The Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation of the US government, the FBI was forced to scrap its $170 million virtual case file (VCF) management system. Official reports blamed numerous delays, cost overruns, and incompatible software. But a deeper examination of the cause of this failure uncovered issues of control, culture and incompatible systems.

Among its many duties, the FBI is charged with the responsibility to fight crime and terrorism. To do so it requires a large number of agents located within the United States and around the world. That means agents must be able to share information among themselves within the bureau and with other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. But sharing information has never been standard operating procedure for this agency. According to new source, "agents are accustomed to holding information close to their bulletproof vests and scorn the idea of sharing information."

Enter the FBI's efforts to modernize its infrastructure, code-named "Trilogy." The efforts included providing agents with 30,000 desktop PC's, high bandwidth networks to connect FBI locations around the world, and the VCF project to facilitate sharing of case information worldwide. The FBI director explained to congress that VCF would provide "an electronic means for agents to globally send field notes, documents, pieces of intelligence and other evidence so they could hopefully act faster on leads." It was designed to replace a paper-intensive process with an electronic, Web-based process. With such a reasonable goal, why didn't it work?

The CIO of the FBI offered one explanation. He claimed that "the FBI 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. We must move from a decentralised amalgam of 56 field officers that are deeply distrustful of technology,