FBI awards contract to update aging computers

The FBI last week issued a task order worth at least $51 million to upgrade thousands of the bureau's outdated computers and servers. The order to upgrade 27,000 personal computers and 350 servers at 650 locations over three years was awarded to Reston, Va. contractor DynCorp Information & Enterprise Technology Systems. In the project, known as Trilogy, DynCorp will also build local- and wide-area networks for the bureau. The first two years of the three-year effort to revamp the FBI's outdated information systems will cost $242 million. The FBI's aging information technology systems contributed to the misplacement of more than 3,000 documents pertaining to the bombing investigation of Timothy McVeigh. Misplacement of the McVeigh documents has added urgency to the Trilogy project.

The FBI failed to give the documents to McVeigh's lawyers during the discovery phase of McVeigh's trial. McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., that killed 168 people. He was scheduled to die by lethal injection May 16, 2001. However, the records blunder forced Attorney General John Ashcroft to delay the execution. In a May 16 hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., said "there's been plenty of money available for technology upgrades, but we've had cost overruns, we've had projects that went beyond the time they were supposed to take place.... So the money is there now for the new system, and we hope that it will be spent forthwith in the proper way." FBI Director Louis Freeh has taken responsibility for the records snafu. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary, Freeh said the issue of records management at the bureau was "just a management and execution problem." Freeh has called for a new senior records management expert at the agency and a modification of the Trilogy project that would give it "the ability to account and order documents in electronic format." The FBI's computer systems were singled out as problematic by the House Judiciary Committee even before the records mishap. The committee sent a letter to Freeh on April 25 saying it was "concerned that the FBI has information technology systems that are slow, unreliable [and] obsolete--systems that are unable to address the bureau's critical needs." The committee asked the FBI to present it with an evaluation of the problems with agency IT systems and an assessment of the agency's IT needs.