Why The G-Men Aren't I.T. Men
The FBI's new CIO must change the agency's cultural bias against information-sharing and technology before it can become a global intelligence operation truly capable of preventing crime and terrorism.
CIO — In the past few months, FBI CIO Zalmai Azmi has been very careful not to say, "I told you so." After the FBI was forced to scrap its $170 million virtual case file (VCF), a case management system, because of numerous delays, cost overruns and incompatible software, Azmi was finally given full authority over the agency's IT budget and encouraged to centralize much of the IT decision making at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. He and other top executives at the FBI recognize that they must radically change the agency's culture if the Bureau is ever going to get the high-tech analysis and surveillance tools it needs to effectively fight terrorism. The FBI, they say, must move from a decentralized amalgam of 56 field offices that are deeply distrustful of technology, outsiders and each other to a seamlessly integrated global intelligence operation capable of sharing information and preventing crimes in real-time.
Former IT managers at the FBI say that sharing information has never been standard operating procedure for the nation's top law enforcement agency. In fact, FBI agents intent on solving crime are accustomed to holding information close to their bulletproof vests. Many agents scorn the idea of sharing information within the Bureau—and with other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. Even when agents are promoted to management positions at headquarters, they bring with them the same secretive modus operandi to the day-to-day management philosophy in Washington, D.C.
FBI CIO ZalmaI Azmi is working hard to win buy-in from agents in the field so that the next multimillion-dollar case management system for the FBI doesn't run aground like the last one did.
"They work under the idea that everything needs to be kept secret," says Sherry Higgins, the former project manager for the FBI's $600 million IT modernization project. "But everything doesn't have to be kept secret. To do this right, you have to share information."
In addition, FBI officials have long marginalized the role that IT could play in connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated intelligence, evidence and field notes. (Consider this: Former FBI Director Louis Freeh didn't even have a computer on his desk.) The result is a history of troubled IT projects, including a system to automate 35 million fingerprint files, which ran over budget by $170 million and was delivered years behind schedule. An updated system created to give local police and sheriffs the capability to check for stolen guns, stolen cars and other crime-related data also fell years behind schedule and ran over budget by more than $103 million in the 1990s.
