Delay for FBI's Virtual Case File May Be a Blessing in Disguise

Computerworld - WASHINGTON -- The fact that the FBI's long-awaited electronic case file system will not be fully deployed by the end of this year as planned may be more of a saving grace than an embarrassment. The FBI needs to take the time to get the system right, analysts said last week.
The system, known as the Virtual Case File (VCF), was envisioned as a means of enabling agents to conduct rapid, paperless information sharing; it's a major component of the FBI's IT modernization effort, known as Trilogy. But only one module of the system, the automated workflow application, is scheduled to be deployed by the end of the year.
"Because the software program is large and complex, we are modularizing VCF capabilities and then testing them, deploying them to subset user groups, evaluating performance and then building upon them," said an FBI official whom the agency would not allow to be identified.
And that's actually a welcome development, said analysts, who have criticized the bureau in the past for not taking a phased approach to such a large IT deployment. In addition, the bureau has only recently begun to reverse years of mismanagement and design flaws that have led to major delays and problems with the deployment of the system, analysts said.
In a letter sent to the FBI on June 9, a committee of IT experts from the National Research Council (NRC) cited "clear evidence of progress" in the month since it issued a scathing report of the Trilogy program. That report, sponsored by the FBI and issued on May 10, outlined a series of past missteps in the design and deployment of the VCF system that by all accounts made enterprisewide rollout by December 2004 impractical and highly risky.
A Matter of Time
But while the progress has been "reassuring," the bureau faces many remaining IT challenges that will take time to fix, the NRC said.
For example, according to the NRC study, the VCF system was developed without the benefit of prototyping and testing. In addition, the bureau had no contingency plan in place for handling "mission disruptive failures" that could stem from the bureau's planned "flash cutover" from the old system to the VCF system.
"With limited testing, and no experience gained from a limited initial rollout, the FBI would be implementing what amounts to a prototype throughout the bureau," the NRC concluded in its study. "This approach is nearly guaranteed to cause mission-critical failures and further delays."
In light of that criticism, the decision to