GAO-06-853R Responses to Posthearing Questions 

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 

June 9, 2006 

The Honorable Arlen Specter 

Chairman 

Committee on the Judiciary 

United States Senate 

Subject: FBI Trilogy: Responses to Posthearing Questions

Dear Mr. Chairman: 

This report responds to your request for additional information related to the 

committee’s May 2, 2006, hearing entitled FBI Oversight. Enclosed are our responses 

to the supplemental questions you submitted for the record. Our responses are based 

largely on information contained in our published report, entitled Federal Bureau of 

Investigation: Weak Controls over Trilogy Project Led to Payment of Questionable 

Contractor Costs and Missing Assets, GAO-06-306. As discussed in my statement at 

the hearing, unless the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) strengthens its controls 

over contractor payments and purchased equipment, future projects, including the 

new Sentinel project, will be highly vulnerable to same types of issues that plagued 

the Trilogy project. 

If you have any further questions or would like to discuss any of the issues in more 

detail, please call me at (202) 512-8341. Contact points for our Offices of 

Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this 

report. 

Sincerely yours, 

Linda M. Calbom 

Director 

Financial Management and Assurance 

Enclosure - 1 
Enclosure

Responses to Written Questions for the Record Submitted by Chairman Arlen 

Specter, Committee on the Judiciary, on FBI Oversight Hearing, May 2, 2006

1. In your February Trilogy report, you offered the FBI a number of 

recommendations to “(1) facilitate the effective management of 

interagency contracting, (2) mitigate the risks of paying potentially 

unallowable or questionable costs in connection to cost-reimbursement 

type contracts, and (3) improve FBI’s accountability for and safeguarding 

of its computer equipment.” Has the FBI implemented your 

recommendations? 

Answer: 

We will be following up on FBI’s efforts to implement our recommendations as part 

of our normal tracking and evaluation process for open recommendations. This 

process begins with our receipt of a copy of FBI’s formal written response to the 

Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and to the House 

Committee on Government Reform on its plans to implement our recommendations, 

which is due 60 days after our report is publicly released. We received a copy of this 

formal response letter on May 30, 2006.1

 In addition, at the request of this committee, 

we will evaluate FBI’s internal controls over contractor invoices and asset 

accountability for the Sentinel project—the FBI’s new electronic information 

management system initiative—to help ensure that the internal control failures we 

identified with Trilogy are not repeated. After we have completed this follow-up 

work, we will report to you on our assessment of FBI’s actions to implement our 

recommendations. 

2. In testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, 

State, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies on March 28, 2006, 

Director Mueller told the panel that GAO will be auditing the Sentinel 

 1

 FBI’s letter was dated May 12, 2006. 

Page 2 GAO-06-853R Responses to Post Hearing Questions 
program. What measures will you be taking to ensure that the same 

mistakes from the Trilogy debacle are not repeated? 

Answer: 

In reference to Director Mueller’s comment, GAO is currently reviewing the Sentinel 

program at the request of the Chairman and Ranking Minority Member of the House 

Committee on the Judiciary. In this review, GAO is examining the program’s (1) use 

of effective methods for acquiring commercial solutions, (2) efforts to align itself with 

the bureau’s enterprise architecture, (3) basis for reliably estimating costs and 

schedules, (4) plans for applying earned value management, (5) provisions for 

adequate human capital to manage the acquisition, and (6) relationship to the 

governmentwide case management line of business. This work is being coordinated 

with the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General and collectively should 

help determine whether the Sentinel project is being effectively managed. This work 

and the follow-up work described in our answer to question one will provide 

information on key aspects of FBI’s efforts to ensure that the Trilogy mistakes are not 

repeated with Sentinel. 

3. In the Trilogy report, you reported a number of issues that perplexed this 

Committee. For example, 1205 pieces of equipment, worth an estimated 

$7.6 million, went missing—some of which were classified or secured 

computers. The project was overbudget and overdeadline, and around $10 

million was wasted. Which of the issues that led to the delinquency of the 

Trilogy project did you find to be the most alarming? Is that issue still of 

concern to you? How has the FBI addressed it? 

Answer: 

We reported on two fundamental issues that we consider to be key contributors to 

the problems we identified with the Trilogy project. First, the review and approval 

process for Trilogy contractor invoices did not provide an adequate basis for 

verifying that goods and services billed were actually received by FBI or that the 

amounts billed were appropriate. Second, FBI did not have an adequate process to 

ensure physical and financial accountability of assets purchased with Trilogy project 

Page 3 GAO-06-853R Responses to Post Hearing Questions
funds. In addition, we were unable to determine if any of the missing assets contained 

confidential or sensitive information and data. Therefore, we recommended that FBI 

further investigate those missing assets to determine whether any confidential or 

sensitive information and data may be exposed to unauthorized users. 

We understand that FBI is taking actions to implement our recommendations to 

resolve the fundamental issues we identified. We will evaluate FBI’s corrective 

actions as part of our normal recommendation follow-up process and during our 

review of the Sentinel project. Until corrective actions are fully implemented, both of 

these internal control issues will be a concern with Sentinel and other information 

technology projects at FBI. 

 

4. In your testimony, you discuss that FBI could not locate 1,404 [pieces of 

equipment]; you adjusted the number to 1,205 when you were able to 

verify that the FBI had found 199 pieces of equipment. However, in its 

response to your report, FBI stated that it had accounted for around 800 

of the remaining items [of equipment]. Are you satisfied with the FBI’s 

efforts to track these assets? Has the FBI given any explanation for the 

remaining roughly 400 assets that are completely unaccounted for? 

Answer: 

In February 2006, FBI informed us that the approximately 800 remaining items,

referred to above, that it believes it has now accounted for included (1) accountable 

assets2

 not in FBI’s property system because they were either incorrectly identified as 

nonaccountable assets or mistakenly omitted, (2) defective equipment that was never 

recorded in the property system and was subsequently replaced, and (3) 

nonaccountable assets or components of accountable assets that were incorrectly 

bar coded. However, because FBI was not able to provide us with any evidence, such 

as location information, to support that it had actually accounted for these 800 assets, 

we could not definitively determine whether FBI had located these items. We 

 2

According to FBI policy, assets valued at $1,000 or more, as well as certain sensitive items, such as

firearms, laptop computers, and central processing units, are considered “accountable” assets, 

regardless of cost, and must be accounted for individually in FBI’s property system. 

Page 4 GAO-06-853R Responses to Post Hearing Questions 
considered these same issues during our audit in an effort to determine if assets were 

missing or merely miscoded. 

The FBI also has not provided any additional explanation for the remaining roughly 

400 missing assets. The numerous control weaknesses identified in our report are 

major factors contributing to FBI’s continuing inability to find and definitively 

confirm the existence of these assets. Further, the fact that assets have not been 

properly accounted for to date means that they have been at risk of loss or 

misappropriation without detection since being delivered to FBI—in some cases, for 

several years. We will continue to monitor FBI’s progress on locating these assets as 

part of our review of FBI’s implementation of corrective actions to address our 

recommendations. 

(190150) 

Page 5 GAO-06-853R Responses to Post Hearing Questions
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