So, you've heard about the
FBI's $170 million snafu? Now, the FBI has contracted with Lockheed Martin, who will reveal their
$400 million plans in October, 2006 to integrate the FBI's data systems in a project called Sentinel. If you think about the difference between the FBI's information systems, and the ideology behind a tiny little site called MySpace, you'll see the problem. I know, weird thought, but wait for it. The FBI's information systems are decentralized and non-integrated. Special agents cannot get the information they need because it is compartmentalized in different systems and data storage structures scattered all over the landscape, instead of everything being accessible, in the same place, and in the same format. Now, MySpace is no secure, robust, or bulletproof system to help stop criminals (that's actually funny), but the social-centric website is
at least good at connecting different people, places, events, and information in a standard way, and despite page loading problems actually works fairly well. Not that special agents need a customizable homepage to wow their buddies over a beer after a big drug bust, but the new Sentinel system proposed by
Lockheed Martin will aim to give agents a central location to access information needed.
Tags: commercial, FBI, MySpace, news, Sentinel, snafu, VirtualCase
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Subscribe to commentsJilSep 4th 2006 9:38AM
Businesses can learn several lessons from the change-management challenges the FBI has faced as technology has evolved. The FBI has had a tendency in the past to develop its technology strategy at headquarters and then push that technology out to its field offices, without much input from field managers or the agents and analysts who will use the technology.