 

us that which we had envisioned in Virtual Case File. We are currently reviewing the Aerospace reports which recommend that we 

discard VCF and start over with a COTS-based product and which 

provide their evaluation of COTS products as well as products in 

use by other Government agencies. As we review these reports, we 

will continue to consult with industry leaders to ensure that we develop a sound long-term plan for our IT needs. 

We will move forward with a phased, and I emphasize a phased, 

development and deployment plan as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Every phase will provide a set of services that the FBI workforce needs and which was part of the original VCF plan. 

I cannot at this time estimate when this will occur, nor can I determine right now what we will need in terms of additional funding. I will tell you that we will work closely with this committee 

and other committees of Congress to develop the future for a Virtual Case File, and with the work of Mr. Azmi and the people he 

has brought in, with input from persons outside the Bureau, I am 

confident that we, in a phased way, can replicate that which we 

had envisioned in 2000 and 2001 as being a part of Virtual Case 

File. 

AEROSPACE CORPORATION SELECTION

Mr. Chairman, before I conclude, let me say that I have reviewed 

the testimony of other witnesses and there are two questions that 

I would anticipate and would like to answer at the outset. 

The first question is, how did we select Aerospace Corporation to 

conduct the independent verification and validation review, and I 

am going to pass that over to Mr. Azmi. 

I am going to start on the second question, and that is why did 

we limit Aerospace’s review to the December 2003 delivery of Virtual Case File and not include that which was produced in December 2004 and that which we are testing now. 

I will tell you, last spring, in 2004, after we saw the problems 

we had in the version that was provided in December 2003, we entered into negotiations with SAIC, and at the end of those negotiations it was clear from their leaders that we would have to invest 

another $56 million and an additional year of time to complete the 

project as we had anticipated with SAIC. At that time, in consultation with Mr. Azmi, I felt we needed an independent review of the 

work that had been produced by SAIC and that is the version that 

we had to review at that time. I am comfortable in having Aerospace or anyone else review the initial operating capacity that is 

currently being tested in New Orleans and here at the FBI headquarters. 

Mr. Azmi may want to provide more input into why we asked 

Aerospace to review the December 2003 delivery, and I would also 
13 

ask him to answer the question as to why we selected Aerospace, 

because I believe that is when it would be forthcoming, and then 

I will close. 

Mr. AZMI. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank 

you for the opportunity to appear here today and respond to your 

questions. 

On the question, why we selected Aerospace to conduct an evaluation of the VCF delivery of 2003, it was mainly a recommendation made by the Director of the Science Board. When I arrived in 

November 2003, I realized that the Director already had a number 

of boards and advisors that were actually providing input to the future of the information technology within the Bureau. I met with 

the Science Board—the members are former CIOs, technologists 

from both the Government and private sector—and I presented the 

dilemma that we were facing with VCF. 

The software was delivered with 17 deficiencies. We decomposed 

those 17 deficiencies to 59. Later on, we found 400 problems with 

the software, and that was the recommendation of the Board, that 

we conduct an independent evaluation. 

We had selected three sources of evaluators. Aerospace was selected because it was a federally funded organization, a nonprofit 

organization. It had worked with the Department of Defense (DOD) 

and the intelligence community for more than four decades. They 

were also capable of providing in-depth software engineering review that we needed. For those reasons, we selected Aerospace to 

conduct an independent evaluation of the VCF software. Thank 

you, sir. 

Mr. MUELLER. Anything to add on why we selected the December 

2003 version to be evaluated? 

Mr. AZMI. I can add only one point. When I arrived, I looked at 

the contract and the contract stated specifically that SAIC will deploy a working version of VCF by December 17, 2003. When I 

looked at all of the capabilities of VCF, what should have been delivered and what was delivered, we decided if we are going to invest in the software for the future of the FBI, if we will have to 

stay with this software, we need to understand what the software 

will provide to us, and that is one of the reasons why we selected 

to evaluate that software that was promised to the Bureau from 

the outset of support of this contract. 

PREPARED STATEMENT

Mr. MUELLER. So in closing, those hopefully answer the questions that would have been asked. I want to thank the subcommittee, you in particular, Mr. Chairman, for your support 

throughout this endeavor, your patience, understanding your frustration. Mr. Azmi and I are happy to respond to any questions that 

the subcommittee may have. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you, Mr. Director, and thank you for your 

forthrightness. 

[The statement follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT S. MUELLER, III 

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Senator Leahy, and Members of the Committee. 

Thank you for the opportunity to appear this afternoon and address concerns relat-
14 

ing to the FBI’s Virtual Case File system, or VCF. As you know, VCF is a case management system constituting the third prong of the FBI’s information technology 

program known as Trilogy. The first two phases of Trilogy have been successfully 

completed and deployed, and have greatly enhanced our Information Technology 

(IT) capabilities. 

—We have deployed a high-speed, secure network, enabling personnel in FBI offices around the country and around the world to share data, including audio, 

video and image files. Our new IT infrastructure also provides for secure communications with our Intelligence Community partners. 

—We have also replaced outdated hardware with more than 30,000 new desktop 

computers with modern software applications, nearly 4,000 new printers, 1,600 

scanners, 465 servers, and 1,400 routers. 

As a result of the implementation of two major prongs of the Trilogy initiative, 

FBI personnel can now utilize a uniform suite of software that enables them to 

share information quickly, reliably, and securely. These efforts have also provided 

a foundation for a number of new capabilities to support the FBI’s counterterrorism 

mission. The new capabilities include: 

—The FBI’s Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW) now provides Special Agents, 

Intelligence Analysts, and members of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) 

with a single access point to more than 47 sources of counterterrorism data, including information from FBI files, other government agency data, and open 

source news feeds, that were previously available only through separate, stovepiped systems. 

—New analytical tools are used across multiple data sources providing a more 

complete view of the information possessed by the Bureau. Users can search up 

to 100 million pages of international terrorism-related documents and other 

structured records such as addresses and phone numbers in seconds. They can 

also search rapidly for pictures of known terrorists and match or compare the 

pictures with other individuals in minutes rather than days. Coupled with sophisticated state-of-the-art search tools, the IDW enhances the FBI’s ability to 

identify relationships across cases quickly and easily. 

—Other critical IT improvements have enabled the FBI to proceed with unprecedented connectivity with our partners in the Intelligence and Law Enforcement 

Communities. The Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information Operational Network (SCION) gives FBI personnel the ability to electronically receive, disseminate, and share compartmented sources of intelligence information 

among the FBI’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence operations and with 

the Intelligence Community. SCION also provides for video teleconferencing at 

the TOP SECRET level. 

Despite these significant improvements, the Virtual Case File—a case management application for improving efficiency and records management—is not yet available to our personnel. Mr. Chairman, no one is more frustrated and disappointed 

than I at the delays we have encountered in deploying VCF. But I believe it is important for the American people to understand what the failure to deliver VCF 

means—and what it doesn’t mean—to the FBI Agent on the street. 

The FBI Agent on the street has state-of-the-art technology when it comes to surveillance. Without getting into sensitive and classified information, I can assure you 

that our ability to intercept and decipher communications and to otherwise monitor 

criminal activity and gather intelligence is among the best in the world. The FBI 

Agent on the street is able to communicate and share data securely, whether by 

telephone, computer, or teleconference with our partners, not only in the FBI, but 

also in the law enforcement and intelligence communities, in the United States and 

around the world. The Agent on the street is able to access FBI documents electronically on our existing computer systems and to search those documents using multiple search technologies. 

What the Agent on the street does not have is a user-friendly format for inputting 

investigative and intelligence information into his or her computer. Instead, the 

Agent faces a cumbersome, time-consuming process of preparing a paper record of 

that information, seeking the necessary approvals, then uploading the document 

into an existing database. If Agents had the VCF capabilities we envisioned, they 

could directly input information into their computers, receive electronic approvals, 

and, with the push of a button, upload information into the database where it would 

be immediately available to others who need access to it—Agents, analysts, other 

federal employees, and state and local officials. 

I want to emphasize, however, that although VCF would enable us to do our jobs 

more efficiently, the absence of VCF does not prevent us from fulfilling our 

counterterrorism, intelligence and law enforcement missions. Again, VCF is not a 
15 

database or an analytical tool used to connect the dots—it is a case management 

system that will make it easier for Agents to input and share the dots. 

Having said that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your longstanding interest in 

the VCF program and your commitment to hold a public hearing to examine the 

setbacks which have plagued this program. This afternoon, I would like to take the 

opportunity to answer three basic questions about VCF: (1) What went wrong? (2) 

Who is responsible for what went wrong? and (3) Where do we go from here? 

What Went Wrong? 

The development of the VCF application started with a very simple concept—the 

FBI’s need for a modern case management system. As the FBI’s mission evolved 

over the past several years, so did our technological needs. As a result of these 

changes and other issues, the FBI faced obstacles in a number of key areas relating 

to the VCF program. 

—We did not have a complete set of defined VCF requirements when the original 

contract was signed in June 2001. 

—The contract was based on hours worked—cost plus an award fee. We now know 

these types of contracts are difficult to manage. Although the requirements 

were solidified in November 2002, the contract remained a cost-plus-award-fee 

contract. 

—We lacked skill sets in our personnel such as qualified software engineering, 

program management, and contract management. We also experienced a high 

turnover in Trilogy program managers and Chief Information Officers. 

—We underestimated the complexity of interfacing with our legacy system, of addressing our security needs, and of establishing an enterprise architecture. 

We will continue to confront these lessons moving forward. 

Recognizing our internal limitations, we decided to outsource the development of 

VCF, including contract management and technology development. The contractor 

responsible for delivering the user applications component, including VCF, is the 

Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC. 

Following the establishment of solid requirements in November 2002, the original 

target date for completing VCF was December 2003. I personally received a demonstration of the VCF software in November 2003 and was impressed with what I 

saw. I believed that we were on the right track to deliver to our employees’ desktops 

the case management system we were seeking. However, when SAIC delivered the 

product to us in December 2003, we immediately identified a number of deficiencies 

in VCF that made it unusable. Upon further examination, we discovered nearly 400 

problems with the software and, in April 2004, provided SAIC with a document outlining the corrections needed. SAIC ultimately agreed to remedy the deficiencies and 

deliver full functionality but only at a cost—an additional $56 million—and a timetable—an additional year—which were unacceptable to the FBI. 

In June 2004, I decided to adopt a new two-track plan for VCF: an Initial Operating Capability, or IOC, and a Full Operating Capability, or FOC. My goal with 

the IOC was to identify and utilize some portion of the product developed by SAIC, 

since the fully functional case management system had not been delivered. The portion of VCF currently being piloted in the IOC is the automated workflow process. 

Last month, several hundred employees in the New Orleans field office began using 

the system as their document routing system and will continue to do so through the 

end of March. The purpose of the pilot is to: test drive the workflow concept; validate the human/machine interface; create an electronic interface to our legacy system, the Automated Case Support System, or ACS; assess network performance; 

and develop and deliver an enterprise level training curriculum. 

The IOC is on track to accomplish these objectives. 

As part of Track Two, the FBI contracted with multiple independent vendors to 

perform the following tasks: 

—Examine the VCF application delivered by SAIC in December 2003 to determine 

if the software as designed will meet the FBI’s operational, security, and performance requirements. The contractor, Aerospace Corporation, was also tasked 

to determine if the VCF application is scalable and can be maintained and enhanced easily. 

—Examine the current technologies and vendors, as well as available Commercial 

Off-The-Shelf, or COTS, software applications and those designed for other 

agencies, to determine the best combination to meet the FBI’s needs. This effort 

was conducted jointly with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure our 

case management efforts would be interoperable. In many ways, the pace of 

technological innovation and the need for information sharing has overtaken 

our original vision for VCF and there are now products to suit our purposes 

that did not exist when Trilogy began. 
16 

—We have also asked a different contractor to review and revalidate our users’ 

requirements because the mission of the FBI has evolved and there are new requirements for information and intelligence sharing among different entities. 

Last week, we received the final version of the Aerospace report and provided copies to the Committee and to the Office of the Inspector General at the Department 

of Justice. 

Who is Responsible for What Went Wrong? 

Mr. Chairman, I am responsible, at least in part, for some of the setbacks experienced with Trilogy and VCF. I agree with the OIG’s finding that ‘‘FBI management 

did not exercise adequate control over the Trilogy project and its evolution in the 

early years of the project.’’ Let me also add that I agree with the OIG’s finding that 

‘‘with the new organizational structure and authority given to the CIO in July 2004, 

project management has been given the attention that was needed throughout the 

Trilogy project.’’ Mr. Chairman, I will address that new structure and its accomplishments later in my statement. 

In addition to our shortcomings in overseeing this project, however, the contractor 

responsible for VCF bears some responsibility. As discussed above, the FBI retained 

a not-for-profit, federally funded contractor, Aerospace Corporation, to conduct an 

independent verification and validation review of the VCF software as delivered by 

SAIC in December 2003. We asked Aerospace to provide responses to the following 

three questions: 

—1. Did SAIC meet the stated requirements? 

—2. Did SAIC develop a complete and correct Concept of Operations, System Architecture, and System Requirements? 

—3. What should the FBI do with the VCF software as delivered in December 

2003? 

Aerospace concluded that ‘‘lack of effective engineering discipline has led to inadequate specification, design and development of VCF.’’ In the course of their review, 

Aerospace could ‘‘find no assurance’’ that the requirements were satisfied, nor that 

the architecture, Concept of Operations, and requirements were correct and complete. Needless to say, Mr. Chairman, after three and a half years, this was disappointing news. 

With regard to the funding of VCF, this Committee has been supportive of our 

efforts and has generously provided the funding we have needed to overcome obstacles and attempt to move forward. Mr. Chairman, you and the other members are 

undoubtedly concerned—as am I—about losses we have incurred, as well as future 

investments we will need to make, in VCF. We have invested approximately $170 

million in VCF to date. It is my understanding our vendors have delivered services 

and reusable equipment worth $53.3 million and that we have $12.2 million in 

unspent obligations on our VCF contracts. This results in a loss of $104.5 million. 

I am disheartened by this result but remain confident in our ability to deliver a case 

management system to our employees’ desktops in the future. 

Where Do We Go from Here? 

VCF 

The development and deployment of an investigative case management system remains the top priority of the Office of the CIO. Some components of VCF that have 

been developed will be incorporated into the long-term solution. We will 

—Leverage the permanent interface that has been established with our legacy 

data systems. 

—Assess the impact of an automated workflow system on a field office and Headquarters structure, as well as the performance of a case management system 

on the new Trilogy network, during and at the end of the pilot testing; and, 

—Take with us a number of valuable ‘‘lessons learned’’ in contract management, 

project management, policies and procedures, modular development and deployment, data security, and records management requirements. 

Not surprisingly, the pace of technology has overtaken the development of unique 

software applications for the FBI, and we may turn to Commercial Off-The-Shelf, 

or COTS-based, products. We are currently reviewing the Aerospace reports which 

recommend that we discard VCF and start over with COTS-based products, and 

which provide their evaluation of COTS products as well as products in use by other 

government agencies. As we do so, we will continue to consult with industry leaders 

to ensure that we develop a sound, long-term plan for our IT needs. 

We will move forward with a phased development and deployment plan as recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and required by Federal information resource management policy. An incremental approach ensures development 

and acquisition of the best available products on the market. Every phase will pro-
17 

vide a set of services that the FBI workforce needs and which was part of the original VCF plan. I cannot at this time estimate when this will occur nor how much 

in additional funding we will need to invest to get there. 

We will also give consideration to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), as recommended in the Aerospace report. The concept behind an SOA solution is to standardize enterprise services—such as searching, reporting, and analyzing data—so 

that different groups of users can reuse similar services to access dissimilar data 

sets throughout the enterprise—such as our legacy systems of ACS, III, and our 

Telephone Application. It appears that an SOA approach could provide a flexible solution to the inflexible systems currently existing within the FBI and would help 

us successfully implement a final product. 

FBI Information Technology 

With me today is Zal Azmi, who joined the FBI in November 2003 as the Chief 

Information Officer. Through his leadership, the FBI has implemented a coordinated, strategic approach to information technology. —Strategic Plan.—In December 2004, we completed our first release of the Strategic IT Plan which maps out how IT will support the FBI’s and DOJ’s Strategic 

Plan and mission goals over the next five years. All IT projects are required to 

be consistent with the FBI’s and DOJ’s Strategic Plans. —Enterprise Architecture.—We established our baseline Enterprise Architecture 

(EA) in 2004 and are in the process of developing our target EA. We have created an IT Master Systems List identifying all of the IT systems, applications, 

networks and databases in the FBI and DOJ. All IT projects in the future will 

be required to be consistent with the FBI’s and DOJ’s EA. 

—Process Improvement.—Our Life Cycle Management Directive (LCMD), which 

governs how IT projects are managed from ‘‘cradle to grave,’’ is now consistent 

with industry best practices and Federal government information resource management policies. All IT Projects and Programs are required to pass through rigorous project and executive level control ‘‘gate’’ reviews for each stage, from inception through disposal. There are 7 gates, 9 phases, and 14 key supporting 

processes in the LCMD. These reviews are the mechanisms for management 

control and direction, decision-making, coordination, and confirmation of successful performance. 

—Portfolio Management Program.—This program focuses on performance assessments of IT investments in the operations and maintenance (O&M) phase of 

their life cycle. Since the majority of our IT investments currently reside in the 

O&M phase, these assessments help senior management make more informed 

decisions about IT investments, in terms of both personnel and money. Portfolio 

Management recommendations are focused on those investments that should be 

leveraged, replaced, outsourced or retired. 

—Enterprise IT Tool.—The IT Portfolio Management Automation project awarded 

a contract to develop the FBI’s Enterprise IT tool. This is a software package 

that will identify and track IT projects with baselined plans, schedules, and 

costs. It will also plan and track all FBI IT hardware and software infrastructure procurements at an integrated, enterprise level. 

—Capital Planning and Investment Management/Project Assurance.—The Investment Management/Project Review Board now reviews and approves new IT investments at specified stages of each IT project’s life cycle. We are also in the 

process of evaluating the FBI’s 130∂ existing IT projects for overall health and 

placement within the system development life cycle. This will enable FBI executives to uncover and address cost, schedule and performance risks. IT Investment Management will use our Enterprise IT Tool to track new FBI IT investments to ensure alignment with mission goals. 

—Performance and Results-Based Management (IT Metrics).—We are updating an 

IT Metrics program that identifies and measures IT performance according to 

industry standards, government regulations, and Earned Value Management 

System (EVMS) principles. Currently, we publish a CIO Monthly IT metrics report using the Balanced Scorecard Methodology. Our plan is to establish EVMS 

for ‘‘major’’ IT projects. When a program or project metric varies by more than 

10 percent of the acceptable thresholds for cost, schedule, and performance, it 

will trigger closer scrutiny and remedial action by the Investment Management/ 

Project Review Board. 

—Acquisition and Financial Reform.—IT Acquisition Reform, a joint initiative between the CIO and the Chief Financial Officer of the FBI and DOJ, will standardize and automate all procurement actions, involving all IT acquisitions, as 

well as focus on increased competition and small business involvement. In 2004, 

the FBI entered into multi-year enterprise-wide agreements with Microsoft, Or-
18 

acle and Dell which have saved millions of dollars in licensing fees. The savings 

derived from these contracts have been reinvested into technology projects, such 

as SIPRNET and FAMS (FBI Automated Messaging System). SIPRNET gives 

the FBI desktop connectivity to the Intelligence Community and FAMS is based 

on the Defense Messaging System (DMS). The FBI is the first civilian agency 

to operate a classified DMS-like system. —Leadership.—We have begun to train our Program and Project Managers as 

well as executive management personnel to become certified as Program Management Professionals (PMP), which is in compliance with the federal guidance. 

We currently have two certified Government and five contractor PMPs. Approximately 25 managers have taken the PMP review course and plan to take the 

test. Another 20 are currently enrolling in the training program. This and other 

leadership training provides best practices and techniques to provide better 

management of the IT projects and the enterprise IT portfolio. —IT Policy.—We are in the process of updating a Master IT Policy List. Once established, any new IT policies or modifications will have to be reviewed and approved by the IT Policy Review Board. The Master List will enable the CIO to 

monitor all IT projects during the Life Cycle Management Directive control gate 

review processes and enforce all applicable IT policies. —Technology Assessment.—The FBI’s Chief Technology Officer is working closely 

with the Enterprise Architecture team of the FBI and DOJ to standardize enterprise technology standards, technical reference models, technical architectures, and technical design reviews under the Life Cycle Management Directive 

and system testing/integration. A unified test and integration facility will allow 

for centralized technology assessment that provides responsive IT solutions to 

meet mission goals. These measures mitigate project risks through common, 

interoperable, supportable and affordable solutions. —Security and Information Assurance.—We have implemented an Information 

Assurance Program which implements key IT capabilities such as Public Key 

Infrastructure (PKI) and the Enterprise Security Operations Center (ESOC), to 

strengthen IT services in the FBI and DOJ and mitigate internal and external 

threats. Certification and Accreditation is being required for all IT Projects and 

Systems to further mitigate project risk. 

CONCLUSION

Mr. Chairman, in the aftermath of VCF, the FBI is faced with difficult decisions 

on how best to proceed with our evolving IT needs and evolving technologies. This 

Committee and the American people have my personal assurance that we will proceed as expeditiously and as prudently as possible to provide our employees with 

the automated capabilities they need. We have expanded the team of IT professionals within the FBI, each of whom has demonstrated an ability to perform under 

adverse circumstances. We have learned many valuable lessons over the past few 

years and, as a result, will be able to apply these lessons and avoid many of the 

pitfalls that befell this project in the past. 

I would like to close by thanking the Committee, and you in particular, Mr. Chairman, for your support throughout this endeavor, and I look forward to working with 

you and your staff as we chart our course for the future. 

Senator GREGG. The FBI has obviously got a problem and you 

are willing to address it and you have been forthright in explaining 

it, but I do think it is important to go back to some of the causes 

of the problem and make sure that those things are being addressed. 

The Aerospace review, and I think choosing Aerospace, from 

what I can figure out, was a reasonable choice. They are independent and they appear to be quite objective. But they have three 

basic findings. One, that the architecture was developed without 

adequate assessment of alternatives and conformance to various 

architectural standards and in a way that precluded the incorporation of significant commercial off-the-shelf software. I want to get 

back to that point because I want to know if that was an intentional decision because it appears to have driven cost. 

Second, the high-level documents, including the concept of operations, systems architecture, and systems requirement, were nei-
19 

ther complete nor consistent and did not map to users’ needs, 

which I find unusual. 

And three, the requirements and design documentations were incomplete, imprecise, requirements in design tracing have gaps, and 

the software cannot be maintained without difficulty and is, therefore, unfit for reuse. We are looking at the 2003 delivery, of course, 

but this was the format on which 2004 was, I presume, built out 

of. And even if it wasn’t, it still raises huge issues since we paid 

$170 million to get it. 

And then Aerospace concluded that it would be better not to even 

develop it this way, that we should go to the off-the-shelf approach, 

which raises three fundamental issues which I am wondering how 

the FBI plans to approach them as it moves forward. 

The first one is, why didn’t we have in the FBI the technical people who would have picked up on things like failure of architectural 

design, failure to meet standards which were fairly consistent 

across the development of software architecture which weren’t 

being met? There was a huge turnover of people during this period. 

Is it possible for an agency like the FBI to maintain the quality of 

people that are necessary in order to monitor a program of this size 

or should they—do we almost as a matter of systems have to put 

that monitoring into an independent group in order to make sure 

that we have the talent necessary to double-check a contractor like 

this? 

Second, why would we ever choose a cost-plus contract? I mean, 

this experience of cost-plus is pretty horrific across Federal funding 

activities. 

And third, this point which Aerospace makes about actually developing a software which wouldn’t conform or wouldn’t be integrated with off-the-shelf activity. We know by definition that technology mutates constantly and improves. I mean, isn’t it inherent 

to any technological system of this size that you are going to want 

to be able to migrate to the next system, which is going to work 

better, and that next system isn’t necessarily going to be internally 

developed, it is going to probably be developed by some smart 

bunch of folks who spun off from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and are sitting in a garage somewhere in hopefully 

New Hampshire? 

But it is not going to probably come from within the agency because you don’t have the time and you don’t have the people and 

you don’t have the talent. Or you have the talent, maybe, but you 

don’t have the time to focus on the mutation. 

So have we addressed those three issues which I see as systemic 

to the question of why it has failed? 

QUALITY OF PERSONNEL

Mr. MUELLER. Let me take a crack at them and then turn it over 

to Mr. Azmi. 

In terms of the quality of personnel we had in the Bureau, I had 

a CIO, a very excellent CIO for the first year after I was there. He 

then retired. I then went on a nationwide search for a CIO which 

took about 8 to 12 months. The persons who were proffered for a 

variety of reasons fell through and there was a gap during that period of time in leadership at the CIO position. That hurt us. 
20 

I also, perhaps due to my naivete, did believe that we had the 

appropriate program managers. I had persons in from other organizations such as IBM and Lucent. I came to find out that there are 

project managers in a particular skill that we needed. I did not provide to our project managers or to the users group. It was a software engineer specialist with the capability of drilling down into 

that which was being composed by SAIC. 

Now, do I have that capability now? I don’t think, and I will ask 

Zal, I am not certain that we have that full capability to drill down 

into a particular software package and determine whether everything is going as it should go. 

I do know that we have greatly expanded our CIO office under 

Zal Azmi. One of the things that he has brought is the ability to 

give me the bad news early on. One of the problems of anybody 

who runs an organization like mine is that people want to give you 

the good news. They do not want to give you the bad news. He has 

always been out there giving me the bad news and he has brought 

on board a technology officer who is the type of person that goes 

out and looks at each one of these COTS products. 

All that being said, we will have to augment our staff with contractors. We will have to go and look, as we have in the past, for 

expertise outside the Bureau to make certain that we have covered 

all of these areas of expertise. 

COST-PLUS CONTRACT AND COTS PRODUCTS

As to your second question, on a cost-plus contract, that was entered into in the summer of 2000. I do not have the facts or the 

understanding as to why we entered into a cost-plus contract in the 

summer of 2000, in the summer of 2001. I can tell you that my experience is we will never again in the Bureau enter into a cost-plus 

product that can lead us so far astray. 

I will tell you that prior to the last piece of the second part of 

Trilogy, which was putting in the networks, the local area networks, the wide area networks, at the secret level, at the classified 

level, which was a challenge, we had difficulties with the cost-plus 

contract with that contractor and ended up restructuring it so we 

got a commitment to produce at a particular cost at a particular 

time. 

Last, with regard to COTS products, as I become more knowledgeable about technology, it goes without saying, I think, that the 

world has come to be a plug-and-play world. You don’t get a full 

system of stereo television all in one package by one manufacturer 

now. What you have is plug and play, whether it be computers or 

your stereo or what have you. As we have grown since 2001, it is 

clear that in developing a package such as the Virtual Case File, 

we have to look at COTS products. We have to use COTS products. 

We have to phase it in, understanding that down the road 1, 2, or 

3 years hence, we may have to unplug a product and plug in a new 

one. 

Zal, do you have anything to add? 

Mr. AZMI. I want to add to the concept of cost-plus contract. The 

Bureau originally actually got into this contract in 2001 because we 

did not have all of our requirements defined. However, in 2002, 

there was a joint application development session between the Bu-
21 

reau and SAIC and, at that point, we developed a solid base for requirements, and, at that point, that contract could have gone to a 

performance-based contracting. However, that contract continued 

as a cost-plus contract. 

I will say that in June 2004, when we decided to actually develop 

the initial operating capability, we did move to a performancebased contract. That is the main reason why the software was developed on time and within the budget. 

I would also add that even though IOC is only 10 percent of the 

VCF, I think the concept is sound and we can implement that for 

larger contracts. 

ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

The other question, Mr. Chairman, you had was about enterprise 

architecture and what we are doing, where we are going from here. 

I submit to you that we have already solidified our requirements 

for Virtual Case File or a case management system of the future. 

We have already mapped those requirements through a Federal enterprise architecture framework, which is the best practice, is the 

standard the Federal Government uses. We have already mapped 

our software, or our requirements to what they call a service reference model. We have already done this mapping. 

