Incompetence at the FBI
This Washington Post story is about the flushing of nearly $200 million dollars by the FBI on a failed computer systems upgrade.
I’ve been involved in the creation of a major government department computer system replacement before. Even with competent government administrators and completely reliable, knowledgable and pro-active contractors there is a lot of waste in these projects. Extra people get hired where they aren’t needed just so a contract can be enlarged and competition between different contractors working on the same project contributes to delayed timetables.
Even with the obstacles inherent in government contracts, for the FBI to spend $170 Million on a new major system then to declare it dead is sickening. SAIC (I have a few friends who work for them) is a major technology contractor used often by the federal government and clearly some of the blame lies with them in this case but it is hard for any contractor to produce a working product when the client doesn’t present them with a realistic set of requirements. I’ve seen this happen multiple times on smaller projects and if the contractor doesn’t work very hard to try to guess correctly what the government really needs and find a way to implement the impossible the project is nearly always a failure.
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My former employer was better than most at figuring out what our clients needed in these situations and was nearly always able to implement the impossible. If you are a government procurement officer for the FBI looking to fork out another $200 million for your next system be sure to check out PaL-Tech.
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Boy, you got that right. Big government tech projects are hotbeds of mismanagement and abuse. Can you say, “Boondoggle,” children?
If you think this FBI thing is bad, it’s nothing compared to the project on which I worked (as a peon) at the IRS a decade back. Congress funded $8 billion (yeah, with a ‘B’) for significant main system upgrades, since the IRS’s main system was 30 years old. Five years and $4 billion into it, Congress demanded an accounting. Well, a lot of little pet projects had been done, $2 billion had gone down the tube on a failed imaging system that was supposed to make the IRS paperless, and the main computer systems were then 35 years old. Needless to say, some folks were pretty upset. Some heads rolled. And this doesn’t even rank among some of the worst boondoggle projects that have burned up taxpayer bucks.
This helps stoke my sentiment that we need less government, not more.
Comment by Reach Upward — August 22, 2006 @ 7:47 am
It really bugs me when the gov acts like it has money to burn… and so everyone who works on gov projects doesn’t care about saving money either.
Dude, I could really use the few thousand a year I pay in taxes, even if it’s jump change to our administrators.
Comment by Sare — August 24, 2006 @ 6:52 pm