That will enable us to actually deliver a case management system of the future in phases, with capabilities being available to the 

users shortly after the contract is awarded, and that is the concept 

we are going to move forward with, the small deliverables and the 

contained time with program management and project management disciplines in place. 

HOW DO WE GET THE MONEY BACK

Senator GREGG. I want to make sure everybody has time here so 

I will reserve my questions, but I am sure somebody is going to ask 

you how we are going to get any of this money back and that is 

a question I do hope we get to. 

DELIVERY ELEMENTS OF VCF ON TRACK

Senator LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I would ask also 

consent that I have a little time to put my full statement in the 

record and keep this short. 

Senator GREGG. Of course. 

Senator LEAHY. The reason I ask is that it would be somewhat 

more lengthy because it also involves my other hat on authorization. 

Director Mueller, on May 20, 2004, you testified before the Judiciary Committee. You stated, ‘‘We are on track to deliver elements 

of Virtual Case File capabilities by the end of this year.’’ I responded to that and I said, ‘‘What elements and what do you mean 

by elements?’’ I don’t think I ever got a clear answer on elements, 

but you did say, quote, ‘‘We are in negotiations with our contractor 

on finishing out that last part of the Trilogy project, the Virtual 

Case File, and my hope and expectation is that that will be completed by the end of this year. But I do believe that when we are 
22 

concluded this year’’—2004—‘‘we have the foundation for cuttingedge technology for an organization our size,’’ close quote. 

At the same hearing in May 2004, Senator DeWine of Ohio asked 

you this. Quote, ‘‘Do you currently have enough money to complete 

Trilogy? What will be the total cost of Trilogy? How much money 

do you have left to spend on the program, and when will Trilogy 

be completed?’’ You responded, ‘‘I believe we do have sufficient 

money. I believe the total cost will be close to $560 million. And 

the last piece of Trilogy, that is the Virtual Case File, my expectation, it will be in by the end of this year.’’ Senator DeWine said, 

‘‘End of this year?’’ You responded, ‘‘This year.’’ 

Now, we do know that by the time you testified in May 2004, almost 1 year ago, Virtual Case File was already on life support. The 

FBI had already twice rejected SAIC’s delivery of the Virtual Case 

File. It already identified nearly 400 potential problems with the 

software. It had already been told by Virtual Case File that correcting these problems would cost an additional $56 million and an 

additional year. As you say in your testimony today, they are both 

unacceptable to the FBI. 

In addition, the FBI was already negotiating for a scaled-down 

version of VCF, the initial operating capability of VCF Light. 

Just the day before the hearing when we asked you these questions where we got a pretty rosy scenario, the FBI submitted a request, Federal Systems Integration and Management (FEDSIM), 

the contract manager, to estimate the cost associated with shutting 

down 90 percent of it. 

Now, I don’t know anybody who has been more supportive in the 

30 years I have been here of the FBI than I have. Others have been 

as supportive. I don’t know of anybody more supportive. I have 

been extremely supportive of you. But I am ready to tear out what 

little bit of hair I have left. 

Why didn’t you mention any of these problems, all of which were 

there, when you were asked about the status of the project in May 

2004? You had a friendly audience. You had me. You had one of 

the leading Republicans, Mike DeWine. We were asking you these 

questions, and the answers we got didn’t comport with the facts. 

Why? 

DIRECTOR MUELLER’S RESPONSES

Mr. MUELLER. Senator, I don’t want you to lose the last of that 

hair. 

Senator LEAHY. There is not much left, I can tell you right now, 

nor is there any more patience. 

Mr. MUELLER. I will tell you, as we went through the spring— 

and I would have to look at the dates—as we went through the 

spring last year, I had voices telling me, particularly from SAIC, 

that they could produce. I met with the Chief Executive Officer 

(CEO) in the spring—I am not certain of the date—and received 

from the CEO the assurances that we could—and by ‘‘we,’’ I mean 

SAIC would produce and it was my expectation that we would have 

a substantial portion, not all, but a substantial portion of Virtual 

Case File by the end of the year. 

Now, when that came in terms of the timing of my testimony, I 

am not certain. On the other hand, I will tell you that Zal Azmi 
23 

has always raised questions about this. I knew that there were 

issues with regard to the project as it was given to us in December 

2003, but I had already been through a similar circumstance with 

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) in which we had to renegotiate, we had to go back to the drawing table, and they came 

through under budget, on time, as we had done so. And there was 

a part of me in the spring of 2004 that thought that we could go 

through exactly the same exercise. 

FEDERAL SYSTEMS INTEGRATION AND MANAGEMENT REQUEST

Senator LEAHY. The day before the hearing, the FBI had submitted a request to FEDSIM asking, what would it cost to shut 

down 90 percent of it. 

Mr. MUELLER. I am not familiar with that. I am not certain I 

was familiar with that at the time. 

Senator LEAHY. I hope not, because if you were familiar with it, 

your answers to mine and Senator DeWine’s questions were totally 

inconsistent with what the facts were. 

And then we sent follow-up questions to you. I did and several 

others did. You told me you completed your responses some time 

ago and sent them on to the Department of Justice for review. It 

has been 8 months. I don’t know who is good cop/bad cop, to use 

an analogy in your business, who is good cop/bad cop here, but we 

asked specific questions. The answers we were given did not comport with the facts, and I will accept your statement here today 

that you were not aware that the day before, they were trying to 

figure out how to close down 90 percent of it. 

But the answers—somebody has got to bear responsibility. It 

can’t just simply be, well, the Department of Justice told us for 8 

months, don’t answer these questions. We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars and a friendly committee. What in the 

hell goes on if it is an unfriendly committee? 

Mr. MUELLER. Is that a question, Senator? 

Senator LEAHY. Yes. When are we going to get the answers? 

Mr. MUELLER. Well, as I indicated to you yesterday, the answers 

were provided to the Department of Justice in October. We have 

been working with them. I am as frustrated that you do not have 

the answers as you quite obviously are and I am certainly willing 

to do what I can to work to get those answers to you. 

BUDGET TO COMPLETE TRILOGY

Senator LEAHY. Well, let me ask you a specific question for appropriations. Does the FBI have sufficient money to complete Trilogy, including VCF or a similar case management system, or will 

the FBI reprogram or request additional funds to fix and find a replacement for Virtual Case File in this upcoming budget cycle? 

Mr. MUELLER. What we are planning to do is utilize funds that 

we have outstanding for this fiscal year and in 6 to 8—and correct 

me if I am wrong, Zal, on this—and in 6 to 8 weeks, we ought to 

have a better feel for what it would cost to bring on the various 

components that we are anticipating bringing on in the phased-in 

development of Virtual Case File. It would not be a 1-year phasein. It would be a 2- or a 3-year phase-in. At this point in time, having just received the Aerospace report, we are examining all of our 
24 

options and it will be at least 6 to 8 weeks before we can come back 

to you and lay out in front of you our strategy and say, this is what 

we want to do. These are the COTS products we may want to use 

and this is what it will cost. 

I am looking to reprogram funds to do it, certainly within this 

fiscal year, and then we will look at where we are when it comes 

to 2006–2007. 

REPROGRAMMING

Senator LEAHY. Well, if you reprogram the funds—— 

Senator GREGG. Senator, if I can just interrupt, I think it is important to note this phased-in development issue, because this committee was actually very aggressive with the FBI saying that this 

program should have been phased in at the beginning—— 

Senator LEAHY. I remember that. 

Senator GREGG [continuing]. As I think the Director will recall, 

and so I think at least they should be credited with the next steps 

they are going to do phases. 

Senator LEAHY. But then on that, where are you going to reprogram the money? Does that mean you are going to reduce other 

programs? 

Mr. MUELLER. We have carryover money of approximately $15 

million and we are looking at other savings that we have managed 

to put into Virtual Case File, or what will become Virtual Case 

File, and we are also going to look at reprogramming additional 

funds, depending on what we can do and how fast we can do it in 

this fiscal year. 

Senator LEAHY. Will you report to this subcommittee—well, the 

reprogramming, you will anyway—— 

Mr. MUELLER. Absolutely. 

Senator LEAHY [continuing]. But will you report to this subcommittee from what programs you are finding savings? 

Mr. MUELLER. Yes. 

Senator LEAHY. You understand the danger of that, of course. 

Mr. MUELLER. Yes. 

Senator LEAHY. All right. 

Mr. MUELLER. I would anticipate we would have to. We reprogram—if it is over a certain amount, we are up here in any event, 

so—— 

Senator LEAHY. We are just curious—— 

Mr. MUELLER [continuing]. It is an ongoing—— 

RECOUPING FUNDS FROM SAIC

Senator LEAHY. We are just curious what programs that we have 

already authorized might get cut back or eliminated by a reprogramming to take care of the mistakes in the VCF. By the way, 

speaking of money, do you have plans to recoup funds from SAIC, 

and if so, how much? 

Mr. MUELLER. We have referred the matter over to the Department of Justice to look at, explore our options. 

Senator LEAHY. Are they going to get an answer back to you 

quicker than they do to those of us in the Congress? 

Mr. MUELLER. All I can tell you is we referred it to the Department of Justice, Senator, looking at to what extent either of the 
25 

parties are culpable. I do believe there is culpability, as I indicated, 

on both sides. I am not going to stand here and say that we are 

not in some part responsible for the fact that it was not brought 

home on time. But as I say, I believe SAIC was also responsible. 

The report from Aerospace seems to indicate some of those deficiencies and we are looking at our options to recover some of that 

money for the taxpayer. 

Senator LEAHY. Do you have any estimate of how much that 

might be? 

Mr. MUELLER. I do not. 

CASE MANAGEMENT

Senator LEAHY. Okay. Let me ask you just two questions and I 

will submit the rest, which is always scary because I will probably 

never get the answer, but when will agents have a functioning case 

management system in their hands? 

Mr. MUELLER. A basic case management system, and there are 

various aspects to it—monitoring evidence, leads management, and 

the like, but a basic case management system, certainly we hope 

within 1 year. And I will tell you, I am guilty of—— 

Senator LEAHY. One year from today? 

Mr. MUELLER. Yes. And I am guilty in the past of raised expectations. I thought we were going to produce. Every time I have gone 

to an office to talk to our people, I will talk about the importance 

of technology, the desirability of bringing us into the digital age, 

and have given them the expectation that we would have had Virtual Case File certainly by now. I went out and retrained a number 

of agents in support of Virtual Case File. So I am very reluctant 

to give estimates, understanding that I have been proven wrong in 

the past and I have raised expectations, not only of the agents but 

also of Congress and others who are interested in moving us into 

the digital age. 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND FUNDS RECOVERY

Senator LEAHY. I will ask just one last question and I will submit 

the rest, and I ask this question because the same frustration—the 

biggest frustration I have in being unable to get answers is that 

over and over again on the things that we legitimately ask questions about, either the Appropriations Committee or the authorizing committee, we don’t find out until we read it in the paper. 

We either find out because a newspaper reporter is able to get 

more or a TV reporter, or somebody has leaked something to them. 

So let me ask you this. Are there other clouds on the horizon 

with respect to the information technology efforts that you might 

like to tell us about today before we read about it in the press in 

the future? 

Mr. MUELLER. That is a very broad question. 

Senator LEAHY. I know it. It is a very broad subject. 

Mr. MUELLER. Are there any clouds on the horizon with regard 

to the development of these systems? With regard to the development of these systems, I think the last piece of Trilogy was Virtual 

Case File, and I think you know exactly what we know with the 

various reports. We, upon occasion, have other areas in which technology is affected. We are currently looking at an issue that does 
26 

not relate at all to our sensitive material—well, our classified materials, but is an issue which I probably should raise to you in private. 

Senator LEAHY. Okay. Fair enough. Will you? 

Mr. MUELLER. I will. 

Senator LEAHY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator GREGG. Senator Mikulski. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Well, under this rock is another rock and under this rock is a 

black hole. The future—I am concerned. First of all, we can look 

back, but my concern is how do we move ahead. 

Can you tell me, number one, are you thinking about scrapping the program now that we have invested $170 million into it, or how 

much of the $170 million are we able to kind of recapture and get 

value for the agents to have what they need in the field? Are we 

just bagging it? We have got so many contractors there. You have 

got SAIC, and others working on the other parts of Trilogy and of 

course now you have Aerospace, the corporation’s comments and 

evaluations. Where are we here? What are you going to do? Are we 

scrapping a $170 million program here? 

Mr. MUELLER. Let me start, Senator, by saying that the total 

contract was for $170 million. We think we can recover approximately $53 million of that in terms of software, hardware that we 

have received in the course of that contract, so that will not be lost. 

We have in excess of $12 million left in the contract, which leaves 

approximately $104 to $105 million that we will not be able to recover. 

POSSIBILITY OF SCRAPING SAIC

Senator MIKULSKI. Are you saying goodbye to SAIC now or are 

they going to be the ones that everybody walks into the woodshed, 

but then what happens after you come back from the woodshed to 

the main building? Are we going to get the case file—— 

Mr. MUELLER. We are looking at all of our options and who 

can—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. So you don’t know who—— 

Mr. MUELLER. We do not know who the contractor will be for the 

next phases of the program. Now, are we scrapping the program 

altogether, I think was one of your questions. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Yes. 

Mr. MUELLER. The recommendation from Aerospace, based on 

their review of that which was provided to us by SAIC in December 

2003, was to scrap the project totally. We are looking at that. We 

are reviewing that. SAIC, I think, will tell you when they testify 

that the product that they have produced for us that is being tested 

down in New Orleans is state of the art. It is very good and we 

should adopt that. We are looking at that. 

On the one hand, SAIC says we have produced and the product 

we have got down in New Orleans is good and you ought to adopt 

that. On the other hand, we have the report from Aerospace that 

says, for a variety of reasons, you ought to scrap Virtual Case File. 

So we are evaluating those two—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. But SAIC says, we have delivered you an initial product. It is now in New Orleans being tested. 
27 

Mr. MUELLER. Yes, and it is good, state of the art—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. Well, wait. Wait. We don’t know yet. It is 

being tested. 

Mr. MUELLER. That is what SAIC is saying. 

Senator MIKULSKI. It is being tested. 

Mr. MUELLER. It is being tested. 

Senator MIKULSKI. So, number one, you don’t know whether you 

are going to scrap it or not, and if you do, whether you scrap it or 

not, moving ahead, you don’t know who the contractor will be. And 

if you don’t know who the contractor will be, then you don’t know 

how much it will cost—— 

Mr. MUELLER. Correct. 

DECISIONMAKING

Senator MIKULSKI. So this is not a happy situation. 

Mr. MUELLER. No. I would agree with that. It is not a happy situation when we are—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. And then my question becomes, then, who is 

in charge to get this back on track and what are your time tables? 

The chairman will have an appropriations deadline. We have a 

very tight budget—we have been faced with spartan allocations. 

And then who is going to be in charge to make all these decisions? 

And I know you are going to say you are in charge, okay. That is 

great. But like the Pope is in charge of the Catholic Church, who 

is in charge of this confessional? 

Mr. MUELLER. Well, the way you put it, maybe I am in charge 

of the confessional, but I will rely on Zal Azmi and his team for 

advice and management of the process as we go forward. But as 

I said before and I have said since I have arrived, and I have said 

it in this context and other contexts, we need and would look to 

outside, independent advice on whether we are on the right track. 

We have had—and I have gone to any number of outside entities 

to get advice on whether we are on the right track, experts outside, 

and we will continue to do that. 

Senator GREGG. Senator—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. Well, my time is up—— 

Senator GREGG. No, your time is not up, but I am just wondering 

if I could interject a question here. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Please, yes. I think this will work best this 

way. 

EVALUATING THE 2004 PRODUCT

Senator GREGG. Are you evaluating the 2004 product as it is now 

being used in a demonstration in New Orleans independently, and 

if you are, who is doing that? 

Mr. AZMI. That product in New Orleans is a prototype or a functional prototype of the VCF IOC, initial operating capability. That 

software is one-third of the—I am sorry, one-tenth of the VCF software. It is not all of the capabilities that was promised. It is just 

one-tenth of that. Within that software, the FBI has also included 

a number of capabilities that were developed by FBI staff, programmers. So, that is a combination of two programs that is being 

tested in New Orleans. 
28 

By the end of March, we will shut down that evaluation period 

and will have 30 days to actually gather information and feedback 

from our users in New Orleans to see how they liked it. That is 

the work we are doing with our staff over in New Orleans, sir. 

Senator GREGG. Can I postpone you for one more question? 

Senator MIKULSKI. Sure. 

Senator GREGG. You are saying it is one-tenth of what was supposed to be delivered. 

Mr. AZMI. That is correct, sir. 

Senator GREGG. The project that was evaluated and found so 

lacking by Aerospace, which was the 2003 product, was that the 

entire product? 

Mr. AZMI. That is correct, sir. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you. 

Mr. MUELLER. I think—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. Did you want to pick up on my question? 

Mr. MUELLER. I think Mr. Azmi wanted to add on the answer to 

your question, if he could. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Yes. 

Mr. AZMI. I know that Director Mueller is taking responsibility 

for the program as a whole, but as the Chief Information Officer 

for the FBI, it is my responsibility to develop information technology to our users. What steps have I taken since my arrival to 

actually make sure—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. When did you arrive? 

Mr. AZMI. November 2003, ma’am. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Thank you. 

Mr. AZMI. We have taken a number of steps to actually correct 

the deficiencies overall with information technology programs within the FBI. But specifically for the VCF program, what we have 

done, we have completed our requirements. We have a requirements document for a case management system that our users, our 

agents, and our analysts want and the FBI. We have mapped those 

requirements toward services that are guidelines by the Federal 

enterprise architecture framework. We have those services. We 

have broken down those services into phases to ensure that we 

have the ability and capability to deliver those into phases. 

We have also asked another independent contractor to develop 

what we call an independent Government cost estimate to tell us 

exactly how much every one of these phases will cost. That report 

is due to the FBI by mid-February, ma’am. 

Senator MIKULSKI. I appreciate that answer. I know my time is 

about up—— 

Senator GREGG. You have as much time as you want. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Director Mueller, did you—— 

Mr. MUELLER. I wanted to add one other thing that has become 

important. It was in the National Sciences report, and that is the 

necessity for an enterprise architecture for the FBI as a whole. We 

have never had an enterprise architecture. We have been 

stovepiped. And one of the things we have done over the last year 

is begin to develop an enterprise architecture so that whenever we 

bring on an information technology product, it fits within that enterprise architecture. 
29 

For us to move forward, we have to have the enterprise architecture to assure that whatever we bring in is consistent with and 

works with other software and hardware packages that we may 

bring on board, and that is a substantial advance for us. We have 

a team working on it and I think we are on the track to have one 

of the better enterprise architectures for any institution in Washington. 

ACCELERATED FUNDING AND OVERSIGHT

Senator MIKULSKI. Well, I appreciate these answers and I certainly your attempt, Mr. Azmi, to try to bring order out of chaos. 

I also appreciate the fact that after September 11, there was this 

incredible need to retool the FBI. There was an accelerated ops 

tempo, if you will, because we didn’t know when they were going 

to try to kill us again. We were still standing sentry because they 

might be trying to kill us again in an hour and a half. 

So we understand the challenges you faced, the FBI faced, and 

with this increased ops tempo, though, your Congress gave you 

money as well as in a variety of homeland security agencies money 

to protect the United States of America. That is what these files 

and all this technology is all about, is to maximize and leverage an 

agent to make that agent the most effective person that they can 

to do the mission. 

I am really concerned that after 31⁄2 years, where in the hell are 

we and have we just wasted money, have we just wasted time, and 

how we won’t repeat it again, because in the report, it talked about 

how the FBI had changing requirements. It is what we hear at the 

Pentagon. Every time they build a ship, they meet with an admiral 

and a boatswain’s mate and the requirements get changed. 

So my question—well, first of all, just know, I know you are disappointed and I am disappointed. I believe that this is a systemic 

issue with some of the accelerated funding in homeland security 

and I think calls for additional oversight in appropriations. 

But now having then come back to where we are, with the reforms Mr. Azmi has put in to bring order out of chaos, when do 

you think you can tell the subcommittee what it is that you want 

to do and how much it will cost? 

Mr. MUELLER. Two months. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Two months. 

Mr. MUELLER. I think we will have a much better handle on 

where we are at that time. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Fine. But I think we also have to understand 

the pressure that you—when I say you personally, because we were 

together in some tough environments and I respect you very much 

and all the agents. But, wow, I think we kind of have to regroup, 

don’t you agree, Mr. Chairman? 

Senator GREGG. As usual, the Senator from Maryland has gotten 

to the essence of the issue. 

Senator MIKULSKI. Thank you. We look forward to working with 

you, Mr. Chairman, and we look forward to making sure there is 

not an empty chair here. 
30 

INDEPENDENT EVALUATING ASSISTIVE TEAM

Senator GREGG. It would be very enjoyable were you in that 

chair. 

And just to follow up on the Senator from Maryland’s points, 

which I think are absolutely correct, and Senator Stevens actually 

made this point before he had to leave, this could be a systemic 

issue across other agencies, as we tooled up so quickly with technology that agencies that didn’t have the personnel capability to 

properly manage this tooling up either bring online technology that 

can’t migrate into the greater needs, can’t keep up with the changing times, or simply can’t do the job. 

That is why I get back to this issue of should we have an independent evaluating assistive team, where we have the level of expertise there that is consistent and technically current to come in 

and help an agency like the FBI. I mean, you have got a good person in Mr. Azmi. I am extremely impressed with Mr. Azmi. I have 

had a fair number of discussions with him. But is the FBI ever capable of getting out of the trees and looking at the forest on the 

issue of technology the way an independent group might be able to 

help you? 

Mr. MUELLER. I think it is worth exploring. I think, as I have 

come to learn, that development of software for a particular organization requires a complement of individuals within the organization who understand the work of that organization—— 

Senator GREGG. That is obvious. 

Mr. MUELLER [continuing]. Usually called user groups, and the 

experts on the other side who know the technology. And the coming 

together of those two is exceptionally difficult. A third party with 

the expertise, or a third entity that could provide the expertise to 

an agency may be worthwhile. 

Right now, we understand we don’t have all the areas of expertise in the Bureau and we go out to outside contractors to bring 

that expertise in, in particular areas. But it is certainly something 

that perhaps should be explored. 

I will tell you also, in response to Senator Mikulski’s point about 

pushing hard on the technology, one of the things that we did do 

which I think backfired on us is push hard after September 11 to 

get the technology on as fast as possible without understanding, 

fully understanding the detrimental side effects to pushing too 

hard to get that technology on board without going through, unfortunately, some tedious, time consuming steps in order to get what 

you need, even though you have to delay, and that is a lesson I 

have learned in the course of working with Virtual Case File. 

FILE MANAGEMENT AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

Senator MIKULSKI. Mr. Chairman, just to you, after 9/11 and 

then for those of us on the Intelligence Committee also authorizing 

and appropriating with the FBI, it was, in every one of the agencies where there was responsibility for protecting us against predatory attacks, there was this increased tempo and every desire to 

move quickly, even if we made mistakes. It was better to make a 

mistake and spend the money, but don’t dilly-dally on the process. 
31 

At the same time, we had that sniper in Maryland, and I wish 

you could have been there to see the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), hundreds of agents in a room about 

this size with wireless technology. That is when I got a sense of 

the files, the management, and the communication, how they all 

worked with all of the leads all over America, with BATF and the 

ballistic lab, and then local law enforcement. It was really stunning. And when we have the right tools, it is amazing. But again, 

they were at the edge of their chair, working with every tool at 

their disposal, and even though some of those tools were out of 

date. 

So again, we see the way they have to escalate to an intense 

level. They have an attitude which we appreciate. Damn the torpedoes. So if you make mistakes or you spend too much money or 

whatever, at least grab the sniper, grab the killer, grab the terrorist, grab the predator, and we have made mistakes. These are 

big-bucket mistakes, but now it is to regroup. 

But I think it wasn’t because there wasn’t a desire to move 

quickly and do a good job. I am not white-washing this, but—— 

Mr. MUELLER. If I could respond briefly, Mr. Chairman, I think 

if you look at it as a continuum, after September 11, if you went 

into that room, you saw paper all around—— 

Senator MIKULSKI. You did. 

Mr. MUELLER [continuing]. Because we would have to take down 

everything on paper and run it by paper. And if you went into our 

SIOC in the wake of September 11, you would find piles of paper 

around. 

We evolved. When we worked with the other agencies, Federal 

and local, it was pretty much a paperless organization, and we 

have evolved to be paperless when we have challenges such as 

that. 

Unfortunately, we had to run files between offices. We did not 

have the communications capabilities at the time of the sniper attacks that we would want, even though we had the paperless entry 

of information, and we have evolved yet from there. 

So we have made headway in a number of these areas that enables us, particularly with substantial challenges such as September 11 or the sniper attacks and the like, to do our business 

digitally. 

CLOSING REMARKS

Senator GREGG. Thank you Senator, which I think gets back to 

what our purpose here is, is to make the agent on the street more 

effective in protecting us. We know the commitment of the Bureau. 

We know it is extraordinary. We know the people that serve us 

there, including right up to yourself, are the best and trying hardest and we respect that, but obviously the taxpayers want to make 

sure they get value for their dollar, as you do, too. So that is what 

this hearing is about. 

I thank you. Thank you for your time. I appreciate your courtesy 

in giving us so much of your time. 

Mr. MUELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator GREGG. Thank you, Mr. Director, Mr. Azmi. 
32 

SUBMITTED STATEMENTS

We have a bit of an issue here in that we have got a vote at 3:30 

and a 4 o’clock event that I have to be at because the leader told 

me I have to be there and I am a big fan of the leader. So I think 

I am going to have to recess this hearing and probably reschedule 

the second panel, which I regret, because I think SAIC has every 

right to make their case in the public. They have obviously got a 

case they want to make as to their views, and obviously we would 

like to hear from Aerospace and from the Inspector General. 

The statements from these organizations not appearing and a 

statement from Senator Grassley will be inserted in the record. 

[The statements follow:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ARNOLD L. PUNARO, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, SCIENCE

APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION

Chairman Gregg and Senator Leahy: It is a privilege to appear before you today 

to testify concerning our portion of the work on the Trilogy Project for the Federal 

Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Chairman, I ask consent that my entire statement be 

entered into the record and with your permission I am prepared to summarize. 

INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT

At the outset, let us say clearly that SAIC understands and appreciates the overwhelming demands and difficulties that the FBI has faced since the attacks of September, 11. While we disagree with the Bureau over aspects of the Trilogy program 

history, we have only the greatest respect for the dedication with which the Bureau 

has pursued its mission of defending our nation under the enormous, and sometimes 

conflicting, pressures that surfaced in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. 

SAIC, with 45,000 employees, is the largest privately owned research and engineering firm and one of the largest government contactors in the nation. As employee owners, we have prided ourselves since our founding 36 years ago on our 

ability to assist the U.S. Government on programs of national importance. Our dedication to work that matters is further reflected in an aggressive and pervasive ethics program. How our company operates and how we are perceived are matters of 

vital, personal interest to each and every employee. We have grown to become a 

very successful and sought after company by providing quality products and creating satisfied customers. 

In that respect, let me mention several major, illustrative software engineering 

projects successfully designed and deployed for the FBI to illustrate the work we’ve 

done. 

—The Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) is a national DNA database system 

for use by United States and international law enforcement authorities by creating DNA profiles and by matching unknown profiles found in the course of 

criminal investigations to profiles stored in local, state, and national databases 

here and overseas. 

—The FBI Interstate Identification Index (Triple-I) is the U.S. national criminal 

history system that maintains more than 40 million data entries (the largest 

and most accurate criminal history database in the world) and is used every day 

by state, local and federal law enforcement agency in the United States. 

—The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) implements 

the Brady Act. SAIC was contracted to develop, deploy, maintain, and support 

the federal, state, and local governments in checking a citizen’s eligibility to 

purchase a firearm (handing in excess of 30 million purchases to date). It handled more than four million calls per year from firearms dealers checking purchasers against the national database. To quote Mr. Michael D. Kirkpatrick 

(FBI Assistant Director in Charge, Criminal Justice Information Services Division at the time of the work) in his letter of appreciation to SAIC in January 

2004, ‘‘Not only is the successful implementation of the NICS directly attributed 

to the hard work and dedication of the SAIC staff, numerous post-implementation challenges were met head-on and overcome with SAIC’s support—you have 

been a trustworthy, customer-oriented partner.’’ 

—Law-Enforcement Online (LEO) is a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, online, realtime, controlled-access web portal (more than 43,000 users) providing a focal 
33 

point for electronic communication, education, and information sharing for the 

law-enforcement, criminal-justice, and public-safety communities nationwide. 

In sum, SAIC comes to this issue with a record of outstanding achievement in 

challenging projects, including specifically for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

We point this out not to boast, but to provide the context for considering some of 

the issues that have marked the public discussion of Trilogy and the manner in 

which SAIC has performed on this contract. 

The Results and the Reasons 

—Trilogy began in a pre-9/11 world with very different circumstances and requirements than those that exist now. 

—The events of 9/11 caused massive and continuing change in the project while 

the FBI dealt with enormous post-attack pressures and demands. 

—The FBI’s requirements for the project—the list of what the FBI wanted the 

project to have and do—grew and changed continually while turbulence in FBI 

program management worked against stability and definitive guidance. 

—A key FBI decision to drop a controversial, high-risk plan for a one-step conversion to a new system opened the way for a sensible developmental approach of 

incremental improvements in capability. 

—The FBI and SAIC renegotiated the contract in summer 2004, coming to firm 

agreement on requirements for the incremental improvement through what is 

called the Virtual Case File (VCF) Initial Operating Capability (IOC). 

—SAIC acknowledges some areas where we made mistakes and particularly 

where we failed to adequately communicate our concerns to appropriate levels 

of management, to include the Director of the FBI. 

—SAIC delivered, and the FBI approved and accepted, VCF IOC within the allocated budget and ahead of schedule to industry-standard quality, offering FBI 

agents significant new tools in their counter-crime and counter-terror roles. 

Currently, the contract has a negotiated value of $130.3 million and a funded 

value of $123 million. To date, SAIC has been paid $115.2 million. We expect to be 

paid the funded value of $123 million at completion. In conjunction with this work 

effort, the company has invested $3.9 million of its own money to support the Trilogy program. 

Aerospace Corporation 

Before presenting SAIC’s testimony about the course of its work on Trilogy in detail, I want to speak briefly to the report by the Aerospace Corporation. While we 

have not been given a copy of this report, we were allowed to read a copy last week 

at the FBI. We appreciate that opportunity. Aerospace Corporation did not inform 

us, nor attempt to discuss in any way its findings—a lapse we find both inexplicable 

and contrary to the practices of inspectors general, the General Accounting Office, 

and other scientific groups, who find that comments from those reviewed contribute 

to a more balanced and useful report. 

The Aerospace Corporation produced a report on the wrong software while failing 

to concentrate on central issues that determine system performance. 

Had they asked us for comment, we could have told them they examined the 

wrong software. Mr. Chairman, I mean that in a literal sense. Aerospace Corporation explicitly evaluated a snapshot in time of the software as if it were a finished 

product when in reality, as everyone should have known, it was still being developed. The Aerospace Corporation says it found ‘‘evidence of incompleteness’’ and 

‘‘failure to optimize.’’ This is hardly unexpected in a work in progress that was still 

months away from its delivery date. In academic terms, it was as if we had been 

assigned a paper due December but then graded it the previous summer. 

The product we presented to the FBI in December 2004 is not the product evaluated by Aerospace Corporation. VCF IOC was rigorously tested and accepted by the 

FBI after meeting 100 percent of its requirements. 

Because the software evaluated was different from the software delivered, SAIC 

believes that the Aerospace Corporation report is not an adequate basis for deciding 

on a future course of action concerning VCF. 

This is not to say we accept Aerospace Corporation’s judgments about the product 

that was evaluated. We emphatically do not. The Aerospace Corporation is a national asset in its realm of expertise: aerospace. The Trilogy project is something 

else, altogether. We respectfully—but strongly—urge this subcommittee to consider 

that Aerospace Corporation did not bring a sufficient understanding of the uniqueness, complexity, and scope of the FBI undertaking to evaluate our software product. 

Central to the Aerospace report is criticism of requirements documentation. Time 

and again, in the Aerospace report we reviewed, we saw instances where criticisms 
34 

about requirements were based not on the substance of the requirements or whether 

or not the product satisfied the requirements, but rather on ancillary data such as 

syntax in documentation. How well the product satisfied requirements was not a 

part of their evaluation. Based on examination of the documentation they concluded 

they were not assured the product would meet requirements and went no farther. 

In particular, SAIC categorically rejects the assertion that its work lacked engineering discipline, an assertion that appears without support in the document we 

read. This kind of assertion, without rigorous—or even specific—support should be 

unacceptable in an endeavor of this importance. For instance, Aerospace Corporation did not look at the software development folders, which are key documents on 

how the code was designed and written. These comprise the ‘‘Bible’’ for software developers. In a football analogy, it was as if Aerospace Corporation was asked to 

scout another team which had made available its playbook. They didn’t bother to 

read it. In fact, they scouted the wrong team. 

Even so, Mr. Chairman, we would welcome the opportunity, late though it may 

be, to discuss the findings with Aerospace Corporation. It could only benefit the FBI, 

which is our aim here. 

SAIC’S PARTICIPATION IN TRILOGY

The FBI’s Trilogy program is a massive, multi-part, multi-contractor program for 

broad-based modernization and improvement of its information technology. In June 

2001, SAIC was competitively awarded a cost-plus-award fee developmental contract 

for the Trilogy User Application Component (UAC). This is an appropriate contract 

type because the project involved first working with the customer to develop and 

agree on what was needed (the requirements) and then execute the agreed tasks. 

The complexity and uniqueness of the missions of the Bureau also argued for this 

approach. Some of the public discussion of the Trilogy contract has been conducted 

as if the required tasks were well known at the start, and easily achievable. At no 

point in time has either condition existed. 

At the time of award in June 2001, the contract scope for SAIC called for development of a web front-end to the existing legacy applications used to manage case information. When this effort was complete, SAIC was to define an Enterprise Case 

Management System. This was a measured low-risk approach building on existing, 

or legacy, systems within the Bureau. 

The attack of 9/11 

The September 11, 2001, attacks had as profound an affect on this project as it 

did elsewhere in the nation. Following 9/11, the Bureau faced enormous and sometimes conflicting pressures. Prior to the attack, the Bureau was dealing with revelations that a spy, Robert Hansen, had plundered FBI secrets. Security and integrity 

of information is a fundamental issue for the FBI. After the attack, it faced three 

often conflicting demands: 

—The need to share information in the post-9/11 world so authorized personnel 

could both see and connect the dots to analyze and exploit intelligence. 

—The need, in the post-Hansen world, to prevent all but a few specifically authorized people from seeing truly sensitive information. 

—The need to ensure admissibility of investigative information in court in keeping 

with the complex body of legal, policy, and Attorney General Guidelines under 

which the Bureau operates. 

Thus, the FBI faces a task of great difficulty and complexity in building an information technology system that simultaneously meets all three imperatives. 

Trilogy after 9/11 

Following the attack, the Bureau fundamentally reexamined the project. The earlier, measured approach of June 2001 called for improving legacy systems. In the 

wake of the attack, the FBI correctly determined that the legacy applications should 

be replaced to make the Bureau more effective in responding to terrorists’ threats 

as well as to improve the efficiency of the continuing criminal investigative mission. 

In the months following 9/11, the Bureau conducted an independent review of 

available Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems and Government developed systems, and determined they could not satisfy the requirements. Therefore, SAIC was 

tasked to in February 2002 to develop the replacement for the legacy systems using 

the original contract. The SAIC UAC contract was restructured to incorporate an 

aggressive development plan first conceived in February 2002. This became the electronic Virtual Case File (VCF) contract. Thus, the FBI shelved 6 months of work 

that no longer fit the post-911 world, and directed SAIC take on a much more ambitious, high risk project. 
35 

The Trilogy VCF was a large and complex enterprise-level undertaking. There are 

no other criminal investigative management systems of this scale in the world. In 

terms of size, the VCF DELIVERY 1 system was to manage millions of case files 

on Day One with an annual growth of hundreds of thousands of cases per year. At 

start-up, the VCF DELIVERY 1 system was to store and index more than hundreds 

of millions of documents in a wide variety of formats. The VCF DELIVERY 1 system 

would support 30,000 users geographically dispersed across the United States and 

other countries. FBI agents, analysts, and support personnel would rely on the VCF 

DELIVERY 1 to conduct nearly all the business functions that support the criminal 

investigative process. The VCF DELIVERY 1 was also to provide hundreds of interfaces to legacy systems. The VCF DELIVERY 1 system would manage this workload 

while providing a 3-second response to users as well as high system availability. 

This would not be an ordinary case file management system. 

The VCF was intended, in sum, to provide the next generation system supporting 

the FBI’s case file management concept. It would be, as the Justice Department Inspector General has reported, ‘‘the first real change in the FBI’s workflow and processes since the 1950’s’’. The VCF would move the FBI from its slow, paper-based 

processes into the twenty-first century with electronic work flow. VCF, it was envisioned, would support real-time coordination among agents, allow secure access to, 

and reporting of case information for all those authorized to receive it, regardless 

of organization or location. VCF would support a dispersed community of users in 

creating, accessing, and managing centrally stored electronic case file information. 

It would provide the foundation upon which the FBI could migrate its disconnected 

business processes into an integrated and seamless work environment. 

Following the 9/11 attacks, time was of the essence. SAIC was asked to devise 

an approach to deliver VCF in record time—on an even more aggressive schedule. 

The new challenge was to define, develop, and deploy a bureau-wide enterprise-level 

case management system in just 22 months. Without defined requirements or an enterprise architecture for the FBI IT systems, this was a high risk approach that reflected the post 9/11 atmosphere. Here is where SAIC made honest mistakes. We 

should have made known that this approach was too ambitious. 

VCF and ‘‘flash cutover’’ 

One of the key issues in the new VCF development strategy was the so-called 

‘‘flash cutover’’ approach. That meant, simply, that the new VCF, in spite of its then 

undefined requirements, would not be implemented via a low risk, evolutionary 

strategy, but rather would be built as a grand design in record time and be implemented all at once in a ‘‘flash cutover’’ from the legacy systems to the new VCF. 

SAIC informed the Bureau this was a high-risk strategy. It was here that SAIC 

should have made its concerns known to the Director. The FBI insisted on this aggressive approach because of its critical need to improve information sharing and 

case management. SAIC agreed to undertake the challenge. In hindsight, this approach was a fundamental error and, in May 2004, the National Research Council 

Computer and Telecommunications Science Board was highly critical of the flash 

cutover approach and instead argued in favor of an incremental deployment model 

with prototyping and adequate time for test. From 2002 through mid-2004, the Bureau was committed to the flash cutover approach; however, after the Academy report, the Bureau agreed to a low-risk, incremental strategy. 

During 2003 and 2004, the Bureau’s understanding of how it should respond, of 

what mechanisms and process it might need, and how it should adjust the IT infrastructure to meet the challenges of fighting terrorism continued to evolve. Not surprisingly, the impact on the VCF program was continuing and significant. In the 

testimony of the Department of Justice Inspector General before this Subcommittee 

in March, 2004, the IG identified ‘‘poorly defined requirements that evolved as the 

project developed’’ as one of the reasons for the delays and cost increases in the Trilogy project. In fact, as recently as 4 months ago, the FBI had a team working to 

define, confirm, and refine their case management requirements. 

When the flash cutover approach was adopted, SAIC formulated an approach to 

meet the aggressive schedule. SAIC used eight development teams working in parallel and a program staff that reached 250 full-time equivalents. The risks associated with the multi-team, parallel approach became apparent in the fall of 2003. 

With multiple teams working on vertical slices of the system at breakneck speed, 

SAIC did not adequately enforce coding standards across the teams and this resulted in less than uniform code. In addition, this approach resulted in some level 

of duplication of effort in the code with different approaches used to solve similar 

problems. This, however, did not compromise the system. 

Another matter affecting the VCF software development was significant management turbulence. Since November 2001, there have been 19 Government manage-
36 

ment personnel changes that had a direct and significant impact on the management of this project (11 FBI Changes and 8 FEDSIM Changes). This lack of continuity among key Government managers contributed to the problems of ensuring 

the effective and timely implementation of this system. Each change brought new 

directions, a different perspective on priorities, and new interpretations of the requirements. 

In its report on Trilogy last year, the National Research Council spoke directly 

to the difficulty of developing software in the absence of specific, settled requirements. As the Council noted, ‘‘[I]t is essentially impossible for even the most operationally experienced IT applications developers to be able to anticipate in detail 

and in advance all of the requirements and specifications.’’ 

Probably the most damaging aspect of this development environment was the 

ever-shifting nature of the requirements. SAIC development teams would meet with 

the FBI agents assigned to the project to elicit system requirements, then SAIC 

would translate that into software designs. Often, however, the agents would look 

at the development product and reject it. They would then demand more changes 

to the design in a trial-and-error, ‘‘we-will-know-it-when-we-see-it’’ approach to development. The turbulence was not limited to the immediate changes demanded. 

They would ripple though the related parts of the software design. This cycle was 

repeated over and over again and prevented SAIC from defining system acceptance 

criteria and suitable test standards until requirements were finally agreed under 

VCF IOC this past summer. SAIC expressed concern over the affect of these 

changes on cost and schedule; however, we clearly failed to get the cumulative effect 

of these changes across to the FBI customer. We accept responsibility for this failure 

to elevate our concerns. 

The most significant of these changes, occurring during the period when the flash 

cutover strategy was in place, was to the Records Management System. SAIC had 

actually selected a commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution and the FBI had agreed 

to it. Then, late in 2003, FBI representatives decided they wanted a different approach, which would require changes to another COTS software package. The new 

COTS vendor would not be able to modify the software until a new release of the 

software was available in spring 2004. At this point, the grand design approach of 

the flash cutover strategy had begun to fall apart. 

In December 2003, we delivered an evaluation copy of the VCF system. The FBI 

reviewed the product and identified 17 deficiencies, some of which were actually 

more changes in requirements. These deficiencies and changes were addressed by 

SAIC, and an updated version of the system was provided in March 2004. The FBI 

then asked SAIC to assess the cost and schedule impact of incorporating accumulated changes and finishing Delivery 1. SAIC complied with this request in April 

2004, but the FBI chose not to undertake this course of action. The goal established 

early in 2002—define, develop, and deploy a bureau-wide, enterprise-level case management system in 22 months—was now clearly in jeopardy and behind the aggressive schedule. 

From VCF to VCF IOC 

In May, 2004, a series of meetings between SAIC, the FBI, and FEDSIM took 

place to define a new strategy. What emerged from these meetings was a significantly different plan. 

In these meetings, the Bureau agreed to modify its flash cutover approach in 

favor of an incremental approach, allowing deployment of new capabilities. Second, 

instead of replacing its legacy systems at this juncture, the Bureau agreed to focus 

on creating new capabilities based on legacy systems. Finally, the new approach was 

christened VCF Initial Operating Capability (IOC) and it was set for Delivery in December 2004. The fundamental understanding between the SAIC senior leadership 

and Director of the FBI that enabled SAIC to go forward on the VCF IOC was 

agreement, for the first time, on a fixed set of requirements and defined acceptance 

criteria. 

WHAT THE FBI RECEIVED IN VCF IOC

In December of last year, SAIC delivered VCF IOC. The project was successful. 

It delivers significant new capabilities, complied with the December, 2004 delivery 

date, was within the budget allocated for IOC, met 100 percent of requirements established by the FBI for IOC, passed a rigorous testing phase, was accepted by the 

FBI, meets or exceeds industry standards for quality, and, most importantly, is 

working well today for FBI agents in New Orleans and Washington Headquarters. 
37 

Functional capabilities 

With VCF IOC the FBI has a system that will move agents from a slow, paperbased system to a twenty-first century system for their key investigative efforts. In 

the past investigative information was often held-up in Field Offices, captured in 

agent notebooks, stored away in filing cabinets, and generally held in different ways 

and different means all across the country. VCF IOC makes critical information 

available instantaneously, in a uniform, easy-to-access manner, to all who need to 

access it regardless of their physical location. Additionally, these new capabilities 

build a foundation for migrating now-disconnected business processes into an integrated work environment and provide the infrastructure required to add the additional case management capabilities. Specifically, the functional capabilities of IOC 

include: 

—Investigative document import for the FD–302 and related documents (the current mainstay of FBI investigative effort) and National Security Letters. 

—Electronic workflow, validation, and approval meeting legal, policy, and Attorney General Guideline standards to ensure admissibility in court. 

—Upload of approved investigative documents into the appropriate case files as 

serials in the legacy Automated Case Support (ACS) system. 

Infrastructure capabilities 

If widely deployed, the infrastructure capabilities within IOC would take the Bureau from its current paper-based circumstances into a modern web-based environment. Specifically, IOC delivers: 

—A modern 3-tier web based computing infrastructure (as a migration target from 

the legacy mainframe). 

—An effective web-based user interface, already well received by agents who have 

seen and used it. 

—Organizational Hierarchy maintenance infrastructure, which matches IT infrastructure to the Bureau’s organization. 

—Automated interface to the legacy ACS. 

—A significant part of the underlying infrastructure for security, access control, 

auditing and logging. 

—System management and integration with the FBI’s Enterprise Operations Center (EOC), a 24-7 monitoring and support center. 

The functional and infrastructure capabilities in IOC enable the rapid expansion 

of VCF capabilities, both to add new features and to integrate software developed 

for Delivery 1 but not included in IOC. As evidence of this, in November 2004, the 

FBI tasked SAIC to extend the capabilities of the IOC system to provide a significantly broader capability to the Agent users. These extensions were successfully implemented in less than three months and provided to the FBI pilot users, where 

they have been quite well received. 

We believe the FBI would be well served by expanding these capabilities beyond 

the pilot sites, even as an interim solution to its urgent needs. 

Beyond the capabilities and infrastructure active in IOC, SAIC has done substantial work toward meeting the full set of requirements articulated to date for the Bureau and enterprise-wide version of VCF. The product of that broader work can be 

categorized in three groups. In the first category are capabilities where implementation was complete (or nearly complete), where integration and test were underway, 

and where routine software problems were being identified and fixed. These specifics of work done in these categories include: 

—Case Management 

—Leads 

—Intake and Report of Investigative Activity (RIA)—which is a different way of 

approaching the import documents in IOC 

—Document Management 

—Notifications and Ticklers 

—Source Management 

—Text Search 

—Most of the Reporting Generation Capabilities 

—Case Classification Hierarchy Maintenance Infrastructure 

—The remainder of the underlying infrastructure for security, access control, auditing and logging including complex business rules address the potentially conflicting pressures to share information post-9/11 and to implement need to know 

restrictions post-Hansen. 

Beyond completing the integration and test effort, additional work would be required to deploy these capabilities focused on (a) resolving outstanding requirements 

or implementation issues, and (b) adapting the capability away from the flash cutover approach to the incremental deployment strategy. 
38 

The second category represents capabilities where implementation was in 

progress but engineering or requirements issues required resolution before implementation could be completed, including: 

—Evidence Management 

—Analysis and Techniques and the remainder of the report generation capabilities. 

—Name search 

—Resource tracking and management 

—Crisis Case management 

The third category includes capabilities that were late requirements additions or 

implementation approach changes and preliminary engineering efforts were in 

place. This would include records management. 

In addition to these capabilities, SAIC performed substantial analysis and engineering efforts to document the complex and largely undocumented legacy environment that has evolved over the years. That effort was critically important to the 

FBI’s information technology initiative. In a December, 2002 report, the DOJ IG 

noted that the lack of documentation for the legacy systems would limit ‘‘how rapidly UAC can be developed and deployed’’ since ‘‘the FBI must know what it has 

before it can define the right solution to fix the problem’’. The SAIC team made significant progress in this area producing 

—Over 300 Interface Control Documents (ICDs) covering the interfaces between 

internal FBI systems and also with external systems. 

—Extensive analysis and mapping of largely undocumented legacy data to a relational model in preparation for migration into VCF. 

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, SAIC has spent the last 36 years working hard and ethically to 

support important work for the U.S. government and our nation. We have been successful because we have delivered good work for our customers. We followed a difficult path to get there. The Bureau faces difficult choices in difficult and challenging times. Unfortunately, the flawed report from Aerospace Corporation does 

not provide a sound basis for making decisions about VCF IOC. 

The information technology assignment that the FBI envisioned and that SAIC 

accepted in June of 2001 changed dramatically after the terrible events of 9/11. As 

the FBI struggled to respond to new missions and conflicting demands, new technology requirements also evolved, and we attempted to keep up. Finally, it became 

clear to all that the grand design envisioned in the full version of Virtual Case File 

was collapsing. The FBI agreed, instead, to an incremental approach that would— 

and did—produce immediate and tangible results. With the delivery of VCF IOC, 

SAIC has given FBI agents new capability today—not at some uncertain point years 

from now, but today as they work to combat both crime and terror across this nation. 

SAIC pledges to the Committee and to the FBI that we stand ready to work at 

cost with all parties to recognize the full potential of all of the extensive documentation, analysis and code that has already been provided to further enhance the capabilities of the FBI to perform its vital tasks. 

If the FBI’s goal is to provide its agents enhanced capabilities as soon as possible 

and at relatively low additional cost, then we strongly recommend that the FBI continue to deploy VCF capabilities to the agents using the highly successful incremental approach utilized for the VCF IOC delivery and to evolve it along with their 

emerging enterprise architecture. Using IOC should bring dramatic productivity improvements now while the bureau develops a new system. 

If, however, the primary goal has shifted to meeting the new requirements of the 

new Federal Investigative Case Management System (FICMS), or to adopt the latest 

technology and COTS components that did not exist when VCF began, then the 

FBI’s agents will have to wait until these new programs deliver as yet undefined 

capabilities in three or more years. The Trilogy IOC provides much needed capabilities today that are scalable across the entire FBI and provides the foundation to 

quickly add other required capabilities incrementally over the next year. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GARY P. PULLIAM, VICE PRESIDENT, CIVIL AND

COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, THE AEROSPACE CORPORATION

Mr. Chairman, distinguished committee members, and staff: I am pleased to represent The Aerospace Corporation and appear before you today as you deliberate 

Trilogy and the Virtual Case File System. 
39 

As a private, nonprofit corporation, The Aerospace Corporation has provided engineering and scientific services to government organizations for over 40 years. We 

provide a stable, objective, expert source of analysis. We are focused on the government’s best interests, with no profit motive or predilection for any particular design 

or technical solution. 

As its primary activity, Aerospace operates a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) sponsored by the Under Secretary of the Air Force, and 

managed by the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) in El Segundo, California. 

The Aerospace Corporation also undertakes projects for civil agencies that are in the 

national interest and are consistent with our corporate role. Over 350 staff members 

focus exclusively on computer systems, software, and information technology. 

Our unique ‘‘trusted agent’’ role provided to the Air Force has become known 

throughout the Intelligence Community. In executing our FFRDC mission, and more 

specifically, our support to the National Reconnaissance Office, our technical core 

competencies have become known to the FBI. 

1. INTRODUCTION

In 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began a major information 

technology upgrade commonly known as The Trilogy Program. The User Applications Component (UAC) is one of three basic elements of Trilogy. Organizations such 

as the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice Inspector General, and the National Research Council have voiced serious concern about the 

progress in completing Trilogy, and specifically the UAC. In response to these concerns, the FBI developed and implemented a ‘‘corrective action plan’’ in June 2004. 

As part of the corrective action plan, the FBI requested that The Aerospace Corporation (hereafter, Aerospace), conduct an independent verification and validation 

of the UAC; specifically, the Virtual Case File (VCF) Delivery 1. 

This testimony summarizes findings and recommendations from the independent 

verification and validation (IV&V) review of the VCF Delivery 1, conducted by The 

Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace). This testimony is extracted from Aerospace Report No. ATR–2005(5154)–4, ‘‘Independent Verification and Validation of the Trilogy 

Virtual Case File, Delivery 1: Final Report’’, delivered to the FBI on January 21, 

2005. The FBI, and the Vice President, Civil and Commercial Operations of The 

Aerospace Corporation have approved release of this information. 

This overall scope of the IV&V assessments of the VCF Delivery 1 included the 

system design, software design, overall security, and the maturity of the development contractor’s software development processes. Each assessment comprised reviews and analyses of pertinent documentation, source code, and process-related materials. In addition, the assessment of the maturity of the development contractor’s 

software development processes included a site visit (November 9, 2004) with interviews of key contractor personnel involved in the VCF Delivery 1. The assessments 

summarized in this testimony were conducted in the period August-December 2004. 

It is important to clarify that this effort was not an IV&V in the traditional sense 

of verifying that all requirements have been satisfied, though requirement satisfaction was part of the assessment. Neither was it an independent program assessment 

that focused on the entire range of management, programmatic, contractual, and 

technical issues. Rather, Aerospace conducted a detailed engineering assessment of 

VCF Delivery 1 requirements and design documentation, source code, and artifacts 

to provide a recommendation to the FBI on discarding or remediating VCF Delivery 

1 products. 

Specifically, Aerospace was asked to address the following business questions: 

Question 1. Did the incumbent contractor meet the stated requirements? 

a. User Needs 

b. System Requirements 

c. Software Requirements 

Question 2. Did the incumbent contractor develop a complete and correct Concept 

of Operations, System Architecture, and System Requirements? 

Question 3. What should the FBI do with VCF Delivery 1? 

a. Keep all of it? 

b. Keep parts of it? 

c. Discard it? 

The remainder of the testimony is organized as follows: 

Section 2 describes the methodology used in assessing the system design associated with VCF Delivery 1, as well as the software design, security, and the maturity 

of the development contractor’s software development processes. 

Section 3 summarizes the findings made by the assessment teams in terms of topics whose state of being influences the answers to the three business questions. 
40 

These topical groupings represent (1) architecture, (2) requirements, (3) software 

quality, (4) performance, (5) security, and (6) contractor processes. More detailed 

finding statements are found in the Appendices. 

Section 4 presents conclusions formed by examining the findings across all six 

items of interest, as well as inferred findings based on possible observed trends. 

This section addresses Business Questions 1 and 2. 

Section 5 presents a framework for addressing Business Question 3 and a recommendation based on the framework. In addition, general recommendations are 

given based on Aerospace observations. 

2. APPROACH

The IV&V review consisted of assessments of the UAC documentation and artifacts relating to system design, software design, security, and the maturity of the 

development contractor’s software development processes. In addition, the IV&V assessment of the maturity of contractor processes included a fact-finding trip to the 

contractor’s facility to conduct interviews and view additional materials. In general, 

the methods used were tailored versions of those employed by Aerospace in performing IV&V reviews of national security space systems. The specific approaches 

utilized by a given assessment team are summarized in the following sections. 

Because IV&V is the process of verifying that requirements are satisfied and validating that user needs are met, and because Aerospace was limited primarily to documentation and artifacts, most of assessment was spent examining the quality of 

and traceability through the documentation and artifacts. This is in keeping with 

an essential tenet of systems engineering that necessary conditions for a system to 

be successfully implemented are that (1) documentation and artifacts be complete, 

clear, concise, precise, and mutually consistent, and (2) requirements be properly decomposed with bi-directional tracing between successive levels of the system (e.g., 

user needs trace to system requirements, system requirements trace to subsystem 

requirements, and so forth through design, implementation, and test). Not only do 

these conditions increase the probability of successfully implementing a system, 

they are required for effective maintenance. 

When possible, the assessment team used industry and government standards as 

benchmarks against which the program documentation and artifacts were measured. Although standards were not required on the VCF development contract, 

standards were used in the assessment because they encapsulate known best practices that should be used whether or not they are required of a contractor. The use 

of standards also eliminates a level of subjectivity from the assessment. 

Given the scope and time constraints of the IV&V review, Aerospace focused on 

a sample of program documentation and other artifacts. Two notable exceptions 

were that (1) the group assessing the maturity of contractor software development 

processes conducted a 1-day site visit with the contractor to obtain answers to process questions and to view sample reports and artifacts, and (2) a limited number 

of Aerospace personnel attended a 1-day design review. In taking this overall approach, it is important to note: 

—With the exception of the 1-day site visit and the 1-day design review, Aerospace did not have direct contact with the incumbent contractor to address comments on the documentation and potentially alleviate some concerns. 

—With the exception of database performance testing, access was not provided to 

the tests that occurred or the results of those tests (hence, the review does not 

directly address how well VCF Delivery 1 satisfies the user requirements but 

does so by inference). 

2.1 System Design Assessment 

The system design assessment provided the system-level portion of the IV&V review. The system design assessment was divided into two smaller assessment activities: an evaluation of the system-level documentation (i.e., cross-checking the system-level documentation) and a system-level IV&V appraisal of VCF Delivery 1. The 

latter consisted of an examination of requirements traceability, requirements satisfaction, performance, and security. 

2.1.1 System Level Documentation Assessment 

To objectively assess the system-level documentation, Aerospace identified standards against which the documents could be compared. This section describes the 

ways these standards were used in the assessment. 

The CONOPS was reviewed and its content compared against the reference standard embodied in the Department of Defense (DOD) Data Item Description (DID) 

Operational Concept Description (OCD) [1]. (The emerging guide for preparing 

CONOPS documents [2] that is being created by the American Institute of Aero-
41 

nautics and Astronautics (AIAA), in conjunction with the International Council on 

Systems Engineering (INCOSE), was also consulted for content and language.) In 

the review, particular attention was given to the CONOPS with respect to: 

—The description of the current system (e.g., operational environment; major system components; interfaces to external systems or procedures; capabilities and 

functions of the current system; diagrams/charts depicting data flow and processes; quality attributes such as reliability, availability, maintainability, flexibility, extensibility; personnel; support concept for the current system). 

—The justification for and the nature of changes (e.g., description of the needed 

changes; priorities among the changes; changes considered but not included; assumptions and constraints). 

—The description of the new system. 

—Operational scenarios (e.g., the role of the system and interactions with users; 

events, actions, interactions, stimuli). 

—The new system’s operational and organizational impacts. 

—The analysis of the proposed system (e.g., summary of advantages; summary of 

disadvantages/limitations; alternatives and trade-offs considered). 

The SADD was reviewed and its content compared to the reference standard 

found in the DOD DID System/Subsystem Design Description (SSDD) [3]. (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems, IEEE Std 1471–2000 [4], was 

consulted for content and language.) The SADD was examined with respect to its: 

—Presentation of system-wide design decisions. Specifically, decisions regarding 

system behavior and the selection and design of components; inputs, outputs, 

and interfaces; actions the system would perform in response to inputs or conditions; description of physical systems; selected algorithms; how databases would 

appear to the user; approaches to meeting safety, security, and privacy requirements; design and construction choices. 

—Descriptions of the system architectural design (e.g., hardware configuration 

items, computer software configuration items, and manual operations; concept 

of execution; interface design; requirements traceability). 

The SRS was also reviewed and compared against two applicable standards: DOD 

Military (MIL) Standard (STD) 498, Software Development and Documentation [5] 

and DOD DID System/Subsystem Specification (SSS) [6]. (The INCOSE Systems 

Engineering Handbook [7] was consulted for content.) The SRS was assessed against 

the full breadth of possible requirements, to include: 

—Definition of required states and modes 

—Internal and external interface requirements 

—Internal data requirements 

—Safety requirements 

—Environment requirements 

—Computer-related requirements (e.g., resources, hardware, resource utilization, 

software, computer communications) 

—Quality factors. 

In addition to performing reviews of the SADD, CONOPS, and SRS against particular standards, the system-level documentation was assessed for their mutual 

consistency, completeness, and reasonableness. 

2.1.2 VCF Delivery 1 Assessment 

2.1.2.1 Requirement Traceability 

Aerospace examined the completeness and consistency of user need statements 

and their maturation into system requirements. 

Aerospace extracted all system and software requirements from traceability tables 

found in the SRS and the SRD, and examined parent-child relationships between 

these documents. Comparisons were made of each system requirement statement 

within the body of the SRS to that found in the SRS traceability matrix. A similar 

comparison was made with software requirements in the SRD. 

Validation and verification was performed on subsets of the system-level requirements involving access control and workflow (these requirement areas were chosen, 

in consultation with the FBI, based on their importance to the UAC). Specifically, 

Aerospace identified 22 system-level access control requirements and assessed all of 

them. Of the more than 120 system-level workflow requirements identified, 52 were 

assessed. The 74 system-level access control and workflow requirement statements 

were assessed against the following quality attributes provided in The Engineering 

Design of Systems [8]: 

—1. Clear and concise.—The requirement has only one interpretation and does 

not contain more than it should. When clarity was in question, the UAC Re-
42 

1 Critical path SQL code is defined as those SQL queries that are executed a majority of the 

time. 

quirements Terms and Definitions Document (RTDD) was used as the primary 

source for clarification. 

2. In-scope.—The requirement does not impose anything unnecessary on the system. 

3. Design- and implementation-free.—The requirement does not impose a design 

or implementation solution. 

4. Verifiable.—The requirement uses concrete terms and measurable quantities. 

5. Free of TBD/TBR.—The requirement does not contain placeholder statements 

or values. 

6. Free of conflict or duplication.—The requirement neither overlaps nor opposes 

another requirement. 

7. Appropriate decomposition.—The traced-to software requirements make sense 

and are complete. 

8. Complete requirement set.—There is no appearance of missing requirements related to the requirement being examined. 

2.1.2.2 Requirements Satisfaction 

Actual requirement satisfaction, as determined through a review of requirement 

testing results, was not considered because test results were not made available. For 

this reason, Aerospace relied on secondary indicators of requirement satisfaction. 

For example, the assessment of traceability of the CONOPS, SADD, and SRS was 

performed within the system-level requirement traceability activity (Section 2.1.2.1), 

while traceability of software requirements was examined in the software source 

code and traceability analyses (Sections 2.2.3 and 2.2.5). Other facets of requirement 

satisfaction were provided by other analyses. 

2.1.2.3 Performance 

Contractor test methodology and database performance test results, as found in 

the Interim Scaling and Performance Test Report, were examined to assess the performance of VCF Delivery 1. The goal of the database performance evaluation was 

to identify areas of high performance risk in the database schema and database 

Structured Query Language (SQL) query code. Network, application server, and web 

server performance were not examined. 

In addition to examining the contractor test data, independent checks on database 

performance were conducted through the following means: 

—Creation of an Entity Relationship diagram based on the contractor database 

Data Definition Language (DDL) code, from which further analysis of the database could be conducted. 

—Examination of SQL code with respect to (1) system queries, especially with respect to the use of table joins in clauses, nested queries, outer joins, and 

cursors; (2) code complexity; (3) performance risk factors; and (4) identifying the 

SQL code critical path 1. —Review of the database structure for signs of performance enhancement attributes (e.g., table partitioning, table splitting, denormalization, materialized 

views, and rollup tables). 

—Review of the database indexing to determine if table indexes were selected for 

maximum SQL code performance. 

—Analysis of the Virtual Private Database (VPD) implementation performance 

risks (i.e., looking at the where clause predicates that would be added to each 

and every SQL query). 

—Evaluation of system scalability requirements through an extrapolation of reported test results. 

2.2 Software Design Assessment 

The software design assessment comprised six distinct analyses: software architecture, software requirements, source code traceability, source code documentation, 

requirements traceability, and security. 

2.2.1 Software Architecture Analysis 

The analysis began with a review of the CONOPS, SADD, SRD, Software Design 

Document (SDD), and accompanying component SDDs. In addition, IEEE Std 1471– 

2000 [4] was reviewed because it was referenced in the SADD. 

The software architecture was examined using an abbreviated form of the Architecture and Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) developed by the Software Engineering Institute [9]. Critical system and software requirements (known as quality attribute requirements in the ATAM) were identified in Exhibit 3–2 of the SADD, re-
43 

2 IEEE STD 830–1998 was used because software requirement specifications and system requirement specifications are different, and each has a different set of recommended practices. 

There is a lot in common between standards for system requirements and IEEE STD 830–1998, 

and hence duplication, but the two types of standards address different areas of scope for different audiences, and do so at different levels of detail. 

viewed, and laid out to form a quality attribute tree, with specification down to the 

scenario level. (These system quality factors address scalability, extensibility, reliability, performance, security, and evolvability.) Software architectural approaches 

based on the high priority quality factors were then iteratively elicited and analyzed, with risks, sensitivity points, and tradeoff points identified. Part of the 

iterative process included brainstorming and prioritizing the scenarios generated in 

the utility tree based on stakeholder needs (in this case, because access to the actual 

stakeholders was not possible, the prioritization was based on information in the 

document artifacts); in the second pass of the process, the scenarios were treated 

as test cases for the architecture analysis. 

2.2.2 Software Requirements Analysis 

Software requirements analysis was conducted on data access control and basic 

workflow requirements after a review of the SRD, SDD (and corresponding volumes), thread design documents, and consultation with the FBI. The quality of 

these software requirements was evaluated against the following attributes found 

in IEEE STD 830–1998 [10] 2: 

—1. Unambiguous and clear.—The requirement has only one interpretation. The 

UAC Requirements Terms and Definitions Document (RTDD) was the primary 

source for clarification, followed by Webster’s Dictionary [11]. 

—2. Consistent.—The requirements do not conflict, and requirements use the 

same terms to mean the same things. 

—3. Non-redundant.—There are no superfluous requirements. Each requirement 

adds something new to the SRD. 

—4. Complete.—Nothing is missing from the requirement. Each requirement defines a user type, employs the verb ‘‘shall’’ once, and specifies an end result. 

Most requirements should also have a performance or timing criterion. 

—5. Single requirement and concise.—The requirement does not contain more 

than it should. The requirement has no superfluous detail and expresses only 

one need. 

—6. Design- and implementation-independent.—The requirement does not prescribe any design or implementation solution. 

—7. Testable/verifiable.—The requirement uses concrete terms and measurable 

quantities. Words like ‘‘good,’’ ‘‘well,’’ and ‘‘usually’’ signal that a requirement 

is not testable. 

—8. Complete requirement set.—No requirements are missing. The set of requirements defines those actions the software will take given all possible types of 

input data when in all possible states. 

Information and findings were shared with and by the system design assessment 

team to increase overall understanding of critical requirements. 

2.2.3 Source Code Traceability Analysis 

This section summarizes the combined processes of the source code traceability 

analysis and the software requirements traceability analysis (Section 2.2.5). 

Requirements in the areas of access control and basic workflow were identified 

and traced from the software requirements to threads and SDD volumes to the 

source code, using the SDD and corresponding volumes (e.g., Workflow Volume), 

thread design documents, Test Plan, and the RequisitePro® database. (The initial 

process of tracing from software requirements to threads was abandoned after the 

FBI notified Aerospace that the contractor had developed new documentation.) In 

conducting these traceability analyses, emphasis was placed on: 

—Correctness (e.g., does the documented design and source code address the software requirements allocated to it?) 

—Consistency (e.g., is the allocation of software to design and code consistent 

across the documentation and supporting requirements management tools; are 

allocations at the same level of detail?) 

—Completeness (e.g., are all software requirements allocated to design elements 

and code; do the design elements clearly and concisely satisfy the allocated requirements given the design level of detail?) 

Tracings were examined from software requirements through software design and 

code, and from software requirements to tests. 
44 

2.2.4 Source Code Documentation Analysis 

Java source code complexity was determined for all modules. PL/SQL source code 

complexity was examined for modules related to security, basic workflow, administration, and case management software components. The complexity of modules 

written in Java was determined using McCabeQA®. ClearSQL® was used for modules written in PL/SQL. Module size, in terms of source lines of code (SLOC), was 

determined for the respective Java and PL/SQL modules because size is another indicator of complexity. Those modules with the greatest complexity, size, or relationship to other modules were then subjected to a peer review: 191 Java modules, from 

the functional areas of data access control, workflow, case management, administration, and components, out of 309 high-risk modules; all 667 PL/SQL modules related 

to the functional areas of workflow, security, administration, and case management, 

98 of which were determined to be high risk; and 42 JSP modules in the functional 

areas of workflow, security, administration, and case management, based on size 

and relationship to other JSP modules. The underlying source code of the selected 

modules was compared to contractor documentation (SDD and corresponding volumes, thread design documents, Software Development Plan (SDP)), especially with 

respect to design and test. Documentation was examined for correctness, consistency, completeness, and suitability. The Java and PL/SQL peer reviews focused on 

data and control flow, traceability of modules from design documentation, correctness of comments, and other elements of coding practices as defined by the development contractor’s coding standards expressed in the SDP. 

2.2.5 Requirements Traceability Analysis 

The activities of the source code traceability analysis (Section 2.2.3) and the software requirements traceability analysis were tightly coupled. For that reason, the 

process description and status of the two analyses are combined and reported in 

Section 2.2.3 above. 

2.3 Security Assessment 

The security assessment was based on the DOD Information Technology System 

Certification and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP) [12, 13] and the National Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (NIACAP) [14]. Project 

documentation reviewed as part of the assessment include the SRS, SRD, SADD, 

CONOPS, Security CONOPS, SDD, Security Volume, Admin Volume, Security Architecture, Security Plan and associated support package, Privileged Users Guide, 

and Certification and Accreditation Methodology. 

Security-related requirements were identified from the available documentation: 

the SRS, SRD, and the Security Volume of the SDD. The design of the system was 

then examined with respect to the subset of requirements to determine the completeness and accuracy of the system design against this requirement set. 

Certification and accreditation material contained in the System Security Plan 

and System Security Plan Support Package was also reviewed to determine its suitability and completeness with respect to what Aerospace experience has shown is 

necessary for such an activity. 

2.4 Software Development Maturity Assessment 

The software development maturity assessment was conducted using the same 

processes Aerospace employs for national security space systems, but tailored to the 

meet the time constraints of this project. A questionnaire was developed, based on 

the U.S. Air Force Software Development Capability Evaluation (SDCE) [15], that 

addresses risks, key requirements, and five areas of specific interest: 

—Systems engineering (e.g., system requirements development, management and 

control) 

—Software engineering (e.g., software requirements management, software design, software coding and unit testing, software integration and test) 

—Quality management and product control (e.g., quality management, quality assurance, defect control, peer review, software configuration management) 

—Organizational resources and program support (e.g., organizational process 

management) 

—Program-specific technologies (e.g., database management, COTS, trusted systems). 

Answers to some questions were found in a review of the available documentation: 

SRS; Master Plan; Configuration Management (CM), Risk Management (RM), and 

Quality Assurance (QA) Plans; Software Development Plan (SDP); Master Test Plan 

and Delivery 1 Test Plan; and System Security Architecture. Questions that could 

not be answered from the documentation, or for which additional information was 
45 

needed, were presented to the FBI and the contractor in preparation for an on-site 

fact-finding visit. 

At the time of the fact-finding visit (November 9, 2004) Aerospace interviewed selected members of the contractor staff according to areas identified in the questionnaire. The current Deputy Program Director, who was the VCF Delivery 1 Program 

Manager, provided interviewees with the questionnaire and scheduled interviews 

with most of the VCF Delivery 1 managers. The Program Manager accessed the 

IBM Rational® ClearCase®, ClearQuest®, and TestManager® files during the 

interview sessions. Time constraints did not permit an in-depth review of the files, 

but sample reports were printed, and examples of parts of the Software Development Folders (SDFs) were reviewed. 

Prior to the visit, Aerospace requested that the following documents and artifacts 

be available for review: SDFs, the System Engineering Master Plan, documentation 

from preliminary and critical design reviews, deficiency report databases or spreadsheets, Rational Rose® artifacts, metrics plans and reports, peer review reports, and 

quality assurance reports. All requested items were made available and reviewed, 

with the following exceptions: 

—The System Engineering Master Plan was not provided. The review team elected not to review it because it was not part of the development contract baseline. 

—Rational Rose artifacts were not reviewed. The review team focused on the SDF 

because coding was accomplished based on the SDF contents. 

—No system-level preliminary or critical design reviews materials were reviewed 

because these events were not conducted. Materials from In-Progress Reviews 

(IPRs) and the System Requirements Review were reviewed. 

3. TOPICAL FINDINGS

The results of the Aerospace IV&V are grouped into six topic areas: 

—Architectures (e.g., enterprise-, system-, and software-level architectures) 

—Requirements (e.g., concept analysis, system analysis, requirement analysis, requirement quality, traceability) 

—Software quality (e.g., software functionality, structure, testing, documentation, 

thread methodology, database software) 

—Performance (e.g., overall system performance of the database) 

—Security (e.g., certification and accreditation, system security administration, 

security requirements definition, security design documentation) 

—Contractor processes (e.g., processes defined by the contractor that were or were 

not followed, processes that worked or did not work). 

Findings in each area are summarized in the following sections. Each summary 

lists strengths and weaknesses, provides a high-level summary of the most important strengths and weaknesses (individually or in groups) and their implications, 

and gives an overall appraisal of the topic area. Conclusions based on the findings 

are summarized in Section 4. 

With the exception of the software development maturity assessment, all of the 

assessments were made strictly on documentation and artifacts delivered to Aerospace. This has two consequences. The first consequence is that this usually leads 

to noting more weaknesses than strengths. If there is sufficient ambiguity or uncertainty of what is intended in a document, a negative finding is generated, even if 

a short conversation with the contractor could have removed the problem. Therefore, 

the perceived state of what is being evaluated can be more negative than the actual 

state warrants. Aerospace did three things to reduce both the likelihood of this happening and the associated impact. First, a fact-finding visit was made to the development contractor’s facility to resolve questions about their software development 

processes. Second, industry and government standards were used to provide objective measures of quality and practices. Lastly, Aerospace looked at both documentation and product (i.e., source code) for possible strengths or weaknesses in each 

area. 

The second consequence of basing the IV&V review largely on documentation is 

that the ability to transfer the existing document set from the development contractor to a replacement contractor is tested. In this instance many weaknesses 

could indicate there are significant problems with the documentation or that the 

concepts being developed are not clearly stated. In either case, it would be very unlikely that a replacement contractor could pick up where the original left off, thereby closing the door on a possible acquisition or maintenance strategy. 

3.1 Architecture 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

the architecture. 
46 

3.1.1 Strengths 

The incumbent contractor specified a standard three-tiered Web-based design pattern for the VCF architecture. A well-designed and implemented system of this type 

should be highly flexible, extensible, and scaleable, and should easily integrate new 

functionality. The theoretical strength of the approach is that it is highly 

componentized, generic, and built on open standards. 

3.1.2 Weaknesses 

Though the fundamental strength of the architecture lies in its classic three-tier 

model, the fundamental weakness relates to the failure to actually implement the 

system according to the specified architectural concept. As a result, the system risks 

the ability to maintain, change components (e.g., COTS, GOTS), reuse, or add new 

functionality to the software. Maintainability and reuse are negatively impacted by 

the tightly coupled, threaded design. Performance and scalability are likely to be 

limited by the decision to implement VCF in a centralized versus a distributed fashion. Furthermore, it is possible that certain types of distributed architectures would 

provide greater reliability through redundancy. 

Though maximizing the use of COTS was a stated goal of the VCF program, Aerospace found a limited use of COTS application products, and a design approach 

whereby functionality available in COTS was rejected, then reimplemented in VCF 

custom code. In addition, no non-Oracle COTS search and analysis tools were found 

to be acceptable, as no non-Oracle tools were found to be compatible with the Virtual Private Database and associated access controls. 

The use of most COTS software is precluded by the choice for implementation of 

security and access controls at the data level. The VCF system uses two types of 

access controls: functional access controls, and data access controls. Functional access controls are implemented primarily in application code written in PL/SQL within the data tier. Data access controls are implemented using the VPD. Because all 

of the access control mechanisms are enforced by the database, they cannot be utilized by external applications. This is a fundamental limitation in VCF architecture. 

This means that virtually all functionality available in COTS that requires access 

control (including document management, workflow, tasking and delegation) must 

be implemented by developers in the VCF application in custom code. This limitation extends to highly capable COTS search and analysis applications, including 

link analysis and specialized applications used in other law enforcement and intelligence community applications. 

The manner in which the access controls were implemented in the VPD feature 

of the Oracle database also imposes significant and unacceptable performance 

delays. While most implementations incorporate some of the controls available in 

VPD, and apply to a restricted subset of database tables, this implementation uses 

all of the control mechanisms and applies them to the tables that are used in virtually every join operation required for the response to any normal database query, 

resulting in significant performance degradation. 

Remediation of these weaknesses would require a complete reevaluation of the approach to security access control. 

Lastly, the software architecture documentation does not conform to the best practices identified in IEEE Std 1471–2000. For example, stakeholder concerns are not 

directly mapped to the software architectural responses, there is no viewpoint specification for the software architecture description, a specific methodology is not identified to represent architectural views, and known inconsistencies among architectural description elements are not noted. Failing to adhere to best practices can impact functionality, timeliness, and schedule throughout the development cycle. 

3.1.3 Appraisal 

Decisions on architecture and the accompanying high-level design are fundamentally important. Yet critical architecture goals have not been met. There was a failure to appropriately assess the use of COTS products. It appears that inadequate 

attention was given to the performance requirements in relation to the choice of the 

Virtual Private Database and the associated Access Control List (ACL) table to implement the discretionary access control requirements. Analysis targeted at determining the objects to be protected with discretionary access controls, and methods 

of protecting these objects, may have resulted in alternate design choices that had 

more attractive performance characteristics. Likewise, by allowing the original 

three-tier architecture to collapse to two tiers (thus failing to adhere strictly to the 

Web-based design pattern), the architectural tenet on separation-of-concerns was 

violated. Consequently, future technology insertion is at risk, and maintenance and 

reuse of the VCF software will be more difficult. 
47 

3.2 Requirements 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

system and software requirements (development, analysis, and documentation). 

3.2.1 Strengths 

All of the system level requirements examined were found to be within scope. 

There is no evidence of unnecessary features that could constrain design and increase cost. 

The System Requirements Specification (SRS) did not contain TBD (to be determined) or TBR (to be reviewed) markings. This is generally a positive indicator for 

systems that have progressed from the conceptual phase to the development phase, 

since a lack of TBDs and TBRs usually means that the requirements baseline is stable. However, the lack of TBDs and TBRs provides no assurance that requirements 

are not missing. Friedman and Sage [16] have pointed out that the lack of TBDs 

can indicate that requirements have been suppressed or ignored, thus creating what 

they call ‘‘silent specs.’’ 

Design and implementation details were not found in either the system-level or 

software requirements; therefore, the developer adhered to expected system and 

software development practices. 

None of the examined data access control and the basic workflow software requirements duplicated another. Avoiding duplicate requirements eliminates needless 

requirements analysis and redundancies in development and testing. 

3.2.2 Weaknesses 

The CONOPS is incomplete in that it lacks summaries of advantages, disadvantages, limitations, and alternatives and tradeoffs considered. It fails to show through 

analysis that the Information Presentation and Transportation Network Components provide the necessary infrastructure to meet UAC requirements. 

The CONOPS does not agree with the SRS, resulting in concepts that are not articulated as requirements in the SRS and requirements that do not correspond to 

operational concepts. The expected relationship between the CONOPS and the SRS 

is that the CONOPS should contain statements of operational activities; the SRS 

should specify system functions through functional requirements. A relationship 

should exist between the operational activities and the system functions. Contrast 

this relationship with that between the UAC CONOPS and the UAC SRS: the relationship between operational activities and system functions is missing; there is little correspondence between the statements made in the UAC CONOPS and the 

UAC SRS functional requirements. 

Neither the SRS nor the SRD address all of the requirements expected in a specification. Failure to address the range of applicable requirements can result in a system that is implemented in such a way as to be unacceptable to the user or other 

stakeholders. Incorporating the additional sections at this point in the life cycle 

would require a major effort that would subsequently result in rewriting the design 

documents and making changes to the source code as needed to accommodate these 

design changes and would result in additional integration and test effort. 

The System Architecture Design Document (SADD) is incomplete relative to expectations. Although the SADD lists architecture constraints and goals, it does not 

describe how the architecture meets them. The SADD includes neither decisions nor 

rationale for the external interfaces, scalability, extensibility, maintainability, and 

other items important to the architecture. The incomplete description of the system 

design could lead to unspecified and untraceable software requirements, which, in 

turn, leads to a system that does not meet users’ needs. 

Inconsistencies exist between the Interface Definition Document (IDD), the Interface Control Documents (ICDs), and the SRS. For example, not all ICDs are referenced in the IDD, and some external systems noted in the SRS do not have a corresponding ICD. Although the SRS identifies external systems that currently interface with ACS and the types of interface to be supported by VCF to ensure legacy 

support, there are no requirements in the SRS that indicate the VCF must ensure 

such support. The IDD itself contains only seven requirements (‘‘shall’’ statements), 

six of which relate to the frequency of interface execution. Inadequate interface definition puts at risk the ability of VCF Delivery 1 to operate with legacy systems. 

In addition to reviewing the requirements-related documentation for inclusion of 

information typically expected in the documents, a quality review of the system-level 

and software requirements was conducted. Quality deficiencies include problems 

such as compound requirements, conflicting requirements, ambiguous and undefined 

terms, use of ‘‘and/or’’ in system requirements, use of ‘‘et cetera’’ in system requirements, use of unverifiable words in system requirements, lack of specified user category in software requirements, lack of response time constraints in software re-
48 

quirements, and redundant system requirements. These quality deficiencies may result in a system implementation that does not meet the expectations of users and 

other stakeholders. Specific problems and examples are provided in the finding summaries. 

The SRS did not completely cover requirements. Gaps in expected system level 

functionality were found. Additionally, the Requirements Terms and Definitions 

Document (RTDD) contained implied requirements. Placing implied requirements 

within the RTDD does not ensure that the expected functionality will be implemented. 

Traceability was assessed on various levels and from various perspectives. The expected relationship between need statements, system requirements, and requirements for lower-level elements (e.g., hardware and software) is that there is a strict 

downward flow of requirements. Every need statement maps to a system requirement and every system requirement maps to a need statement. Thus, there are neither ‘‘childless’’ need statements nor ‘‘orphan’’ system requirements. The process 

continues in a like manner for the system requirements and lower-level element requirements. Contrast this with what is observed in the UAC need statements and 

requirement documents: need statements do not flow exclusively to system requirements, and in many cases they bypass the system requirements completely. The 

lack of traceability from need statements to system requirements could result in a 

system design that does not meet user needs and may implement features that are 

not required. 

Traceability was also assessed in the SRS review by conducting a decomposition 

analysis on a set of requirements from the SRS to the software level. The analysis 

identified problems such as incomplete decompositions and decompositions that 

were more restrictive than the system level requirement. Additional traceability 

analyses assessed the mapping of system and software requirements to the 

traceability matrix; errors were found in the trace. The mapping of business rules 

to software requirements was also incomplete. Here again, the lack of traceability 

from system requirements through design means that the design may not meet requirements and may implement features that are not required. 

Finally, analyses were conducted of traceability from software requirements to 

software design and source code, and from software requirements to tests. There 

were three sets of artifacts that provided traceability between the software requirements and the design: the RequisitePro® database, the thread documents, and the 

SDD volumes. The RequisitePro® database traced to the name of a thread, which 

was associated with the corresponding portion of the SDD volume for basic workflow 

and for data access control. The RequisitePro® database was consistent with the 

traceability in the SDD volumes (with one exception), but not consistent with the 

traceability in the thread documents. It is Aerospace’s understanding that the 

thread documents were the original design documents and that the SDD volumes 

reflected the as-built software. All but one of the software traceability findings deal 

with the SDD volumes as opposed to the thread documents. 

There was poor traceability from the software requirements for basic workflow 

(BW) and data access control (DAC) through the design to the software components. 

A spot-check analysis of the workflow code shows that some software requirements 

do not appear to be covered in the code itself. There are some DAC software requirements that are inconsistently traced between the RequisitePro® database and the 

Security Volume of the Software Design Document. Lack of adequate requirement 

traceability into software design and code results in risk that the software will not 

meet its stated requirements and greater difficulty of modifying software when requirement changes occur. 

There were several BW software requirements that were not assigned to tests in 

the Delivery 1 Test Plan. Without these requirements being validated in assigned 

tests, there is no certainty that the users’ requirements are completely met. 

3.2.3 Appraisal 

The requirements, analysis, and documentation associated with the UAC and 

VCF Delivery 1 contain significant information deficiencies that must be corrected 

to ensure an adequate system definition and development process; a majority of the 

system and software requirements examined contain quality deficiencies; and the requirements decomposition and traceability chain, from the SRS to SRD to software 

design components to source code to test documents, is weak because of missing information and inaccuracies. Extrapolating these observations to the entirety of the 

requirements, analysis, and documentation leads to serious concerns about the 

maintainability and reusability of VCF Delivery 1. Remediation could be very timeconsuming and, because of the traceability concerns, may not ensure that all problems would be addressed. 
49 

3.3 Software Quality 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

the software, to include database software. 

3.3.1 Strengths 

VCF Java Package Standards, set forth in Appendix A of the Software Development Plan, were followed. In particular, the Struts framework was followed, compelling developers to follow a Model View Controller design. This was significant because developers familiar with Model View Controller design and the Struts framework should be able to understand the flow of information in the source code and 

maintain the presentation layer of software with little difficulty. Also, the software 

components described in the Workflow Volume of the SDD were almost all found 

in the code. This is important for maintenance purposes. 

3.3.2 Weaknesses 

Commenting standards were not consistently followed in the source code files that 

were analyzed. For example, very few functions or files included a change history, 

and there were no references to the design documents associated with each class. 

This inconsistency indicates that coding standards listed in the Software Development Plan were not always followed. Not following a formal software development 

process for such a large system implies the lack of a disciplined approach, a lack 

of coordination among developers, and a lack of standards enforcement. The result 

of inconsistent comments is that the burden of source code maintenance increases 

because programmers are forced to search through the documentation every time 

the code needs changing or when checking for possible side effects associated with 

making changes to different classes. This weakness can be corrected only by going 

through all the source code files and writing the needed comments. There are also 

comments in the code that mention work that remains to be done. This means that 

either the code is incomplete or that the misleading code documentation was never 

removed from completed code. This code should be examined in detail and compared 

to the design to determine its status, and it should be tested to be sure it ran without errors. Then these comments should be removed to eliminate confusion. 

Some Java classes have modules with incomplete code and unused code. This code 

cannot be validated because its purpose is unknown. Such code can affect the safety 

of the system by performing unexpected and unplanned operations. If the code is 

not fully validated, then the proper operation of the system cannot be assured. 

Some Java code contains inconsistent use of constants by hard coding and some 

by using constants and database files for others. The preferred method is to use constants and database files so that any future changes can be made to the constant 

or to the database, thereby ensuring completeness of the change. Hard coding requires that changes be made to all instances and some may be missed. 

Discrepancies were found between the thread design documents and the Software 

Design Document volumes for data access control and basic workflow. In addition, 

there were cases where more detailed design was found in the thread documents 

than in the design documents. Inconsistent design documentation is confusing to 

anyone trying to understand, maintain, or modify the software. 

The design documentation reviewed does not bridge the gap between the Software 

Design Document volumes and the source code. Missing design information included 

the relationships between the software components; class parameter details; full definition of class interfaces; and details on the purpose and logic of each function. The 

existence of the code is listed in the high-level design, but not the code behavior and 

interactions, which should be reflected in the lower level, detailed design. Examples 

of missing design details include: (1) the PL/SQL code for workflow contained a total 

of 111 modules, of which 57 were not mentioned in the SDD; (2) a discrepancy between the Java files listed in the SDD volumes and the source code provided to 

Aerospace. The lack of a detailed design document that included all source code 

modules makes maintenance and modifications to the source code more difficult and 

time-consuming, and would subsequently drive up the cost of any future changes to 

the system. 

The PL/SQL code has timing and design issues. With regard to timing, each module writes a character string to the debug log (in one module printing is initiated 

through the use of a debugging switch; in all other cases the printing is hard coded). 

This has a negative impact on code performance because it increases execution time; 

this practice would be tolerable only during prototype development. As to design, 

the PL/SQL code uses literals rather than symbolic constant variables in the arguments of ‘‘IF’’ and ‘‘WHERE’’ statements. This code would be nearly impossible to 

maintain by anyone other than the programmer who developed it because there are 

no references to design documents that define literals, such as the integer-type val-
50 

ues. This is an example of not following coding standards, or of not enforcing them. 

It would take time to fix this code properly by replacing the literals with symbolic 

constant variables so that it could be understood by anyone other than the original 

programmer. 

3.3.3 Appraisal 

The source code appears to have been produced without adherence to the procedures and standards stipulated in the Software Development Plan. The source code 

examined is not maintainable with its current documentation. Without reverse-engineering the missing documentation and conducting thorough testing, the code 

should not be used for any operational system. To reverse-engineer this system to 

bring it up to the level for proper maintenance and support would cost about onequarter to one-half of the original cost of development. In most systems, 15 percent 

of the cost is derived from the documentation across all development stages. Testing, 

including documentation, typically accounts for 40 percent. Approximately half of 

the documentation needs to be completed. The remaining testing is expected to be 

between half and all of the cost of a typical system. This depends on problems found 

during testing. 

3.4 Performance 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

system and database performance. 

3.4.1 Strengths 

None identified. 

3.4.2 Weaknesses 

The VCF system that was tested by the contractor was a development version 

(VCF Delivery 1), which is missing requirements and is inadequate for operations. 

The system did not implement a number of features, such as the Virtual Private 

Database (VPD) or full production scale of hundreds of millions of rows in the database. The measurements (as documented in the Interim Scaling and Performance 

Test Report) only present some CPU utilizations and end-to-end response times 

from/to the web server. Disk, bus, and network actual performance were not provided in the performance report provided to us and are presumed not to have been 

tested. 

The reported system performance and its performance analysis approach are at 

best marginal. Only the least-complex transactions were reported, and a number of 

those did not meet requirements even for the scaled-down database without VPD. 

A fully populated production VCF system based on VCF Delivery 1 would not meet 

requirements. In some cases the response time would be hundreds of percent longer 

than is required, and in worst cases thousands of percent longer than is required. 

Such long response times are essentially nonresponsive. 

The VCF database has the attributes of a logical database model with large numbers of tables, a lack of denormalization, subtype entities modeled directly to physical tables, and other logical data model features. Logical models are rarely performance-optimal. The typical database objects available for performance optimization 

(e.g., performance-based index selection, materialized views, table partitioning) are 

absent from the VCF database. At the current estimated row counts, the database 

will require heavy optimization in order to scale properly; however, the developers 

did not do this. 

The database load estimates were created using historical ACS usage. While using 

historical ACS usage was a good starting point, a more thorough analysis of the 

probable usage of VCF should have been performed before translating these estimates into a testing protocol. 

The database SQL code is not performance-optimized. The SQL code throughout 

the system uses many of the constructs that are specifically noted in the database 

manufacturer documentation [17, 18] as being performance risks. Compounding the 

problem is the use of the Oracle VPD feature for database security. The VCF implementation of this feature causes even more poor-performing SQL code to be added 

to each and every SQL statement in the database. 

The executed performance tests were flawed in two ways. First, the contractor did 

not isolate the database when the CPU utilization was tested. Aerospace was unable 

to conclude whether the database CPU was underutilized because it was not having 

a problem with servicing requests or it was waiting on another dependent system. 

The database CPU could also have been waiting on internal database hardware 

such as bus data transfers. The second flaw in the performance tests is that the 

test database was loaded at substantially lower row counts than what is estimated 

as needed, even for the ACS database migration. 
51 

An enterprise such as the VCF requires to be managed by a Network Operations 

Center (NOC). The NOC would include a Network Management System (NMS), 

archiving, availability monitoring, and other system and operational functions. 

The NMS would include functions such as a help desk, trouble ticket system, a 

network management console, and network management agents on the managed 

workstations and servers. The NMS would use protocols such as SNMP (Simple 

Network Management Protocol), RMON (Remote Monitoring), and others. The lack 

of a requirement for an NMS would result in a system that cannot be operated in 

a production environment, especially after it is fully scaled to global production size. 

Any production system requires routine archiving. Most systems have an incremental or even a full backup daily, and a full backup at least weekly. Without 

archiving, work could be lost, evidence misplaced or destroyed, and investigations 

could lose their integrity. The lack of a requirement for archiving would result in 

a system that cannot be operated in a production environment, especially after it 

is fully scaled to global production size. 

Any production system must meet availability requirements commensurate with 

its mission. A system that is unavailable could result in an interrupted investigation 

due to lack of access to investigation data, or the inability to record new information 

that is crucial to progress in the current investigation and other affected investigations that depend on new evidence collected. On top of that, investigation resources 

would be lost when the system is down. The lack of a requirement for system availability would result in a system that cannot be operated in a production environment, especially after it is fully scaled to global production size. 

3.4.3 Appraisal 

The system falls short of meeting requirements as tested. In addition, the scaledup system, with the VPD running, is highly unlikely to meet requirements, particularly for the type of complex queries needed by VCF. Simple queries would be hundreds of percent slower than the type of queries that were tested by the incumbent 

contractor. The situation would be far worse for complex queries running on the 

scaled-up system. The system would fall short of requirements with extremely long 

response times—thousands of percent longer than is required. Such long response 

times are essentially nonresponsive. 

The database has many characteristics of a database still in development: a physical implementation of the logical database model that will undergo significant 

modification well before production, and SQL coding statements structured in a way 

that is logically sound and easily understood, but not optimized for performance. Developers typically develop code in this manner, expecting that time will be allocated 

to performance optimization once the code is functionally correct. Code modifications 

are also easier before optimization. 

The database hardware selection appears adequate for the raw amounts of data 

that must be processed, but the database subsystem requires a realistic test with 

all features active, especially the VPD security and a full ACS migration data load. 

The production hardware and COTS software (i.e., Oracle database, Sun server, and 

the Hitachi Storage Area Network (SAN)) are technically capable products. However, the current VCF database schema and SQL code implementation do not contain the performance enhancements that would allow the hardware and COTS database server to perform optimally. 

3.5 Security 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

security. 

3.5.1 Strengths 

It appears that planning for system security was done at a high level early in the 

program. Such planning increases the likelihood that required security features 

(e.g., access control, audit) will be addressed in the requirements and design, which, 

in turn, provides a cost-effective path to certification and accreditation. Select areas 

of the system not generally found in initial system security reviews (e.g., infrastructure devices such as routers and switches that nonetheless contain functionality 

that must be addressed from a security perspective) were addressed in some amount 

of detail. 

The system design provides for a limited interface controlled by the VCF application and infrastructure (for non-administrative users to interact with the VCF). This 

approach prevents exposure to security vulnerabilities that may exist in the interfaces provided by underlying products (not visible at the user interface), such as the 

command line for an underlying operating system. 

At a high level, these strengths point to an approach that, if followed, would 

produce an accreditable system. 
52 

3.5.2 Weaknesses 

Several weaknesses were discovered that create a significant risk that the system 

will not be accreditable. 

Broad areas of security requirements were neither well-defined nor correctly decomposed to lower-level requirements. Although the coverage area of the lower-tier 

requirements was the same as that in the higher-level documents, the lower-tier requirement did not provide the necessary detail to implement and test the system 

in support of the certification and accreditation effort. Furthermore, the documents 

identified as the primary means for the certification and accreditation effort (the 

System Security Plan and the System Security Plan Support Package) did not map 

to the requirements specified for the system. This failure to identify the requirements to which the system would be accredited greatly increases the risk that the 

system would not receive accreditation, even if built to the requirements specified. 

Weaknesses were found in design and implementation. The Privileged User Guide 

should contain information to manage and configure the system in a secure manner. 

However, there are many sections marked TBD, as well as sections that do not provide the detailed procedures required to perform critical configuration steps (e.g., 

specific configuration instructions for the boundary devices so that fundamental assumptions noted in higher-level documents can be achieved). Some of the detail provided in this guide also appears as if it were copied from other sources, and not 

modified for application to the VCF system. Without specific configuration information, the trustworthiness of the system cannot be assessed and the system will not 

be accreditable. Furthermore, if the security features that are needed do not exist, 

or do not support all of the capability being depended upon by the architecture, then 

significant schedule and dollar costs will be incurred. 

The design documentation for the audit subsystem does not describe how the 

audit requirements are being met, especially in the area of management of the audit 

trail. While the Privileged User Guide contains COTS audit configuration steps, 

there is no discussion concerning how the VCF audit is managed, and how the VCF 

audit can be integrated with the audit trails produced by the COTS products to provide a coherent audit trail. 

3.5.3 Appraisal 

At a high level, the system security description appears to be a good start in describing the functionality necessary to build an accreditable system. However, in 

specifying and designing the system to meet that functionality, it appears there are 

significant shortfalls. Select requirements specifying the functionality are imprecise 

and incorrectly decomposed. The design of critical identification and authentication 

and audit subsystems do not implement a significant portion of the requirements 

for those subsystems. The documents supporting the certification and accreditation 

of the system and security configuration are not complete. 

While all of these issues can be remedied, at this point in the product lifecycle 

there is a high risk that the system implementation will not meet the security requirements, and that significant additional costs (both to the schedule and in dollars 

spent) will be incurred in trying to address the issues identified. There is a high 

likelihood that the system as it currently stands will not be able to be accredited 

without significant additional effort on the part of the developer. 

3.6 Contractor Processes 

This section summarizes the strengths, weaknesses, and Aerospace assessment of 

the contractor processes. 

3.6.1 Strengths 

Strengths regarding the development contractor’s initial processes include: 

—Good organizational structure for program management and quality assurance 

—Selection of requirements, software, and documentation control tools 

—Use of peer review and audits as key elements of the quality assurance process 

—Good configuration management and integrated management tools 

—Tracking of change requests. 

A Chief Engineer was designated to monitor the development and integration of 

the systems engineering, software engineering, and data engineering activities. The 

Quality Assurance Manager reported to the Group-level QA at a level above the Program Manager to provide independent quality assessments of compliance with the 

established procedures. 

Processes and procedures for the software development were defined and documented in the Software Development Plan. COTS tools for managing these processes were selected and are the same as those used frequently in other government 

developments. Configuration Management to control and track the baselines and 
53 

changes to the requirements, documentation, and software was defined and controlled via an integrated, automated tool suite. 

3.6.2 Weaknesses 

The Master Plan did not include planning information (such as key events and 

tasks) and controls (such as system level reviews) for the development task. The implemented risk management process included only an ad hoc risk identification 

method—personnel identified perceived risks to the Risk Management Board for 

analysis. Although the organizational structure provided for integration of the engineering tasks, there was a lack of engineering discipline as evidenced by the lack 

of adherence to established processes. 

The software methodology did not provide for the database design, implementation, and test. There were neither top-level software descriptions nor interfaces depicted in the Software Development Plan. The database was developed after the 

software design, which led to performance problems. Software integration testing 

was not planned for in the Software Development Plan, and the test plans called 

this by different names without describing how it was to be done. The system integration manager and team did the software integration testing, but this was not 

made clear in the documentation. 

Requirements were tracked and reported in the RequisitePro® tool, but software 

requirements were not traced to the code—only to the threads (which is at a very 

high level). 

The quality assurance (QA) program did not include QA activities for the software 

code; QA only checked that the peer review process was followed. 

Software development folder guidelines were published in the SDP and in the 

Minimum Thread Team SDF Layout and Contents, but did not provide for a convenient structure to maintain the artifacts. SDF files were dispersed in several different 

tools and in many folders, making it difficult to find a complete SDF. 

3.6.3 Appraisal 

The major process strength of VCF Delivery 1 was the documenting and planning 

for the guidelines, procedures, and process controls in the beginning of the program 

in the Software Development Plan. The major weakness was a lack of compliance 

and completeness in the procedures. 

The SDFs were used to maintain the updated requirements analysis, design materials, implementation artifacts, testing results, and lessons learned. The SDFs were 

to be the key documentation since the other documentation was not updated. However, assessing the completeness of the SDFs is extremely difficult and cannot be 

done without detailed guidance from a developer. 

A major defect for the maintainability, reusability, expandability, and reliability 

of the VCF Delivery 1 software is the lack of a defined and documented software 

architecture and software methodology. Without the tracking of requirements to the 

software, the reliability and usability of the system is questionable and the software 

cannot be verified and validated. Without good software architecture, there is no 

structure to build for future development or functionality. 

4. CONCLUSIONS

The principal conclusion of the IV&V effort is that a lack of effective engineering 

discipline has led to inadequate specification, design, and development of VCF Delivery 1. Most of the findings presented in Section 3 relate in some way to this conclusion. From the documents that define the UAC system at the highest level, down 

through the software design and into the source code itself, Aerospace discovered 

evidence of incompleteness, lack of follow-through, failure to optimize, and missing 

documentation. 

The engineering practices followed on this program were not in keeping with what 

Aerospace would expect in a program of this magnitude and importance. Good engineering practice includes, of course, well-written requirements that specify the essential functionality, performance, and constraints of the system. It also includes 

—Modeling to analyze behavior and performance, and to ensure the correctness, 

completeness, consistency, and realism of the requirements 

—A correct decomposition and flow down of requirements from user needs to system requirements to design. 

These practices were found lacking or ineffective for the VCF program. Without 

them there can be little assurance as to the correctness and completeness of the requirements and design. 

Secondary conclusions address two of the FBI business questions stated in the Introduction. Business Question 2 asks, ‘‘Did the incumbent contractor develop a complete and correct Concept of Operations, System Architecture, and System Require-
54 

ments?’’ and speaks to the framework of the UAC system and VCF Delivery 1. Business Question 1, on the other hand, asks, ‘‘Did the incumbent contractor meet the 

stated requirements?’’ and must be considered in light of user needs, system requirements, and software requirements. Responses to these questions are not given 

in terms of a simple ‘‘yes’’ or ‘‘no,’’ but are phrased in terms of assurance of an affirmative answer. 

The secondary conclusions, together with their basis in the findings, are given 

below, as well as the summary assessment of the state of the UAC and VCF Delivery 1. 

4.1 Regarding the Quality of the CONOPS, Architecture, and Requirements 

Findings in the areas of architecture and requirements indicate that the concept 

of operations, system architecture, and system requirements were not sufficiently 

mature for the purposes of developing VCF. The SRS does not provide an adequate 

basis for the developer to design the system. The SRS and the CONOPS taken together do not provide a complete and consistent view of the system. The SADD contains certain sound architectural concepts but fails to adequately consider the use 

of alternate architectural concepts or the use of COTS that may have better served 

the needs of the VCF system. Therefore, Aerospace finds no assurance that the architecture, CONOPS, and requirements are correct and complete, and no assurance 

that they can be made so without substantial rework. 

4.2 Regarding the Satisfaction of Requirements 

Findings on user, system, and software requirements touch most of the areas of 

interest (i.e., architecture, requirements, software quality, security, and performance), and tend to be negative. Based on the requirements examined, the findings 

indicate that a substantial body of requirements are imprecisely written or incorrectly decomposed into lower-level requirements, detailed designs, or test scenarios. 

There are key requirements whose correctness is questionable, and there are notable instances where the design and implementation do not match the architecture 

and requirements. The extent of requirement satisfaction could not be fully determined because only high-level test plans, software problem reports (SPRs), and a 

performance test report were available; other documents that are normally examined in determining requirement satisfaction (e.g., requirement test plans and procedures, and results from testing) were not available. There is no evidence that the 

system will scale to the storage and throughput capabilities under the demands of 

a fully loaded scenario; rather, evidence was found to the contrary. Therefore, Aerospace finds no assurance that requirements, at the system or software level, will be 

fully satisfied, and no assurance that they can be satisfied without substantial rework. 

4.3 Overall Assessment 

The UAC and VCF Delivery 1 do not adequately meet system and software requirements. Each of the six areas examined has significant weaknesses and few 

compensating strengths. For example, 

—The architecture was developed without an adequate assessment of alternatives 

and conformance to various architectural standards, in a way that precluded 

the incorporation of significant commercial-off-the-shelf software, and without 

modeling and simulation to determine whether the architecture would meet 

user needs in realistic situations. 

—High-level documents were neither complete nor consistent, and did not map to 

user needs. 

—Requirements and design documents are incomplete and imprecise, requirement 

and design tracings have gaps, and software cannot be maintained without difficulty, and is therefore unfit for reuse. 

In short, VCF Delivery 1 is a system whose true capability is unknown and may 

be unknowable, unless substantial time and resources are applied to remediation. 

5. RECOMMENDATIONS

This section presents a framework for addressing one of the FBI business questions set forth in the Introduction and recommendations based on the framework. 

Additional recommendations beyond the scope of the original business questions are 

also provided. 

5.1 A Framework for Addressing FBI Business Question 3 

FBI Business Question 3 asks, ‘‘What should the FBI do with VCF Delivery 1?’’ 

The possible outcomes include keeping all of it, keeping parts of it, or discarding 

all of it. Although this independent assessment is primarily technical in nature, 
55 

stakeholder interests that affect the disposition of VCF Delivery 1 may be technical, 

budgetary, schedule-based, or mission-oriented in nature. Only the FBI—in consideration of the various stakeholder interests—can make the ultimate decision on the 

disposition of VCF Delivery 1. 

The decision to be made about VCF Delivery 1 is framed by the conditions that 

must be met in each possible outcome. As understood by Aerospace, the outcomes 

and conditions are as follows: 

—Under what conditions should the FBI keep VCF Delivery 1? 

—Only if VCF Delivery 1 satisfies all requirements or remediation is readily 

achieved. 

—Only if the FBI desires a custom UAC solution versus a solution based on 

COTS software. 

—Only if it satisfies the needs of the FBI with respect to functionality, schedule, 

affordability and life-cycle issues. 

—Under what conditions should the FBI keep parts of VCF Delivery 1? 

—Only if there are separable components of VCF Delivery 1 that contain useful 

functionality in the future context of the UAC. 

—Only if VCF Delivery 1 meets the conditions for reusable or maintainable soft- ware. —Only if the FBI still desires a custom VCF solution versus a solution based 

on COTS software. 

—Under what conditions should the FBI discard VCF Delivery 1? 

—Only if VCF Delivery 1 satisfies none of the conditions above. 

5.1.1 Regarding the First Possible Outcome 

Regarding the first outcome, keeping all of VCF Delivery 1, Aerospace has no assurance that the VCF Delivery 1 requirements have been met or that remediation 

may be readily achieved. In fact, Aerospace concludes that determining which requirements are actually met and remediating those that are not would be very costly and time-consuming, given that there are serious concerns with every level of the 

system, from the requirements and architecture, to the design and the software. 

5.1.2 Regarding the Second Possible Outcome 

The second outcome, keeping parts of VCF Delivery 1, depends on whether components of VCF Delivery 1 will be useful in some future context. In the current context, VCF Delivery 1 is custom software based on a centralized hardware architecture. Thus, if the future context is a COTS-based service-oriented architecture 

(SOA) solution based on a distributed hardware architecture, it is less likely that 

useful components of VCF Delivery 1 will be found. On the other hand, if the future 

context is another centralized hardware architecture with custom software, it is 

more likely that useful components will be found. This last instance is precisely the 

context in which the incumbent contractor is developing the IOC software—and is, 

in fact, reusing components of VCF Delivery 1. 

Even if a future context occurs in which components of VCF Delivery 1 are 

deemed useful, Aerospace has concerns on the reusability and maintainability of the 

software based on the documentation, design, and coding standards. The software 

was not written for reuse and has serious maintainability and extensibility problems as well. 

Because the Aerospace IV&V review was based largely on documentation and artifacts, and included no substantive direct contact with the development contractor 

other than that needed to assess the software development processes, the ability to 

transfer the existing document set from the development contractor to a replacement contractor was tested. The many documentation weaknesses that were found 

indicate the existence of significant problems. It is very unlikely that a follow-on 

VCF contractor could pick up where the incumbent left off, thereby weighing against 

this as a possible acquisition strategy. 

5.1.3 Regarding the Third Possible Outcome 

The third outcome, discarding all of VCF Delivery 1, is essentially the default condition that will occur if none of the preceding conditions are met. It can be reached 

if the VCF Delivery 1 software is found unsuitable for reuse and beyond remediation. Alternately, it can be reached by fiat if the FBI should decide—based on the 

results of the Aerospace COTS/GOTS survey [19]—to proceed with a COTS-based 

solution. 

5.1.4 Recommendation 

It is evident from this decision framework that the VCF Delivery 1 decision depends on more than just VCF Delivery 1 itself. It depends on the total future context in which the VCF application will exist. 
56 

3Providing the documents and artifacts as Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) is not 

recommended so as to avoid the government incurring any liability for their use. 

It is clear that the first outcome (keeping or remediating VCF Delivery 1) is not 

feasible because of the lack of assurance that VCF Delivery 1 fully satisfies the system and software requirements, and because Aerospace can foresee no condition 

under which remediation would be feasible. Put another way, any remediation of 

VCF Delivery 1 would be akin to starting over. 

The second outcome (keeping parts of VCF Delivery 1) is more feasible than the 

first, but is still fraught with difficulty. Because VCF Delivery 1 documentation and 

source code do not meet the conditions for reusable or maintainable software, Aerospace believes it would be difficult for any contractor (including the incumbent) to 

extract much of value from the current requirements, design and software given the 

poor state of the documentation. Furthermore, Aerospace believes it would be extremely difficult for any contractor besides the incumbent to do so. 

Additionally, using VCF Delivery 1 or a derivative thereof only makes sense absent a preference for a COTS-based VCF solution. Given that there are multiple 

COTS applications, or features within applications, that meet the needs stated in 

the Federal Investigative Case Management Request for Information (RFI) [19], the 

question of reusing parts of VCF Delivery 1 rests on: 

—Having functionality that is superior to the COTS options or that is not available in COTS; 

—Having functionality that is modular and has a defined interface application 

programming interface (API); 

—Its ability to provide a clearly defined service or set of services in the context 

of an SOA. Both the RFI and current federal information technology acquisition 

guidelines (Clinger-Cohen Act [20], Federal Enterprise Architecture Guidelines 

[21]) stress the desirability of SOAs. 

While the discussion to this point is implicitly about the best long-term VCF solution, it is also worth considering what may be a useful short-term solution. It may, 

for instance, be the case that the work currently being performed by the incumbent 

contractor on an IOC build will provide a short-term capability to satisfy mission 

needs in a timely fashion until a solution can be crafted that is both more capable 

and more feasible for the long term. Whether or not this is feasible depends on the 

timeliness and affordability and short-term utility of an IOC-like solution versus the 

timeliness of a COTS-based solution (which is a strong contender for the preferred 

long-term solution). 

Thus, pending the outcome of the trade studies recommended below, Aerospace 

believes that discarding VCF Delivery 1 and starting over with a COTS-based solution is the best long-term solution. Although Aerospace recommends that VCF Delivery 1 not be used as a software baseline for any future VCF activities based on 

the deficiencies identified herein, Aerospace recommends that the VCF Delivery 1 

artifacts (both documentation and source code) and this report be made available 

as Government Furnished Information 3 (GFI) to any future VCF vendors (as part 

of a ‘‘Bidders’ Library’’ for instance). There are insights to be gained from understanding how the VCF problem was initially framed, how the architecture was conceptualized, and how the system was designed and implemented that Aerospace believes will be of use to future developers. Aerospace recommends, however, that 

these artifacts be made available only if accompanied by this report. Otherwise, the 

future vendors will be in the position of having to repeat all the investigation and 

analysis performed by Aerospace in its investigation of those artifacts. 

Based on the RFI responses, there are multiple COTS applications, or features 

within applications, that meet both the SOA requirements and the needs stated in 

the RFI. 

5.2 Additional Recommendations 

The fact that Business Question 3 was asked at all implies that the future of VCF 

is being considered. The larger issue, then, beyond the disposition of VCF Delivery 

1 is the way ahead for VCF. It is in consideration of this larger issue that the following recommendations are offered. 

The principal conclusion of this assessment relates to a lack of engineering discipline and all its negative effects. Accordingly, this problem must be remedied before going forward. Broadly speaking, this will require that the FBI specify that appropriate systems engineering and software engineering practices be defined and 

used, and then provide oversight to ensure that they are followed. Allowance must 

be made for a reasonable schedule. An assessment conclusion states: ‘‘The engineering practices followed on this program were not in keeping with what one would 

expect in a program of this magnitude and importance.’’ The specific recommenda-
57 

tions offered below speak to practices that Aerospace believes are in keeping with 

a program of this magnitude and importance. 

5.2.1 Concerning the VCF Architecture 

Aerospace found that VCF Delivery 1 began with certain sound architectural concepts, but failed to consider the use of alternate architectural concepts or the use 

of COTS components that may have better served the needs of the VCF system. 

Therefore, Aerospace recommends that trade studies be performed across several 

key dimensions, to include the following at a minimum: 

—The use of COTS components for key integrated case management functionality 

(not merely for infrastructure items such as databases, operating systems, and 

communications protocols) versus the use of custom application software. 

—The use of an SOA versus the use of a monolithic software application. 

—The use of a distributed hardware architecture versus the use of a centralized 

hardware architecture. 

Additionally, Aerospace recommends an analysis of how VCF fits in with, and is 

constrained by, the broader enterprise architecture. 

5.2.2 Concerning the VCF Requirements 

Aerospace found the VCF Delivery 1 concept of operations and the system requirements to be insufficiently mature for the purposes of the UAC acquisition. Therefore, Aerospace recommends that a new series of meetings be conducted with the 

users and other stakeholders to elicit needs, constraints, operational concepts, and 

requirements. Once a set of abstracted needs, constraints, and broader enterprise 

concerns is in place, it will be possible to perform the operational and requirements 

analyses, modeling of operations and functions, and modeling of performance necessary for the creation of a correct and complete CONOPS and System Requirements Specification. 

Aerospace found a lack of accurate and complete traceability between the various 

levels of requirements, components, and tests. Therefore, in order to provide assurance that all VCF requirements have been met and verified, Aerospace recommends 

that the any future VCF development and acquisition activities enforce strict 

traceability. 

5.2.3 Concerning the Use of Standards 

Many of the problems with the body of VCF documentation extend beyond a simple lack of discipline and instead relate to a failure to address certain standard concerns in system architecture, system specification, system design, and requirements 

quality. The systems engineering field is sufficiently mature that there are standards and other references that provide descriptive outlines for key documents and 

quality attributes for written requirements. 

Many—though not all—of these standards originate in the defense arena. However, they are applicable (with tailoring) to non-defense systems such as VCF precisely because it is similar to many defense systems in its complexity, its scope, and 

the criticality of its mission. As such, the approaches used in creating other large, 

complex, mission-critical systems can be applied here. The standards and other references that Aerospace applied to the VCF assessment are given in the bibliography 

contained in this document. Aerospace believes they are as applicable to the future 

of VCF as they were to an assessment of its past. 

5.2.4 Concerning Processes 

The success of acquisition programs, particularly large ones, depends not only on 

what is done but also on how it is done. Products result from processes—and it is 

precisely for this reason that processes are important. While a good process is not 

sufficient to produce an excellent product, it is necessary. 

A project of the scope, complexity, and importance of VCF demands the level of 

process maturity embodied in CMMI Levels 3 and 4. CMMI Level 1 and Level 2 

are too ‘‘ad hoc’’ for a program of this nature; on the other hand, CMMI Level 5 

is probably not warranted. 

Aerospace recommends that a Software Development Capability Evaluation be 

conducted prior to contract award to reduce acquisition risk by objectively assessing 

each offeror’s ability to successfully develop the software needed by the VCF program. Aerospace recommends that an independent government cost analysis be conducted during source selection to objectively assess the cost realism of each offeror’s 

proposal. 
58 

REFERENCE

[1] U.S. Department of Defense. Operations Concept Description (OCD), Data Item 

Description DI–IPSC–81430, December 5, 1994. 

[2] American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Guide for the Preparation 

of Operational Concept Documents, Working Draft 1.0, ANSI/AIAA G–043–200x. 

Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

[3] U.S. Department of Defense. System/Subsystem Design Description (SSDD), 

Data Item Description DI–IPSC–81432, December 5, 1994. 

[4] Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE Recommended Practice 

for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems, IEEE STD 1471–2000. 

New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2000. 

[5] U.S. Department of Defense. Software Development and Documentation, MIL– 

STD–498, December 5, 1994. 

[6] U.S. Department of Defense. System/Subsystem Specification (SSS), Data 

Item Description (DID) DI–IPSC–81431, December 5, 1994. 

[7] International Council on Systems Engineering. International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Systems Engineering Handbook, Version 2.0, July 2000. 

[8] Buede, Dennis M. The Engineering Design of Systems. New York: Wiley, 2000. 

[9] Bergey, J. et al. Software Architecture Evaluation with ATAMSM in the DOD 

System Acquisition Context. Carnegie Mellon University/Software Engineering Institute Technical Note CMU/SEI–99–TN012, ADA377450. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon 

University/Software Engineering Institute, 1999. 

[10] Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE Recommended Practice for Software Requirements Specification, IEEE STD 830–1998. New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1998. 

[11] Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts: 

Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1988. 

[12] U.S. Department of Defense, DOD Information Technology System Certification and Accreditation Process, DOD Instruction 5200.40, December 30, 1997. 

[13] U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Defense Information Technology 

System Certification and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP): Application Manual, 

DOD 8510.1–M, July 31, 2000. 

[14] National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security 

Committee. National Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process 

(NIACAP), National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security 

Instruction (NTISSI) No. 1000, April 2000. 

[15] U.S. Department of the Air Force, Air Force Material Command. Software Development Capability Evaluation, AFMC Pamphlet 63–103, vols. 1 and 2, June 15, 

1994. 

[16] Friedman, George, and Andrew P. Sage. ‘‘Case Studies of Systems Engineering and Management in Systems Acquisition,’’ Systems Engineering, volume 7, no. 

1, 2004, p. 90. 

[17] Green, Connie. Oracle9i Database Performance Tuning Guide and Reference, 

Release 2 (9.2). Oracle Corporation (Redwood Shores, CA 94065), 2002. 

[18] Holdworth, Andrew. Oracle 9i Database Performance Planning, Release 2 

(9.2). Oracle Corporation (Redwood Shores, CA 94065), 2002. 

[19] Kreitman, Kevin B. COTS/GOTS Trade Study Report, Aerospace Technical 

Report Number ATR–2005(5154)–3. The Aerospace Corporation (El Segundo, CA 

90245), 17 December 2004. 

[20] Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 (divisions D and E of U.S. Public Law 104–106). 

[21] Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office. The Technical 

Reference Model Version 1.1: A Foundation for Government-wide Improvement, August 2003. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GLENN A. FINE, INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF

JUSTICE

INTRODUCTION

Mr. Chairman, Senator Leahy, and Members of the Subcommittee on Commerce, 

Justice, State and the Judiciary: 

I appreciate the opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee as it examines the 

Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Trilogy information technology (IT) modernization project. The Trilogy project was designed to upgrade the FBI’s IT infrastructure and replace its antiquated case management system with the Virtual Case 

File (VCF). 
59 

Successful implementation of the Trilogy project is essential to modernizing the 

FBI’s inadequate information technology systems. The FBI’s systems currently do 

not permit FBI agents, analysts, and managers to readily access and share case-related information throughout the FBI. Without this capability, the FBI cannot perform its critical missions as efficiently and effectively as it should. 

In March 2004, this Subcommittee held a hearing on the status of the Trilogy 

project, and I testified about the schedule delays and cost increases of the Trilogy 

project. At that time, I stated that I was skeptical about the FBI’s proposed schedule to deploy a fully functional, complete version of the VCF before the end of calendar year 2004. Shortly before the hearing, the Office of the Inspector General 

(OIG) initiated a follow-up audit to assess the FBI’s management of the Trilogy 

project. 

Today the OIG released the results of this follow-up audit. Our audit found that 

the FBI successfully has completed the Trilogy IT infrastructure upgrades—albeit 

with delays and significant cost increases. However, the FBI has failed to complete 

and deploy the VCF, the critical component of Trilogy that was intended to provide 

the FBI with an effective case management system. The VCF still is not operational 

after more than 3 years of development and the allocation of $170 million. We found 

that the VCF either will require substantial additional work or need to be scrapped 

and replaced by a new system. Moreover, the FBI has not yet provided a realistic 

timetable or cost estimate for implementing a workable VCF or a successor system. 

Our audit also examined the causes for the delays and cost increases in the Trilogy project. Among the problems were poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements for Trilogy, weak IT investment management practices at the FBI, 

weaknesses in the way contractors were retained and overseen, the lack of management continuity at the FBI on the Trilogy project, unrealistic scheduling of tasks 

on Trilogy, and inadequate resolution of issues that warned of problems in Trilogy’s 

development. 

In this statement, I describe the OIG’s examination of the Trilogy project. The 

statement is organized into five parts. First, I provide a brief description of prior 

OIG assessments and testimony about the FBI’s IT systems in general and Trilogy 

in particular. Second, I provide background information on the Trilogy project. 

Third, I discuss the results of the OIG’s recently completed audit regarding Trilogy’s 

cost increases and schedule delays. Fourth, I discuss the OIG’s assessment of the 

causes for the problems in Trilogy’s development and implementation. And fifth, as 

requested by the Subcommittee, I conclude my statement by briefly highlighting 

several ongoing and recently completed OIG reviews that examine a variety of other 

issues in the FBI. 

PRIOR OIG REVIEWS OF FBI INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

In a series of reviews over the past several years, the OIG has identified problems 

in the FBI’s IT systems, including outdated infrastructures, fragmented management, ineffective systems, and inadequate training. 

For example, a July 1999 OIG review examined the actions of the Campaign Finance Task Force that investigated allegations of improper fundraising practices 

during the 1996 Presidential campaign. The Task Force relied on the FBI’s antiquated case management system, the Automated Case Support (ACS) system, and 

other FBI databases to obtain information on the individuals and organizations that 

had become subjects of the investigation. In this review, the OIG noted that deficiencies in the ACS system and the way search results were handled within the FBI 

resulted in incomplete data being provided to the Task Force. 

Another OIG review issued in March 2002 examined how the FBI had failed to 

turn over to defense attorneys hundreds of FBI documents that should have been 

disclosed prior to the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The OIG again 

concluded that the FBI’s computer systems were antiquated, inefficient, and badly 

in need of improvement. We found that the ACS could not handle or retrieve documents in a useful, comprehensive, or efficient way, and it did not provide FBI employees with the type of support they need and deserve. 

An OIG audit issued in December 2002 examined the FBI’s IT investment management practices. This audit concluded that that the FBI had not effectively managed its IT investments because it had failed to: (1) effectively track and oversee 

the costs and schedules of IT projects; (2) properly establish and effectively use IT 

investment boards to review projects; (3) inventory the existing IT systems and 

projects; (4) identify the business needs for each IT project; and (5) use defined processes to select new IT projects. We concluded that the FBI continued to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on IT projects without adequate assurance that the 

projects would meet their intended goals. Our audit made eight recommendations 
60 

with respect to Trilogy, including urging the FBI to establish schedule, cost, technical, and performance baselines and track significant deviations from these baselines. 

In a September 2003 audit, the OIG examined the FBI’s implementation of the 

OIG’s prior IT-related recommendations. While we found that the FBI had made 

substantial progress by implementing 93 of 148 total recommendations, we concluded that full implementation of the remaining recommendations was needed to 

ensure that the FBI’s IT program effectively supported the FBI’s mission. 

As noted above, in March 2004 this Subcommittee held a hearing to examine Information Technology in the FBI, at which the FBI Director testified about the status of the FBI’s Trilogy project. At that hearing, the FBI stated that it planned to 

have ‘‘a network with Full Site Capability by late spring’’ and that it was ‘‘closing 

in on the goal of completion’’ of the Trilogy project. 

The OIG initiated our follow-up audit to assess the FBI’s management of the Trilogy project. In December 2004, the OIG completed a draft of this audit report and 

concluded that the VCF was not operational after more than 3 years of development 

and the obligation of $170 million, and the FBI did not know when the VCF or a 

replacement system would be implemented. 

Pursuant to our standard practice, in late December 2004 the OIG provided the 

draft audit report to the FBI for its response. In early January 2005, the FBI publicly acknowledged problems and delays in the development of the VCF. In a written 

response to our audit report dated January 26, 2005, the FBI acknowledged that 

the VCF had not met its goals with respect to development of an automated case 

management system. Nevertheless, the FBI stated that the ‘‘VCF project remains 

the highest IT priority for the FBI.’’ 

After receiving the FBI’s comments, the OIG completed this audit report and released it today. 

I will now provide background on the Trilogy project and the VCF before summarizing the main findings of our audit. 

BACKGROUND ON TRILOGY

Trilogy is the largest of the FBI’s IT projects. As originally designed, the Trilogy 

project had three main components: (1) the Information Presentation Component 

(IPC)—which was intended to upgrade the FBI’s hardware and software; (2) Transportation Network Component (TNC)—which was intended to upgrade the FBI’s 

communication networks; and (3) User Applications Component (UAC)—which was 

intended to replace the FBI’s most important investigative applications, including 

the ACS, the FBI’s antiquated case management system. Among its major shortcomings, the ACS does not permit FBI agents, analysts, and managers to readily 

access and share case-related information throughout the FBI. Without this capability, the FBI cannot efficiently bring together all of the investigative information 

in the FBI’s possession to solve crimes or help prevent future terrorist attacks. 

The first two components of Trilogy provide the infrastructure needed to run the 

FBI’s various user applications, while the UAC was intended to upgrade and consolidate the FBI’s investigative applications. After the September 11 attacks, the 

FBI decided to replace the ACS with an entirely new case management system, the 

VCF. 

It is important to note that Trilogy was not intended to replace all 42 of the FBI’s 

investigative applications or the FBI’s approximately 160 other non-investigative applications. Rather, Trilogy was intended to lay the foundation so that future enhancements would allow the FBI to achieve a state-of-the-art IT system that integrates all of the agency’s investigative and non-investigative applications. 

Our audit found that in late April 2004, the FBI completed the first two components of the Trilogy project. The FBI deployed new hardware and software, including 22,251 computer workstations, 3,408 printers, 1,463 scanners, and 475 servers, 

and it installed new communications networks. 

However, as I describe in the next section of this statement, this deployment was 

not done as quickly as the FBI hoped or expected. Despite the fact that after the 

September 11 attacks Congress appropriated the FBI an additional $78 million to 

accelerate deployment of Trilogy’s infrastructure components, the FBI completed the 

two infrastructure components by late April 2004, just before the FBI’s original target date of May 2004. Consequently, the FBI missed by some 22 months the completion date for the two infrastructure components under the accelerated schedule 

funded by Congress. In addition, the total costs for the infrastructure components 

of Trilogy increased from $238.6 million to $377 million over the course of the 

project. 
61 

And while the infrastructure components are now in place to support improved 

investigative applications, the FBI still is far from implementing the third component of Trilogy, the VCF. 

RESULTS OF OIG AUDIT OF TRILOGY PROJECT

Trilogy Costs 

Trilogy originally was planned in 2000 as a 3-year, $380 million project. Over its 

life, Trilogy has become a $581 million project that has suffered a continuing series 

of missed completion estimates and associated cost growth. 

Initially, in November 2000, Congress appropriated $100.7 million for the first 

year of the project. In May 2001, the FBI hired DynCorp (which later merged into 

Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)) as the contractor for the IPC/TNC infrastructure components of Trilogy. At that time, the scheduled completion date for the Trilogy infrastructure was May 2004. In June 2001, the FBI hired Science Applications 

International Corporation (SAIC) to develop the user applications component of Trilogy (which became the VCF), with a scheduled completion date of June 2004. 

In early 2002, the FBI informed Congress in its Quarterly Congressional Status 

Report that with an additional $70 million in fiscal year 2002 funding, the FBI could 

accelerate the deployment of Trilogy. Congress supplemented the Trilogy budget 

with $78 million from the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act of January 

2002, thereby raising projected costs to $458 million. 

In December 2002, the FBI estimated it needed $137.9 million more to complete 

Trilogy, in addition to the $78 million it had received to accelerate completion of 

the project. Congress approved a $110.9 million reprogramming of funds that took 

into account the estimates to complete the IPC/TNC portions of Trilogy, as well as 

an estimate of the costs to complete the UAC portion. The $110.9 million reprogramming increased the FBI’s total available funding for the project to $568.7 million. 

In addition, $4.3 million for operations and maintenance and $8 million for computer specialist contractor support were added in fiscal year 2003, for a total of 

$581.1 million—$201 million more than originally estimated. 

The following table describes the cost of Trilogy under the original plan and under 

the current plan: 

[In millions of dollars] 

Component Area Original Plan Current Plan 

TNC/IPC ................................................................................................................................... 238.6 337.0 

UAC .......................................................................................................................................... 119.2 170.0 

Contractor Computer Specialists ............................................................................................ n/a 8.0 

Integrator ................................................................................................................................. n/a 5.5 

Project Management ............................................................................................................... 22.0 32.5 

Management Reserve .............................................................................................................. n/a 28.1 

Total ........................................................................................................................... 379.8 581.1 

Schedule for Trilogy Infrastructure Components 

Despite the increased money provided for Trilogy, its implementation has been delayed significantly. Part of the problem we found was that a stable schedule for Trilogy never was firmly established for much of the project’s history. Beginning in 2002 

the FBI’s estimated dates for completing the Trilogy project components began to 

swing back and forth and were revised repeatedly. 

The original completion date for deploying the Trilogy infrastructure (the first two 

components of Trilogy) was May 2004. After the September 11 attacks, the FBI recognized the urgency of completing the project and moved up the completion date for 

deploying the Trilogy infrastructure to June 2003. Later, the FBI said the infrastructure would be completed by December 31, 2002. Still later, the FBI informed 

Congress that with an additional $70 million it could accelerate deployment of Trilogy and complete the two infrastructure components by July 2002 and also deploy 

the most critical analytical tools in the user applications component. 

Yet, the timetable for completing the infrastructure components slipped from July 

2002 to October 2002 and then to March 2003. On March 28, 2003, CSC completed 

a communications network, the Wide Area Network, for Trilogy. The FBI reported 

that the Wide Area Network, with increased bandwidth and three layers of security, 

had been deployed to 622 sites. In April 2003, the FBI also reported to Congress 

that more than 21,000 new desktop computers and nearly 5,000 printers and scanners had been deployed. 
62 

In April 2003, the FBI and CSC agreed to a statement of work for the remaining 

infrastructure components of Trilogy, including servers, upgraded software, e-mail 

capability, and other computer hardware, with a completion date of October 31, 

2003. In August 2003, CSC informed the FBI that the October 2003 completion date 

would slip another two months to December 2003. In October 2003, CSC and the 

FBI agreed that the December 2003 date again would slip. In November 2003, the 

General Services Administration (whose Federal Systems Integration and Management Center, known as FEDSIM, had awarded contracts for Trilogy on behalf of the 

FBI) formally announced that CSC had failed to meet the deadline for completing 

work on infrastructure portions of Trilogy that were required to support the VCF 

user application under development. 

On December 4, 2003, CSC signed a commitment letter agreeing to complete the 

infrastructure components of the Trilogy project by April 30, 2004, for an additional 

$22.9 million, including an award fee of over $4 million. An award fee is used when 

the government wants to motivate a contractor with financial incentives. The FBI 

covered these additional costs by reprogramming funds from other FBI appropriations. In January 2004, the FBI converted the agreement with CSC to a revised 

statement of work providing for loss of the award fee if the April 30, 2004, deadline 

was not met. In addition, the revised statement of work provided for cost sharing 

at a rate of 50 percent for any work remaining after the April 30 deadline. 

CSC met the revised deadline of April 30, 2004, for completing the two infrastructure components of Trilogy. As a result, the FBI met the original target set in 2001 

for the infrastructure components of Trilogy, but missed the accelerated schedule 

funded by additional money from Congress by some 22 months. 

Schedule for the Virtual Case File 

In June 2002, the FBI decided to deploy the VCF user application component of 

Trilogy in two phases under an accelerated plan: delivery one in December 2003 and 

delivery two in June 2004. A third delivery eventually was added, also for June 

2004. Delivery one was supposed to consist of the initial version of the VCF, which 

was intended to be a completely new case management system with data migrated 

from the ACS. The VCF also was intended to serve as the backbone of the FBI’s 

information management systems, replacing paper files with electronic case files. 

Deliveries two and three under the contract were supposed to consist of enhancements and additional operational capabilities to the VCF. 

SAIC provided the first version of the VCF to the FBI in December 2003, in accordance with the accelerated schedule. However, the FBI did not accept that 

version because the FBI said it was not a functional system and did not meet the 

FBI’s requirements. Deliveries two and three never occurred because of the difficulties experienced in completing the initial version of the VCF. The FBI informed the 

OIG that these deliveries are not being pursued now given the problems in the first 

delivery and the FBI’s plans to seek a common interagency platform for a case management system (the Federal Investigative Case Management System or FICMS, 

which is discussed below). 

In fact, the FBI has abandoned the intended three VCF deliveries and instead announced a new two-track approach for continuing development of the VCF. Track 

one, which the FBI refers to as the ‘‘Initial Operational Capability,’’ includes a 6- 

week test of an electronic workflow process scheduled to be completed by March 

2005. During this test, the FBI’s New Orleans field office and a smaller resident 

agency office will enter investigative lead and case data into a prototype VCF file 

system, and this information will be approved electronically and uploaded into the 

ACS. The FBI intends to obtain user comments on, and assess the performance of, 

this new workflow system being tested in track one. 

However, it is important to make clear that the version of the VCF being tested 

in track one will not provide the FBI with the case management applications as envisioned throughout the Trilogy project because it represents just one developmental 

step in the creation of a fully functional investigative case management system. It 

does not offer full case management capabilities. Rather, it is designed to demonstrate that documents can be approved electronically and uploaded into the existing, obsolete ACS. 

The second track, called Full Operational Capability, is intended to reevaluate 

and update requirements for the next phase of developing a functional case management system to replace ACS. In track two, the FBI plans to identify user activities 

and processes for creating and approving documents and managing investigative 

leads, evidence, and cases. As a result of the information gleaned during track two, 

the FBI is updating and confirming the case management requirements and evaluating whether currently available software can be adapted for a case management 

system rather than creating a completely new system. 
63 

In commenting on the findings in our audit report about the delays in the VCF, 

the FBI stated that ‘‘In many ways, the pace of technological innovation has overtaken our original vision for VCF, and there are now products to suit our purposes 

that did not exist when Trilogy began.’’ This suggests that the current VCF effort 

may be obsolete and that the FBI may implement an entirely new system to replace 

it. 

Moreover, our audit found that the FBI still does not have a clear timetable or 

prospect for completing the project. The VCF case management application was intended to replace the ACS and be the sole system within the FBI that would contain 

all investigative lead and case file information in a paperless system. Due to the 

failure to complete the VCF, the FBI continues to lack a modern case management 

system containing complete and accessible investigative lead and case information. 

While the FBI cites in its response to our report advances in other FBI IT systems, 

such as its newly created Investigative Data Warehouse, the VCF case management 

system would have many features that a Data Warehouse does not. The VCF was 

intended to be the backbone of the FBI’s information systems, replacing the FBI’s 

paper case files with electronic files. Case data in the VCF could be approved electronically, and the electronic files would be available throughout the FBI immediately as entered. Various lead and case information easily could be associated for 

analysis. The Investigative Data Warehouse, while perhaps a useful tool, does not 

manage case workflow, does not provide immediate access to case information, and 

does not substitute for an effective case management system. Consequently, the FBI 

continues to lack critical tools necessary to maximize the performance of both its 

criminal investigative and national security missions. 

Federal Investigative Case Management System 

As a parallel effort to the VCF, the FBI recently has stated that it is pursuing 

an effort to develop the Federal Investigative Case Management System (FICMS). 

FBI officials have variously described this effort to the OIG during the course of our 

audit as a continuation of the VCF, a new investigative case management system 

to replace the failed VCF, or a ‘‘framework’’ for the future development of an investigative case management system platform. 

In its January 26, 2005, formal response to the OIG audit report, however, the 

FBI stated that the VCF and the FICMS are ‘‘two separate, but related projects that 

will move forward simultaneously. The VCF project remains the highest IT priority 

for the FBI, and we are developing an implementation plan that will result in deployment of a fully functional investigative case and records management system.’’ 

The FBI also stated in its response that it is continuing to pursue the VCF 

through development of an implementation plan. The FBI hired the Aerospace Corporation to evaluate currently available software products to determine if they meet 

the FBI’s requirements for a case management system. The FBI also asked Aerospace to evaluate the adequacy of the VCF as delivered by SAIC to determine what 

might be salvaged from that effort. 

Yet, the timetable for the FICMS and the VCF still does not appear to be rapid 

or clear. In conjunction with the OIG’s audit, the FBI told the OIG that it hopes 

to award a contract for FICMS by April 30, 2005. But the FBI has not provided its 

estimated costs, a revised schedule for completing the VCF, or a schedule for developing a new case management system to replace the VCF through the FICMS effort. 

CAUSES OF TRILOGY’S PROBLEMS

We believe the responsibility for ensuring the success of the Trilogy project is 

shared by several parties: the FBI; the Department of Justice; FEDSIM—the component of GSA that awarded Trilogy contracts on behalf of the FBI; and the two contractors—CSC for the two infrastructure components, and SAIC for the user applications component that became the VCF. These entities, to varying degrees, did not 

appropriately contract for, manage, monitor, or implement the Trilogy project. 

In our view, the main responsibility for the problems with Trilogy rests with the 

FBI. The FBI acted on a legitimate and urgent need to upgrade its IT infrastructure 

and replace the antiquated ACS. However, in the FBI’s desire to move quickly on 

the Trilogy project, it engaged FEDSIM to handle the contracting for this very large 

and complex project without providing or insisting upon: defined requirements, specific milestones, critical decision review points, and penalties for poor contractor performance. 

The resulting cost-plus-award-fee contract yielded control to the contactors for developing Trilogy’s technical requirements, while leaving the FBI little leverage to direct the project. In essence, the contract terms required paying the contractors regardless of whether they met schedules or were even technically capable of completing such a challenging project. 
64 

In addition, the FBI failed to adequately develop and articulate the design requirements at the outset of the project, and consequently the requirements repeatedly changed as the project progressed, with too much contractor control and too little input from FBI management. 

In its response to the audit report, the FBI alluded to its lack of control over requirements as a reason for the current VCF problem by stating that ‘‘[T]he VCF 

project suffered in part from runaway scope.’’ The FBI response also stated that to 

guard against runway scope in the future, ‘‘the IT system will be designed, developed, and deployed incrementally against specified and planned parameters.’’ 

In addition to the poor choice of contracting method and sketchy requirements, 

neither the FBI, the Department, nor FEDSIM ensured that adequate schedule, 

cost, technical, and performance baselines were established to allow the project to 

be adequately monitored and to identify and rectify schedule slippages or technical 

problems. Since none of the responsible parties ensured that realistic milestones 

were established to complete various segments of the project, it was difficult to ensure that the contractors successfully met overall schedule, cost, technical, or performance targets for the project. 

In addition, the Department expected the FBI to assume the role of project integrator to ensure all three Trilogy components meshed properly and were on track, 

even though the FBI lacked this capability or experience. The FBI’s ability to manage the Trilogy project, even with the help of contractor personnel, was crippled further by a revolving door of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Trilogy project 

management personnel at the FBI. 

A variety of audits by the OIG and the Government Accountability Office, as well 

as internal FBI reviews, had identified deficiencies in the FBI’s management of IT 

projects, including Trilogy. However, the FBI’s corrective action was slow. Only recently has the FBI made substantial progress in its IT investment management 

processes. 

More specifically, in our audit report the OIG detailed the following eight causes 

for the FBI’s problems with the Trilogy project: —Poorly defined and slowly evolving design requirements.—One of the most significant problems with managing the schedule, cost, technical, and performance 

aspects of the Trilogy project was the lack of a firm understanding of the design 

requirements by both the FBI and the contractors. Trilogy’s design requirements were ill-defined and still evolving as the project progressed. During the 

initial years of the project, the FBI had no firm design baseline or roadmap for 

Trilogy. According to one FBI Trilogy project manager, Trilogy’s scope grew by 

about 80 percent since the initiation of the project. Such large changes in the 

requirements meant that the specific detailed guidance for the project was not 

established, and as a result a final schedule and cost were not established. In 

addition, after the September 11 attacks, the FBI recognized that the initial 

concept of simply modifying the old ACS would not serve the FBI well over the 

long run. The FBI then created plans for the VCF. Additionally, a need for 

broadened security requirements due to vulnerabilities identified in the 

Hanssen espionage case affected Trilogy’s development. According to one project 

manager, this recognition of the need to upgrade security caused more problems 

and delays for the full implementation of the infrastructure component. 

—Contracting weaknesses.—The FBI’s current and former CIOs told the OIG that 

a primary reason for the schedule and cost problems associated Trilogy was 

weak statements of work in the contracts. According to FBI IT and contract 

managers, the cost-plus-award-fee type of contract used for Trilogy did not require specific completion milestones, did not include critical decision review 

points, and did not provide for penalties if the milestones were not met. 

—IT investment management weaknesses.—As described in the OIG’s December 

2002 audit report, The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Management of Information Technology Investments, at Trilogy’s inception and over much of its life, 

the FBI’s IT Investment Management process was not well-developed. Although 

our recent audit found that while the FBI had started centralizing its project 

management structure, appropriate project management was not consistently 

followed by Trilogy’s IT project managers. In essence, the FBI took risks to expedite Trilogy’s implementation, and that approach failed because the management practices to oversee Trilogy simply were not in place. 

—Lack of an Enterprise Architecture.—An Enterprise Architecture provides an organization with a blueprint to more effectively manage its current and future 

IT infrastructure and applications. The development, maintenance, and implementation of Enterprise Architectures are recognized hallmarks of successful 

public and private organizations. While the FBI has agreed to develop a comprehensive Enterprise Architecture, this recommendation has not yet been fully 
65 

implemented. The FBI has contracted for an Enterprise Architecture to be completed by September 2005. Without a complete Enterprise Architecture, the FBI 

needed to conduct reverse engineering to identify existing IT capabilities before 

developing the infrastructure and user applications requirements for the Trilogy 

project. 

—Lack of management continuity and oversight.—Turnover in key positions hurt 

the FBI’s ability to manage and oversee the Trilogy project. Since November 

2001, 15 different key IT managers have been involved with the Trilogy project, 

including 5 CIOs or Acting CIOs and 10 individuals serving as project managers 

for various aspects of Trilogy. This lack of continuity among IT managers contributed to the lack of effective and timely implementation of the Trilogy 

project. According to contractor personnel who are advising the FBI on Trilogy, 

the FBI suffered from a lack of engineering expertise, process weaknesses, and 

decision making by committees instead of knowledgeable individuals. 

—Unrealistic scheduling of tasks.—Along with the lack of firm milestones in the 

Trilogy contracts, the scheduled completion dates for individual project components were unrealistic. The unrealistic scheduling of project tasks led to a series 

of raised expectations followed by frustrations when the completion estimates 

were missed. According to an FBI official who monitored the development of the 

Trilogy infrastructure, Computer Sciences Corporation had problems producing 

an appropriate work schedule given the resources provided for the project. Until 

the FBI became more active in examining the scheduling of the project, the FBI 

accepted the project’s schedules as presented by the contractor. This acceptance 

began to shift when the FBI’s scheduler worked with the contractor in early 

2003 to establish a realistic work schedule for completing the infrastructure 

components. 

—Lack of adequate project integration.—Despite the use of two contractors to provide the three major Trilogy project components, the FBI did not retain a professional project integrator to manage contractor interfaces and take responsibility for the overall integrity of the final product until the end of 2003. According to FBI IT managers, FBI officials performed the project integrator function 

even though they had no experience performing such a role. Although FBI and 

Department officials stated that the Department required the FBI to perform 

project integration duties without contractor support, the expertise to adequately perform this function did not exist within the FBI. 

—Inadequate resolution of issues raised in reports on Trilogy.—Within a matter 

of months after initiation of the Trilogy project, the FBI recognized significant 

issues that needed resolution. Internal reports issued by the FBI’s Inspection 

Division, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, and consultants identified a lack of a single project manager, undocumented requirements, and a 

baseline that was not frozen. Based on internal reports, the FBI was aware of 

the risks that it faced during the development of the Trilogy project. While FBI 

management eventually hired a project manager to oversee the project—a recommendation made in all of the reports—the process of defining requirements 

and baselines for the VCF still continues, more than three years after these internal reports were issued. Because the FBI did not act timely to resolve the 

findings of these reports, many problems involving project management weaknesses, poorly-defined requirements, and lack of firm targets unnecessarily continued throughout much of the Trilogy project’s history. 

I believe it is important to note that, despite the troubled history of the Trilogy 

project, the FBI recently has made some improvements in its management of information technology. One major improvement in the FBI’s IT management was the 

appointment of a new CIO in May 2004 and the consolidation of the FBI’s previously fragmented management of IT resources and responsibilities under the Office of the CIO. A significant problem in the FBI’s management of IT investments 

was that all of the FBI divisions with IT investments were not under a single authority and, as a result, had a variety of processes and procedures for developing 

new systems. Under the reorganization, the CIO is responsible for all of the FBI’s 

IT assets, projects, plans, processes, and budgets. 

In December 2004, the Office of the CIO completed an initial version of an IT 

Strategic Plan, which describes how IT will support the FBI’s Strategic Plan and 

mission goals for the next five years. All IT projects now are required to be consistent with the FBI’s Strategic Plan. 

The Office of the CIO also has developed an FBI-wide Life Cycle Management Directive to guide FBI personnel on the technical management and engineering practices used to plan, acquire, operate, maintain, and replace IT systems and services. 

The directive provides detailed guidance to FBI Program and Project Managers and, 
66 

if fully and effectively implemented, will help prevent the delays and problems that 

occurred during the Trilogy project. 

As noted above, the FBI also is in the process of creating an Enterprise Architecture by September 2005. The Enterprise Architecture will provide a blueprint to aid 

the FBI in coordinating and managing its current and future IT infrastructure and 

systems. The FBI also is working on an IT Portfolio Management Program to list 

and technically document all of its IT systems. The FBI anticipates that recommendations stemming from its completed IT portfolio will be included in the development of its fiscal year 2007 IT budget. 

In commenting on the OIG’s Trilogy audit report, the FBI cited a number of other 

improvements it has begun to make, such as an IT metrics program to identify and 

measure IT performance, an initiative to standardize and automate IT procurement 

actions, a Program Management Professional certification training program, a Master IT Policy List to coordinate and control IT policies, standardized technology assessments, and an Information Assurance Program. Further, the FBI told us that 

VCF track one, or Initial Operating Capability, used the FBI’s new IT management 

approach, including identifying project objectives, requirements, and constraints before proceeding to control gates designed to keep the project on track and to regulate 

the release of funds. Also, the FBI said it developed a cost-sharing arrangement as 

part of the renegotiated UAC contract. These initiatives were beyond the scope of 

our audit, and we could not examine the FBI’s claims on these systems. However, 

they appear to represent progress in the FBI’s IT system. But none of them diminish the urgent need for the FBI to fully implement a fully functioning case management system like the VCF to create, organize, share, and analyze case information. 

OIG CONCLUSIONS REGARDING TRILOGY PROJECT

In sum, the FBI has made progress with its management of IT and its implementation of the first two phases of Trilogy. Trilogy’s infrastructure improvements have 

been completed, including the delivery of thousands of modern computer 

workstations and other hardware throughout the FBI. Although the Trilogy infrastructure improvements were characterized by delays and increased costs, the infrastructure now is in place to support improved user applications, including the VCF 

or its successor case management system, which the FBI recognizes as its top IT 

priority. 

Yet, the VCF effort is incomplete, and the prospects for timely completion remain 

unclear. After more than 3 years, multiple missed deadlines, and a price tag of $170 

million, the FBI still does not have an investigative case management system to replace the antiquated ACS system. Further, we are not confident that the FBI has 

a firm sense of how much longer and how much more it will cost to develop and 

deploy a usable system, whether the FBI continues to pursue the VCF system or 

decides to implement a new case management system. 

Finally, we disagree with the FBI’s assertion in its response to our draft report 

that the delays in deploying the VCF and the lack of an adequate case management 

system do not have national security implications. To the contrary, we believe there 

is a critical need to replace the ACS to enable FBI agents and analysts to effectively 

perform the FBI’s mission. The archaic ACS system—which some agents have avoided using—is cumbersome, inefficient, and limited in its capabilities, and does not 

manage, link, research, analyze, and share information as effectively or timely as 

needed. While the FBI has made strides in other IT areas—including installing a 

number of systems to share intelligence information and upload numerous documents into a data warehouse—the continued delays in developing the VCF affects 

the FBI’s ability to carry out its critical missions. 

ADDITIONAL OIG REVIEWS IN THE FBI

To conclude this statement, in response to a request from the Subcommittee, I 

summarize briefly the OIG’s ongoing reviews of other priority issues in the FBI. The 

following are examples of ongoing and recently completed OIG reviews that may be 

of interest to the Subcommittee. 

Ongoing OIG Reviews in the FBI 

Terrorist Screening Center.—The OIG is examining the operations of the Terrorist 

Screening Center to determine how it has managed terrorist-related information to 

ensure that complete, accurate, and current watch lists are developed and maintained. 

Implementation of the Attorney General’s Guidelines.—The OIG is reviewing the 

FBI’s compliance with the revised Attorney General Guidelines that govern the use 

of confidential informants; undercover operations; investigations of general crimes, 
67 

racketeering enterprises, and terrorism enterprises; and warrantless monitoring of 

verbal communications. 

Intelligence Analysts.—The OIG is reviewing the FBI’s recruitment, selection, 

training, and staffing of intelligence analysts. 

FBI’s Handling of the Brandon Mayfield Matter.—The OIG is reviewing the FBI’s 

conduct in connection with the erroneous identification of a fingerprint found on evidence from the March 2004 Madrid train bombing as belonging to Brandon 

Mayfield, an attorney in Portland, Oregon. 

Alleged Mistreatment of Detainees at Military Detention Facilities.—The OIG is examining any involvement of FBI employees in either observing or participating in 

the alleged abuse of detainees at the military’s Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib 

facilities. In addition, the OIG is reviewing when FBI employees reported the allegations of abuse and how FBI managers handled the employees’ reports. 

The FBI’s Chinese Counterintelligence Program.—At the request of the FBI Director, the OIG is examining the FBI’s performance in connection with the handling 

of Katrina Leung, an asset in the FBI’s Chinese counterintelligence program. 

The Department’s Counterterrorism Task Forces.—The OIG is evaluating the Department’s counterterrorism task forces to: (1) determine if they are achieving their 

stated purposes; (2) evaluate gaps, duplication, and overlap in terrorism coverage; 

and (3) identify how the performance of each task force is measured. 

Implementation of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act 

(CALEA).—The OIG is conducting a follow-up audit of the implementation of 

CALEA, which allows reimbursement to communications carriers for modifications 

of equipment to allow the capability for lawful electronic surveillance. The FBI has 

expended more than $500 million under CALEA. The OIG’s objectives are to review 

the progress and impediments to the FBI’s implementation of CALEA; review 

CALEA’s costs; and determine how the implementation of CALEA has impacted federal, state, and local law enforcement in their ability to conduct electronic surveillance. 

FBI’s Reprioritization Efforts.—The OIG is reviewing how the FBI’s operational 

changes resulting from its reorganization and change in priorities after the September 11 attacks have affected other law enforcement agencies. 

Recently Completed OIG Reviews in the FBI 

The following are some examples of recently completed OIG reviews related to 

FBI operations: 

—Follow-up Review of the Status of IDENT/IAFIS Integration (December 2004).— 

This OIG review examined ongoing efforts to integrate the federal government’s 

law enforcement and immigration agencies’ automated fingerprint identification 

databases. Fully integrating the automated fingerprint systems operated by the 

FBI and the DHS, known as IAFIS and IDENT respectively, would allow law 

enforcement and immigration officers to more easily identify known criminals 

and known or suspected terrorists trying to enter the United States, as well as 

identify those already in the United States that they encounter. This latest OIG 

report is the fourth in four years that monitors the progress of efforts to integrate IAFIS and IDENT. 

This OIG report found that while deployment of new IDENT/IAFIS 

workstations to Border Patrol offices and ports of entry represents a significant 

accomplishment, full integration of IDENT and IAFIS has yet to be realized. 

Federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities still do not have complete 

access to information in the IDENT database. Without such access, the FBI and 

DHS fingerprint systems are not fully interoperable, and it is more difficult for 

federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify illegal aliens they 

encounter. 

This OIG report found that the congressional directive to fully integrate the 

federal government’s various fingerprint identification systems has not been accomplished because of high-level policy disagreements among the Departments 

of Justice, Homeland Security, and State regarding such integration. In addition, the Department and the DHS still have not entered into a memorandum 

of understanding (MOU) to guide the integration of IAFIS and IDENT. This 

MOU has not been completed because of fundamental disagreements between 

the Department and the DHS over the attributes of an interoperable fingerprint 

system and the number of fingerprints to be taken from individuals by each 

agency. 

—Effects of the FBI’s Reprioritization (September 2004).—The OIG reviewed the 

changes in the FBI’s allocation of its personnel resources since the September 

11 terrorist attacks. The report provided detailed statistical information regarding changes in the FBI’s allocation of resources since 2000. The OIG determined 
68 

that the FBI has reallocated resources in accord with its shift in priorities from 

traditional criminal investigative work to counterterrorism and counterintelligence matters. In addition, the OIG review identified specific field offices most 

affected by changes in FBI priorities within various investigative areas, such as 

shifting agent resources from organized crime or health care fraud cases to terrorism investigations. The OIG report recommended that the FBI regularly conduct similar detailed analyses of its agent usage and case openings to provide 

a data-based view of the status of FBI operations and to assist managers in 

evaluating the FBI’s progress in meeting its goals. 

—Handling of Information Prior to September 11 Terrorist Attacks (July 2004).— 

This classified OIG report, conducted at the request of the FBI Director, examined the FBI’s handling of intelligence information prior to the September 11 

terrorist attacks. The review focused on the FBI’s handling of an electronic communication written by its Phoenix Division in July 2001 regarding extremists 

attending civil aviation schools in Arizona, the Zacarias Moussaoui investigation, and information related to September 11 terrorists Nawaf al-Hazmi and 

Khalid al-Mihdhar. 

The OIG made 16 recommendations for improving the FBI’s intelligence handling and counterterrorism efforts, including recommendations targeted towards 

the FBI’s analytical program. The OIG provided the classified version of this report to the 9/11 Commission and to Congress. In response to requests from 

members of Congress, the OIG is working with the Department to produce an 

unclassified version of this report that can be publicly released. 

—Foreign Language Translation Program (July 2004).—The OIG audited the 

FBI’s translation of counterterrorism and counterintelligence foreign language 

materials. The audit found that the FBI did not translate all the 

counterterrorism and counterintelligence material it collected. The OIG attributed the FBI’s backlog of unreviewed material to difficulties in hiring a sufficient number of linguists and limitations in the FBI’s translation information 

technology systems. The review also found problems in the FBI’s quality control 

program for language translations. The report made 18 recommendations for 

improving the FBI’s foreign language translation program. 

In response to the OIG report, the FBI stated that it plans to implement a 

national integrated statistical collection and reporting system for its translation 

program in fiscal year 2005 that will allow foreign language program management to accurately determine the amount of unreviewed material that needs to 

be translated. The FBI also plans to increase its digital collection systems’ storage capacity so that unreviewed audio material for critical cases is not deleted 

by the system. In addition, it plans to implement controls to ensure that the 

forwarding of audio among FBI offices via its secure communications network 

is accomplished reliably and timely. The FBI further reported that it plans to 

assess the linguist hiring process, implement measures to reduce the time it 

takes to bring linguists on board, and strengthen quality control procedures to 

ensure that translations are accurate and that all pertinent material is being 

translated. 

—Edmonds Case (June 2004).—The OIG examined the FBI’s actions in connection 

with allegations raised by former FBI contract linguist Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds alleged that her concerns about aspects of the FBI translation program 

were not appropriately handled by the FBI and that her services as a contract 

linguist were terminated in retaliation for her raising these allegations. The 

OIG review concluded that many of Edmonds’ core allegations relating to the 

co-worker had some basis in fact and were supported by either documentary 

evidence or witnesses other than Edmonds. The OIG concluded that the FBI 

should have investigated Edmonds’ allegations more thoroughly. With respect 

to Edmonds’ claim that she was fired for raising these concerns, the OIG concluded that while Edmonds does not fall within the protection of the FBI’s whistleblower regulations, Edmonds’ allegations were at least a contributing factor 

in why the FBI terminated her services. 

—DNA Reviews.—During the past year, the OIG completed three reviews examining various aspects of DNA laboratories or DNA grant programs. In the first 

review, completed in May 2004, the OIG examined vulnerabilities in the protocols and practices in the FBI’s DNA Laboratory. This review was initiated after 

it was discovered that an examiner in DNA Analysis Unit I failed to perform 

negative contamination tests. The OIG’s review found that certain DNA protocols were vulnerable to undetected, inadvertent, or willful non-compliance by 

DNA staff, and we made 35 recommendations to address these vulnerabilities. 

The FBI agreed to amend its protocols to address these recommendations. 
69 

In a separate review, the OIG audited several laboratories that participate in 

the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), a national database maintained by the FBI that allows law enforcement agencies to search and exchange 

DNA information. The OIG’s CODIS audits identified concerns with some participants’ compliance with quality assurance standards and uploading of unallowable and inaccurate DNA profiles to the national level of CODIS. 

In a third review dealing with DNA matters, issued in November 2004, the 

OIG audited the Office of Justice Programs’ DNA backlog reduction grant program. This program provides funding to states for the analysis of DNA samples 

collected in cases where no suspect has been identified. The audit found that 

many of the DNA profiles that had been analyzed by the states using grant 

funding had not been uploaded into the FBI’s CODIS system and that grantees 

were not using the funds on a timely basis to reduce DNA backlogs. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CHARLES GRASSLEY

Chairman Gregg, I want to thank you and the Ranking Member for holding this 

important hearing on the FBI’s Trilogy project and for allowing me to submit a 

statement for the record. Over the years I have taken a keen interest in making 

sure that the FBI does the best job that it can. Unfortunately, as Inspector General 

Fine has testified today, the Trilogy project isn’t an example of excellence. 

I want to commend General Fine for his report outlining the many problems with 

the FBI’s management of the Trilogy project and it’s Virtual Case File. The results 

of the OIG audit revealed that, although the FBI has completed two of the three 

components of the Trilogy project, the Virtual Case File (VCF) project has failed to 

produce a functioning records management system. More importantly, it seems as 

if the FBI will now actively pursue the development of the Federal Investigative 

Case Management System (FICMS), but has not provided estimated costs for such 

a project or a revised schedule for completing the VCF. 

The audit has determined that the ‘‘main responsibility for the problems with 

Trilogy rests with the FBI.’’ The fact that changes to the system requirements were 

made after the project had been initiated, that contracts were not monitored and 

that project management decisions were made by committees instead of experts 

with a working knowledge of these systems, are all indicative of a plan that had 

failed before it even got off the ground. The absence of an Enterprise Architecture 

and lack of proper scrutiny over the various contracts leads one to believe that 

funds for this project were requested from Congress before a rational and pragmatic 

review of the potential problems were examined. 

Today’s OIG audit is another verse of the same song. On several occasions in the 

last few years, the IG has had opportunity to examine the FBI’s automated case 

support and its IT systems. They have highlighted the flaws and deficiencies and 

made recommendations. As the IG noted in September 2003, the FBI implemented 

many of the IG’s recommendations, but not all of them. Had the FBI fully embraced 

these recommendations the Trilogy project might have been in a different place 

today. In fact one of the problems we see today was noted in December of 2002. At 

that time, the IG concluded that the FBI was spending hundreds of millions of dollars on IT projects without adequate assurance that the projects would meet their 

intended goals. Apparently, not much has changed. 

This is particularly troubling, in light of the dire need for a case management system that works. I agree with the IG’s assessment that ‘‘there is a critical need to 

replace the ACS to enable FBI agents and analysts to effectively perform the FBI’s 

mission.’’ Fighting terrorism is the FBI’s main job and not having an adequate ACS 

hinders their effort. The FBI asserts that the failure of the VCF will not impact on 

national security, but frankly, I’d rather not take the chance. Securing the homeland is far too important of a task to not have the best tools available. 

After having spent $580 million on the Trilogy project, including $171 million on 

the Virtual Case File, one would think that the FBI didn’t just have the best tools, 

but they have all of the tools. Unfortunately, the taxpayers $171 million was squandered on a project that doesn’t meet the FBI’s needs. Additionally, the fact that the 

FBI has been set back three years in planning their critical infrastructure, necessitates a well thought-out and managed solution. I hope that from this failure the 

FBI can gain some insights and build a learning curve that will help them as they 

look for a another system. 

To that end, I would recommend that the FBI explore the case management programs already utilized by other federal government agencies, before attempting to 

spearhead a Federal Investigative Case Management System. It is quite possible 
70 

that a program currently in use by the federal government could be adapted to suit 

the needs of the FBI case management program. 

Chairman Gregg, I again want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to 

weigh in on this critical topic. General Fine, thank you for your thorough and insightful report and testimony. I really do want the FBI to be the best they can be 

at protecting America’s citizens, and that’s why this report and hearing are so very 

important. The FBI must learn from its mistakes. To not do so could lead to an even 

greater waste of taxpayers’ dollars and increased risk to national security. 

ADDITIONAL COMMITTEE QUESTIONS

Senator GREGG. But I am going to have to recess this hearing 

and we are going to have to come back and reschedule the balance 

at another date. I think the time that the Director has given us has 

been exceptional and it might have been a little longer than people 

had expected, but we appreciate his courtesy. 

[The following questions were not asked at the hearing, but were 

submitted to the Department for response subsequent to the hearing:] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY SENATOR PATRICK J. LEAHY

VIRTUAL CASE FILE

Question. There is a field test of the VCF Initial Operating Capability currently 

underway in the New Orleans field office. (A) When will that test be completed? 

Who will assess the results of that test and what criteria will be applied? (B) What 

are the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI’s) plans for ‘‘VCF-lite?’’ Does it expect 

to use this software in the future? 

Answer. The deployment of the Virtual Case File (VCF) Initial Operating Capability (IOC) as a pilot to the New Orleans Field Office, the Baton Rouge Resident 

Agency, the Criminal Investigative Division’s Drug Unit, and the User Advocate 

Unit provides the opportunity to refine workflow business processes, verify workflow 

requirements, quantify workflow efficiency improvements, develop workflow-related 

system deployment processes, and develop workflow-related training processes. During the pilot, metrics are being collected to quantify the above goals and assess user 

satisfaction. At the end of the pilot activities, the FBI will better understand the 

opportunities an electronic workflow capability provides for improving the efficiency 

of document-related business processes and the challenges involved in deploying a 

web-based workflow application across the workforce. Questions the FBI hopes to 

answer include: 

—Will the automation of workflow reduce investigation time? 

—Will the application track documents throughout their existence? 

—What is the impact of the automated workflow on the FBI workforce? 

—What is the best way to train FBI employees on new technology tools and capabilities? 

—Is the user interface acceptable to the users and does it enhance their ability 

to do their work efficiently and effectively? 

—What is needed to implement more effective security controls to ensure seamless access to data and information sharing? 

—Will the interface between the Automated Case Support (ACS) system and the 

VCF IOC be adequate for future system integration efforts, including ‘‘flash cutover’’ strategies? 

The pilot was completed in late spring of 2005, metrics are being analyzed and 

reported. The FBI has tasked Mitretek Systems to perform the assessment to determine what future use of the application is appropriate. The results of this pilot, 

along with the conclusions drawn by the Office of the Chief Information Officer 

(OCIO), will be shared with The RAND Corporation as well as our oversight partners, including the Congress, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

The IOC was developed in two increments: the initial IOC and the incremental 

‘‘IOC Plus.’’ The incremental IOC Plus consists of a few additional features that 

were identified during the beta test as significantly enhancing the usability of the 

IOC and capable of development and testing for a minimum additional cost. Based 

on feedback from users during the pilot, the FBI will determine the value and cost 

of deploying IOC Plus field-wide. Such a deployment would provide a stop-gap capability while the Full Operating Capability solution is being developed. The FBI has 
71 

prepared a cost estimate for deploying IOC Plus field-wide and associated operations 

for a 12-month period. These costs will be analyzed along with the perceived benefit 

of such a deployment to the user community, resulting in a recommendation of 

whether to deploy IOC Plus field-wide. 

Aspects of the pilot software will be used in the future. In particular, the Web 

ACS capabilities integrated into the pilot are being further developed and will provide users increased access to ACS data. In addition, the software implementing the 

workflow aspect of the pilot is under evaluation for longer term, future use. There 

are no plans for a ‘‘VCF-lite.’’ 

Question. You told this subcommittee on March 23, 2004, that in the wake of the 

9/11 attacks, you evaluated whether to develop VCF or purchase a commercial offthe-shelf product. You stated: ‘‘I have had a number of persons outside the bureau 

look at the decision to develop our own, persons—I call them the gray-beards—who 

are from a number of private concerns who would look at the choice we made and 

the product we’ve come up with. And I think the reviews are very good for the product we’ve come up with.’’ Did these ‘‘gray-beards’’ from private concerns produce 

written or otherwise formal assessments of whether the FBI should develop its own 

product or buy off-the-shelf? If so, please provide those. If not, why did the FBI 

chose to rely on an informal assessment rather a formal report like the one recently 

prepared by Aerospace? Couldn’t the FBI have benefited by contracting for a formal 

report on off-the-shelf alternatives much earlier? 

Answer. Two groups of ‘‘gray beards’’ reviewed Trilogy and/or VCF. A panel from 

the National Academy of Science (NAS), led by Jim McGrotty, looked at Trilogy first 

in September 2002, and then again during late 2003 and early 2004. The initial 

NAS effort in September 2002 consisted of two days of briefings, after which the 

panel provided an oral assessment to the Director and others. No formal written report was issued. The purpose of this review was to give the Director a ‘‘pulse-check’’ 

on how Trilogy was proceeding. The second NAS review resulted in a written report, 

issued in May 2004, and was followed by an addendum in June 2004, that focused 

on changes made by Zalmai Azmi, after his appointment as the FBI’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) (which were not considered in the initial report). The NAS was 

not asked to assess commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, although some panel 

members believed, from the discussion of requirements presented, that COTS products might meet FBI requirements. 

The second group of ‘‘gray beards’’ is the Director’s Science and Technology Advisory Board, led by Art Money. This Board has been briefed on Trilogy, VCF, and 

the FBI’s information technology (IT) effort in general since it first began meeting 

in October 2003. At the request of former FBI Executive Assistant Director Wilson 

Lowery, members of the Board met in June 2004, specifically to review and comment on the VCF Corrective Action Plan, including the identification of any inconsistencies or gaps in the remediation plan. After a series of briefings during the day, 

the Board members met with the Director to provide an oral assessment of the plan 

and other suggestions. Since then, VCF, Enterprise Architecture (EA), and IT have 

been regular agenda items on the Science Board’s agenda, and the program managers have updated the board members. Again, the Board was not asked to assess 

COTS, but they also suggested that COTS could satisfy most of the FBI’s requirements and encouraged the FBI to explore that option. 

Question. On July 16, 2002, Sherry Higgins, your then-Project Management Executive, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight that the FBI was using an industry-standard process—Joint Application Development—to ‘‘define and prioritize’’ its requirements. The subcommittee was also 

told this was a new way of doing business: bringing together users, designers, and 

future systems operators to define and prioritize requirements. Why was this process not effective in producing a concrete and final list of VCF requirements that 

SAIC could use to build VCF? 

Answer. The Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions resulted in user-need 

and requirements statements reflecting the capabilities users desired in the final 

system. These statements were, however, not prioritized and, in some important aspects, insufficiently detailed (this was particularly true of the requirements related 

to users’ access to the system’s functions and data and to the requirements defining 

the system’s administrative functions). As a result, the requirements were accurate 

and consistent, but they were not complete in all areas. In addition, they did not 

reflect the constraints imposed by the system’s conceptual design or current infrastructure, since the process by which requirements were defined was implemented 

after the Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) had already developed the conceptual design and the infrastructure framework. The SAIC attempted 

to use these user-need and requirements statements to define a set of requirements 

that were consistent with a vision of how to build the system, but were unsuccessful 
72 

because the JAD lacked sufficiently detailed requirements regarding security, 

records management, and the intelligence mission to complete the new system and 

application architecture. 

Question. At the hearing on February 3, you described problems leading to a 

failed VCF effort, including that the FBI ‘‘lacked skill sets in our personnel, such 

as qualified software engineering, program management and contract management.’’ 

You also stated that the FBI responded to these deficiencies by outsourcing the contract management and technology development. The Federal Systems Integration 

Management (FEDSIM) is acting as the contracting office on behalf of the FBI, and 

Mitretek Systems provides program management, systems engineering and technical advisory services. SAIC has been responsible for delivering VCF. 

Has the FBI or an outside entity evaluated the extent to which it should have 

such capabilities within its own staff, and if so, what is the result of that assessment? 

Answer. In 2003, a distinguished group under the NAS conducted an in-depth 

study of the Trilogy program including, in particular, VCF. The NAS determined 

that, while the FBI had some good IT people, it fell short of the kind of expertise 

needed to manage large IT acquisitions, not only from the program management 

perspective, but also from an engineering perspective. 

The FBI recognized these shortcomings and created the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in June 2004, to strengthen engineering and computer science 

especially as it relates to the development of new technology. Currently, that office 

includes 10 software/system engineers and is in the process of selecting an additional 10, which will be a combination of new employees and transfers from other 

parts of the FBI. At the same time, the CTO is strengthening software, system, and 

data engineering at the Bureau by hiring contractors to work on establishing ‘‘to be’’ 

technical and data reference models for the enterprise, participating in project and 

critical design reviews, and base-lining the FBI’s capabilities from a systems engineering perspective. The FBI plans to request additional government software and 

systems engineers in the future to bolster its resource pool for dealing with complex 

and critical information technology projects. 

Additionally, the FBI’s Office of IT Program Management (OIPM) has taken several steps to strengthen program management skills as they relate to IT programs 

and projects. In addition to recruiting several experienced program managers to fill 

key IT management positions within the OIPM, the FBI has implemented a training 

initiative through which employees can be certified as Program Management Professionals. Since September 2004, 30 employees have been trained and two additional 

classes, with an additional 50 students, are underway. 

On March 4, 2005, the FBI became a member of the Program Management Institute (PMI), and enrolled 20 employees in this professional organization. In addition, 

these individuals joined the Washington, D.C. PMI Chapter and the government 

special interest group. This allows FBI program managers to remain updated on the 

latest information from PMI, attend project meetings, and participate in the government-specific interest group. 

Question. What adjustments did the FBI make to its own internal personnel to 

ensure proper oversight of, and effective communication with, SAIC, FEDSIM, 

Mitretek and other entities performing functions related to VCF? 

Answer. While the FBI did take steps to improve internal oversight of the VCF 

project, in retrospect the steps were not adequate to ensure proper oversight. Steps 

taken included, but were not limited to, the following: (1) a communication plan between the FBI User Team and SAIC where FBI User Team members were integrated into SAIC’s environment for project support; (2) an interim Award Fee feedback plan instituted by the FBI and the Federal Systems Integration Management 

(FEDSIM) Center to provide SAIC more frequent performance analysis; (3) monthly 

In-Progress Review (IPR) briefings provided by SAIC to FEDSIM and the FBI; and 

(4) weekly Program Management Office (PMO) meetings, attended by SAIC, 

FEDSIM, and the FBI. 

Once it became apparent that SAIC was having difficulties, the PMO co-located 

FBI and Mitretek Systems personnel at SAIC. Mitretek was asked by the FBI to 

provide additional resources to help resolve issues. In addition to attending ad hoc 

meetings as issues arose, Mitretek Systems developed a User’s Guide and a series 

of white papers to assist SAIC in understanding the FBI’s needs and requirements 

in areas not covered in detail in the system and software requirements. The white 

papers addressed such topics as: access control concepts, authorized users, delegated 

functions identified in the Systems Requirements Document, lead routing table concepts, package assumptions rules and roles, silent hits, User Application Component 

client server communications link bandwidths, logging, and data models. 
73 

In the first quarter of 2004, an independent FBI Special Technologies and Applications Section technical team provided an architectural evaluation, identifying 

risks and deficiencies previously suspected, but not confirmed, to the PMO. This 

new risk information, in addition to SAIC’s past performance on this project, became 

an important component in the FBI’s assessment of SAIC’s ability to respond to the 

challenges of completing VCF delivery 1. 

Question. Prior oversight reports have found that the bureau has had trouble 

managing its information technology contractors and that these problems contributed in part to cost, schedule, and performance shortfalls on system modernization 

projects such as Trilogy/Virtual Case File. For example, in December 2002, the Inspector General reported that the bureau was not implementing cost, schedule, and 

technical baselines to monitor its contractor’s progress on the Trilogy project. In addition, in May 2004, the National Research Council reported that the bureau needed 

more control over its Trilogy/Virtual Case File contracts, including more frequent 

use of contractor progress reviews, performance metrics, and specific milestone delivery dates. What has the FBI done to strengthen its ability to effectively manage 

its contractors and minimize the risk that the bureau will experience cost, schedule, 

and performance shortfalls on future IT projects? 

Answer. In May 2004, Director Mueller announced the appointment of Mr. Zalmai 

Azmi as the FBI CIO. Mr. Azmi is responsible for the FBI’s overall information technology efforts, including developing the FBI’s IT strategic plan and operating budget; developing and maintaining the FBI’s technology assets; and providing technical 

direction for the re-engineering of FBI business processes. Mr. Azmi was given the 

authority for enterprise-wide IT budget control/consolidation. The CIO and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) work closely together on all IT financial and budget matters 

(including the IT budgets in all FBI divisions). The CIO and CFO instituted an acquisition process that required all IT investments to be reviewed by CIO and CFO 

staff. Almost 1,000 acquisitions were reviewed and approved in the last 2 quarters 

of fiscal year 2004. The risks associated with cost, schedule, and contract performance are also reduced by the FBI’s close coordination with the Department of Justice 

(DOJ) CIO; the FBI and DOJ CIOs meet regularly to discuss status and address 

issues related to the FBI’s major IT investments. 

The CIO centralized the IT business of the FBI, mostly in an organizational structure under his office with a few specialized applications organizationally separate 

but reporting through him (e.g., the Criminal Justice Information Systems Division 

in West Virginia) under the Life Cycle Management Directive (LCMD). The LCMD, 

which fundamentally changes how IT projects are managed in the Bureau, governs 

how IT projects are managed from ‘‘cradle to grave’’ and is consistent with industry 

and other government agency best practices. The LCMD guides FBI personnel on 

the technical management and engineering practices used to plan, acquire, operate, 

maintain, and replace IT systems and services. All IT projects and programs will 

be required to undergo rigorous project and executive level ‘‘control gate’’ reviews 

for each stage, from inception through disposal. There are seven gates, nine phases, 

and 14 key supporting processes in the LCMD. These reviews are the mechanism 

for management control and direction, decision-making, coordination, and confirmation of successful performance. 

The FBI’s CIO has established a system of review boards through which the IT 

business of the FBI is conducted. 

—The IT Advisory Board ensures new technologies are incorporated into FBI operations and business practices, ensures decision makers prioritize operational 

technology needs for future development, minimizes duplicate technology business practices to better optimize resources, and resolves conflicts involving IT 

issues among FBI Headquarters divisions. 

—The EA Board ensures IT systems comply with EA requirements, the supporting system concept, critical design, and disposal reviews. 

—The IT Policy Review Board provides guidance and direction on IT policy matters, resolves issues, and develops new policies. 

—The Technical Review Board ensures IT systems comply with technical requirements, leads critical design, and supports deployment readiness and system test 

reviews. 

—The Change Management Board manages IT infrastructure changes, leading deployment readiness, system test readiness, operational acceptance, and disposal 

reviews. 

—The Investment Management Project Review Board ensures IT systems acquisitions are aligned with IT policy, strategic plans, and investment management/ 

portfolio management requirements. It leads system concept and acquisition 

plan reviews. 
74 

These Boards have defined roles/responsibilities within the structured framework 

of the LCMD and operate pursuant to established charters and procedures. The 

LCMD applies to all solution providers, including contractors. In addition, contract 

management is enhanced at the Departmental level by the work of the Department 

Executive Review Board (DERB), which oversees DOJ’s major IT investments, including those led by the FBI. The DERB operates as part of DOJ’s Information 

Technology Investment Management process to provide oversight at the highest 

level. 

Through a newly instituted IT Investment Management process, the CIO is establishing control and management of IT project budgeting, working with the CFO in 

the budget formulation process during the fiscal year 2006 budget cycle (the Finance 

Division has asked the CIO to provide an addendum to the fiscal year 2007 budget 

request targeting IT requirements). In addition, the OCIO has increased the oversight of IT projects and programs through the development of IT standard system/ 

project definitions; identification of the FBI IT portfolio of systems, applications, 

programs, and projects; release of the FBI IT Master Project/Programs list; promulgation to all FBI divisions of the LCMD; and purchase of an Enterprise Portfolio 

Management tool and a Project Portfolio Management tool. 

Oversight of IT projects begins with establishing baselines for each project. In 

June 2004, it was mandated that all new projects produce and maintain resourcedriven MS Project 2002 schedules. These schedules are subject to periodic (weekly, 

monthly, and/or at LCMD gates, depending on the project) review and analysis. All 

pre-existing projects will be required to produce and maintain project schedules, 

which are subject to review and analysis at each of the remaining LCMD gate reviews. DOJ has announced their implementation of a congressional mandate that 

all projects of a certain size are required to provide American National Standards 

Institute Earned Value Management Systems data. The Earned Value Management 

(EVM) methodology is a project (investment) management process that effectively 

integrates the investment scope of work with schedule and cost elements for optimum investment planning and control. The OCIO is in the process of reporting 

EVM data to DOJ in compliance with this mandate. 

Question. When SAIC submitted invoices as it spent taxpayer’s money, what were 

the FBI’s procedures for evaluating: (a) whether those expenditures were permissible under its contract; (b) whether they were producing the necessary result; and 

(c) whether the timing of those expenses put SAIC on track for timely delivery? Why 

did those procedures fail to identify at an earlier date that SAIC would not be able 

to deliver the expected results on the due date, and what changes have been put 

in place to manage future contracts? 

Answer. In a large system development project such as VCF, the key is the development of a base-lined, resource-loaded network addressing both schedule and resources. Tracking progress against this resource-loaded network reveals whether the 

money is being spent according to the plan and the development is on track. While 

SAIC had a resource-loaded network, it was not sufficiently milestone driven to expose the difficulty they were having completing the system development. Even with 

this weakness, the FBI was aware of the project status. Over the past year, the FBI 

has met with DOJ officials and with House and Senate Committee Members and/ 

or their staffs to address issues regarding the VCF and Trilogy programs. 

The FBI is acutely aware of these deficiencies and has taken proactive steps to 

ensure that they do not recur. As noted above, all projects will be managed in accordance with the Life Cycle Management Directive. Earned Value Management 

(EVM) reporting requirements will be mandated on projects of a specified size and 

dollar threshold. A work breakdown structure and a detailed, integrated, event-driven schedule will be developed and maintained for each project. Project status reporting will be accomplished at both the project and enterprise levels. Project Management Reviews will be conducted at the project level, and ‘‘control gate’’ reviews will 

be conducted at the enterprise level. Appropriately designated boards will oversee 

projects and, through the recent deployment of Worklenz software, all oversight entities will have the same view into a project’s progress. The oversight process will 

also be enhanced by the monthly entry of key budget and milestone data for all DOJ 

IT projects, including FBI IT projects, into DOJ’s IT Dashboard, which will allow 

the FBI’s and DOJ’s CIOs to view status, EVM metrics, and major developments 

affecting progress. 

While clearly VCF does not provide the capabilities the FBI sought, the ‘‘lessons 

learned’’ from the VCF project management were beneficial. As noted above, the FBI 

has developed the LCMD to impose structure and process in system development, 

and the VCF IOC was executed using this new approach to IT management. Project 

objectives, requirements, and constraints were clearly identified before proceeding to 

each control gate, and ‘‘go/no go’’ criteria were used at major milestones to control 
75 

the release of funding and to keep the project focused. In addition, a cost-sharing 

arrangement was established as part of the renegotiated User Applications Component contract, and adherence to defined management processes was mandated. As 

a result, the VCF IOC development and deployment was completed on schedule and 

within budget. 

Question. At the hearing, you indicated that the FBI has deferred to DOJ for consideration of whether the FBI can recoup any funds from SAIC, and if so, how much 

and on what basis. When was this issue deferred for consideration and when do you 

expect to receive an answer? Will you inform the Committee immediately upon receipt of this assessment? 

Answer. The FBI referred this matter to DOJ’s Civil Division on February 2, 

2005. The FBI asked the Civil Division to ‘‘begin to analyze the facts to assist us 

in determining the appropriate course of action’’ concerning the possible recovery of 

funds from SAIC. The FBI is continuing to work with the Civil Division and the 

General Services Administration to resolve this matter and determine what future 

action, if any, will be taken. At this point, it is not known when a final determination will be made. The FBI will inform the Committee when such a determination 

is made. 

Question. The FBI’s response to the Inspector General’s draft report indicated that 

the FBI established its baseline Enterprise Architecture (EA) in 2004 and is in the 

process of developing a target EA in September 2005. What is the status and 

progress of the bureau’s efforts to develop and implement an effective and complete 

EA that can be used to effectively guide and constrain its IT investments, and will 

it be complete by September 2005? Does it make sense to continue to pursue VCF, 

or even the Federal Investigative Case Management System (FICMS), before this 

EA is complete? 

Answer. Since the award of a contract for EA support on March 21, 2004, the FBI 

has applied a focused, concentrated, and elevated effort. For example, a revised EA 

Program Plan was completed and signed by the CIO on July 2, 2004. EA development efforts and products are being reviewed approximately every other month by 

the Director’s Science and Technology Advisory Board, an external group of senior 

scientists and technology experts. Both completed and in-progress EA products are 

also reviewed by the EA Board (EAB), which includes Deputy Assistant Directors 

from FBI Headquarters Divisions. The EA principles and the Integrated EA Base 

were completed and approved by the EAB and the CIO on December 9, 2004. The 

Integrated EA Base Line, which was approved by the FBI Director on December 21, 

2004, contains the following information. 

—Business Architecture—36 stakeholders, 42 functions, 223 sub-functions. 

—Data Architecture—identified 8 data areas and 65 data classes. 

—Applications Architecture—includes the Master IT Systems List with an inventory of over 500 FBI systems, applications, networks, and databases. 

—Technology Architecture—includes the FBI IT Master Products List with over 

800 COTS and Government off-the-shelf products. 

The CIO has added both in-house personnel and contractors to ensure completion 

of the target, or ‘‘To Be,’’ EA by May 2005. The initial phase, referred to as the ‘‘interim To Be architecture,’’ addresses the target architecture and the Integrated 

Baseline Architecture, focusing on current projects and interoperability within the 

current technology environment. Any project that is being developed with incremental capabilities will need to be aware of the architectural impact of projects inprogress to address integration issues. Phase I of the target architecture identifies 

the mission requirements being supported by the FBI projects identified for fiscal 

year 2005 and 2006, including VCF, and the EA team is working with the personnel 

responsible for the VCF to ensure that its architectural issues are addressed. The 

interim target architecture includes mapping to the reference models identified in 

the Federal EA, tailored for the FBI environment to provide architectural support 

for projects under development. The intent is to create an optimum architecture environment for the implementation of projects that enhance the FBI’s technical environment so the FBI is in an optimum position to support the VCF effort. 

Question. Mr. Azmi testified at the hearing that the FBI now has a list of requirements for VCF and has mapped these requirements ‘‘through a federal enterprise 

architecture framework,’’ that these have been broken down into phases, and that 

another independent contractor is assessing the cost of implementing those phases 

and will have a report by mid-February. What is the relationship between this ‘‘federal enterprise architecture framework’’ and the FBI’s efforts to develop its own EA 

by 2005? 

Answer. The Federal EA Framework (FEAF) that was initially established in fiscal year 2000 has been evolving with the development of OMB’s five reference models. For example, the original FEAF did not contain any framework support for se-
76 

curity. Additionally, OMB and GAO recognized that focusing on specific organizations’ applications retained the dependencies or bottlenecks within these organizations. Therefore, OMB replaced that approach with one that employs the concept of 

service components independent of an application’s implementation. Some of the reference models, including the Security reference model, are still under development. 

The OMB approach is to include in the reference models a master list of all possible 

elements, so that an organization can develop its own reference model by selecting 

the elements appropriate to that organization. The FBI is using the OMB reference 

models to complete its EA to the extent possible, adding additional features or 

framework elements, such as security services and features, as appropriate. The FBI 

target model also uses the reference models, but depicts the future environment the 

FBI expects to need to meet mission goals. The difference between the baseline EA 

and the target EA represents the gap that must be bridged to achieve the target 

EA. 

Question. Is the list of requirements referenced in the hearing the final list of requirements against which VCF will be built, or will there be additional changes to 

the requirements list, perhaps when the FBI’s own EA is complete in 2005? 

Answer. The FBI contracted with BAE Systems to review and revalidate users requirements because the mission of the FBI has evolved, presenting new requirements for information and intelligence sharing among different entities. This review 

is still in progress. To ensure future IT systems do not expand beyond their functional level, IT systems will be designed, developed, and deployed incrementally 

against specified and planned parameters. 

Question. Which independent contractor is developing a cost estimate, and will 

you provide the cost-estimate report to Congress upon receipt? Does it make sense 

to solicit cost estimates at this time given the potential flux in the VCF requirements? 

Answer. Two Independent Government Cost Estimates (IGCEs) are being developed, one by Mitretek Systems and one by Aerospace. Aerospace is a Federally 

Funded Research and Development Corporation and is Congressionally chartered to 

provide this kind of analysis. An IGCE is based on a set of assumptions addressing 

the concept and its development, operations, and maintenance. Given the current 

fluidity in the concept’s development, these estimates will need to be revisited when 

the final concept has been defined. 

Due to the rigor and time associated with developing an IGCE, the FBI decided 

to begin preparing the estimates and factor in time for later updates, rather than 

waiting until everything is known to begin to prepare the estimates. 

The FBI would be pleased to brief the Subcommittee on our progress in this area. 

Question. The OIG Report indicates that the FBI discontinued its pursuit of certain enhancements and additional operational capabilities to VCF in part because 

the VCF Delivery 1 did not meet its expectations, and also because the FBI plans 

to pursue the Federal Investigative Case Management System (FICMS). The OIG 

Report also indicated that the FBI is serving as the executive agent of the process 

to award a contract for FICMS by April 2005. The FBI’s response to the OIG’s draft 

audit described FICMS as a ‘‘blueprint’’ and stated that VCF and FICMS ‘‘are on 

parallel tracks that will eventually converge.’’ What will this ‘‘blueprint’’ entail and 

who designed it? 

Answer. The Federal Investigative Case Management Solutions (FICMS) initiative, part of OMB’s Case Management Line of Business, is a framework that provides guidance for participating agencies designing and developing investigative 

case management systems. FICMS ensures, where appropriate, the establishment 

and reusability of common IT solutions and promotes the inter-agency compatibility 

and system interoperability needed to facilitate information sharing across the federal investigative and law enforcement landscape. Investigative agencies share core 

business functions but also have unique needs that drive agency-specific system requirements. The FICMS framework uses a Service Oriented Architecture approach, 

which allows agencies the flexibility to implement a common, core solution and build 

specific functional modules that plug into the common solution to meet unique agency needs. Accordingly, investigative agencies will procure commercially available solutions where appropriate, then implement these solutions to address specific activities such as investigative workflow management, records management, and data 

analysis. These agency-specific systems will follow the broad FICMS blueprint so 

that data can flow easily and securely between agencies. The FBI is planning to implement the first investigative case management system as part of the FICMS 

framework, and is collaborating with DOJ and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to maximize the system’s use by other investigative agencies, thus preventing costly investments in duplicate IT case management systems. OMB selected 
77 

DOJ to lead this effort, and the FBI was designated as DOJ’s Executive Agent for 

FICMS development. 

Question. What impact has the development of FICMS had on the FBI’s view of, 

or plans for, VCF? What does it mean that VCF and FICMS ‘‘are on parallel tracks’’ 

and ‘‘will eventually converge?’’ 

Answer. The FBI is continuing to move forward to develop and deploy a case management system. At the same time, the lessons learned through VCF will be used 

to help develop the FICMS, a broad blueprint for federal investigative case management systems being led by DOJ. The FBI will use the FICMS framework to develop 

an investigative case management system that will not only meets the Bureau’s specific needs, but will also provide a blueprint for other federal investigative agencies 

implementing case management systems. The use of this common FICMS framework will permit more seamless information sharing. 

Question. Will FICMS benefit from the 3-years and $170 million devoted to the 

VCF effort, and if so, in what ways? 

Answer. Yes, the lessons the FBI has learned in its efforts to develop VCF will 

help in developing the FICMS, particularly in the areas of contract management, 

project management, the development and implementation of policies and procedures, modular development and deployment, data security, records management, 

and training. For example, the FBI learned that it should not attempt a ‘‘flash cutover’’ (i.e., a full implementation of a system in which all functionality is brought 

online initially) when migrating from the legacy system to the new system. Instead, 

the FBI should develop and incrementally deploy capabilities in phases. Also, business process requirements captured through the JAD sessions will be used in the 

development of the FICMS requirements. The electronic interfaces developed between the legacy ACS application and VCF IOC are being evaluated for possible 

reuse. The metrics and lessons learned from the New Orleans Pilot, which are currently being compiled, will also influence the development of FICMS. 

Question. How will FICMS relate to the FBI’s enterprise architecture? What steps 

has the FBI taken to ensure that these efforts will interrelate, rather than conflict? 

Answer. The FBI is using the FEAF as the basis for the development of the FBI 

EA. OMB requires that federal agencies use the FEAF, which will ensure interoperability between systems and easy information sharing. The FBI will use the Service 

Reference Model of the FEAF as the FICMS framework for delivering services in 

a phased approach to participating federal agencies based on their determined priority. Each phase will deliver capabilities independently. 

Question. Is there a defined list of requirements for FICMS, such that soliciting 

contracts for FICMS in April will be an efficient and productive process? 

Answer. The goal of this program is to ensure compatibility between all systems 

used by the various entities in DOJ and DHS. In order to ensure that all technology 

requirements will be included in the system’s overarching framework, the FBI sent 

system requirements to DOJ and DHS for review. DOJ and DHS responded by providing additional requirements that are necessary for their operations. Based on 

this input, the FBI created a larger set of requirements encompassing the needs of 

the FBI, DOJ, and DHS. This approach ensures that all components’ investigative 

needs be addressed by the framework. 

Question. Besides DHS, what other departments and agencies will FICMS serve? 

Answer. FICMS will serve as a framework for investigative information technology systems used by the FBI, DOJ (including DOJ components), and DHS. 

Question. At the hearing, you stated that the FBI ‘‘did not have a complete set 

of defined VCF requirements when the original contract was signed in June 2001, 

and we did not have a finalized set until the summer of 2002.’’ In addition, FBI 

CIO, Zal Azmi testified that ‘‘we have completed our requirements. We have a requirements document for a case management system that our users, our agents, our 

analysts want and the FBI. We have mapped those requirements to our services 

that are guidelines by the federal enterprise architecture framework.’’ However, the 

Inspector General’s recent audit stated that ‘‘the process of defining requirements 

and baselines for the VCF still continues,’’ and recommends that the FBI ‘‘freeze the 

critical design requirements for the case management system before initiating a new 

contract.’’ Can you reconcile these statements? Are the requirements for VCF now 

frozen and final until a case management system is delivered? How can the VCF 

requirements be final when the FBI does not have a complete EA? When the requirements are finalized, will an outside expert evaluate the list of requirements, 

and if so, who and when? 

Answer. The OIG report was written in late 2004. Since that time, the FBI has 

made significant progress in documenting the requirements and Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for an enterprise-wide case management capability. In January 

2005, the FBI completed the System Requirements Specifications (SRS) and System 
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CONOPS. The SRS have been revised based on feedback provided through a review 

process, and will be finalized at the end of the review/revision process. The 

CONOPS is also undergoing that review/revision process. A System Requirements 

Review for completeness is also ongoing and, after all inputs are incorporated, the 

final set of system requirements will include approval by each of the Lines of Business owners. The systems engineering team is working with the EA team to ensure 

system requirements meet EA objectives. Additionally, requirements will be put 

under formal Configuration Management control. Requirements will be base-lined 

at contract award and, after contract award, changes or proposed changes to the 

system or requested functionality will be managed in accordance with the Configuration Management Key Support Process of the Life Cycle Management Directive. 

The requirements have additionally been presented to the Director’s Science and 

Technology Board. 

Question. You testified at the hearing that agents will have ‘‘a basic case management system’’ in their hands within a year. What specifically will a ‘‘basic case management system’’ entail and will its delivery complete the VCF project? If for some 

reason developments threaten to delay delivery beyond 2005, will you inform this 

subcommittee immediately? 

Answer. The FBI has expended significant time and effort since the hearing confirming requirements for a new case management system, as well as developing a 

procurement strategy that will take advantage of off-the-shelf products. At this time 

the FBI envisions the deployment of the new case management system in four 

phases, each of which will provide discrete aspects of the new case management system. The first phase should be completed 9 to 12 months after contract award, 

which is expected in the summer of 2005. However, we would not expect a ‘‘basic 

case management system’’ to be in place until the completion of phase 2, which will 

not be until 2006. Phases 3 and 4 will add additional capabilities to the system. 

Question. In your testimony, you stated that within 6 to 8 weeks you would have 

an assessment of: (a) the costs required to get a fully functional case management 

system in the hands of agents; (b) the extent to which those costs would require additional funding or reprogrammed funds; and (c) what other programs would lose 

funds, if reprogramming was required. Please provide these assessments to the subcommittee immediately upon completion, or apprise us if they will be delayed beyond 8 weeks. 

Answer. The estimate referred to in this question will be based on the IGCEs discussed in response to question 9(C), above. The FBI will keep the subcommittee informed. 

Question. In your testimony, you described the FBI’s development of an Investigative Data Warehouse (IDW). Was any part of the development of IDW funded out 

of the $581 million appropriated for the Trilogy project? 

Answer. Funds appropriated for Trilogy were not used for the development of the 

Investigative Data Warehouse. 

TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER

Question. In December 2003, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center began its task 

of consolidating government terrorist watchlists. In the recent White House budget 

submission to Congress, an additional $75 million is directed to the Terrorist 

Screening Center. What is the status of the watchlist consolidation project, and 

what problems have prevented its completion? 

Answer. As of March 12, 2004, the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) consolidated 

in the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) all identifying data from the 12 

watchlists specified in the April 2003 GAO report entitled ‘‘Terrorist Watch Lists 

Should Be Consolidated to Promote Better Integration and Sharing’’ (GAO–03–322). 

While this consolidated database does include the identifying data from the Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) and the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), it does not include the associated purely biometric information from ABIS and IAFIS. 

Question. When will the government have a complete, integrated terrorist 

watchlist with online access for law enforcement? 

Answer. As noted above, the TSC has a complete integrated terrorist watchlist 

that is now maintained in the TSDB. In addition, information appropriate to pertinent law enforcement groups is exported daily to various information systems, 

where it is electronically accessible to groups that need it in performance of their 

specific duties. Domestically, general law enforcement officers have access to the 

TSDB through the National Crime Information Center system; Customs and Border 

Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have access through the Interagency Border Inspection System; the Transportation Security Administration has 
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access through the No-Fly and Selectee lists; and the Department of State has access through the Consular Lookout and Support System. Among the United States’ 

foreign partners, Australian authorities have access through TACTICS, and Canadian authorities have access through TUSCAN. 

CONCLUSION OF HEARING

Senator GREGG. I am going to recess the hearing. 

[Whereupon, at 3:20 p.m., Thursday, February 3, the hearing 

was concluded, and the subcommittee was recessed, to reconvene 

subject to the call of the Chair.] 

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