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Recent Comments
- Re: The billion dollar question
By: Valdis
Date: Apr 16, 2006 2:09 PM - Re: The billion dollar question
By: David Lazer
Date: Mar 29, 2006 12:10 AM - Re: The billion dollar question
By: Valdis
Date: Mar 26, 2006 10:51 AM
Notification
« Social Networks and the Business World | Main | Open source intelligence? »
23 March 2006
The billion dollar question
Last week, an article in the New York Times reported on the newest developments in a decade-long struggle to modernize the F.B.I. computer system (“Cost Concerns for F.B.I. Computer Overhaul", March 14, 2006). Citing a Justice Department report, it says that the overhaul will likely cost “another half-billion dollars to complete". The same amount has already been spent: After the report by the 9/11 commission revealed that the antiquated computer system might have played a part in the intelligence gaps before 9/11, the F.B.I. reacted by devoting $535 million to its Trilogy Program, a network “designed to provide all FBI offices with better organization, access and analysis of information" (F.B.I. press release). So far, the results have been less than satisfactory: Its core component, a case management system (known as Virtual Case File system), collapsed under technical difficulties and was abandoned by the F.B.I. after it had spent $170 million on it. And a few days ago, an audit by the GAO revealed that the F.B.I. and its contractors spent more than $17 million on “questionable payments" (Washington Post, March 18, 2006). Now, the F.B.I. plans to spend $425 million on a new case management system, partly with the same contractors, named Sentinel.
What puzzled me was a statement by the inspector general’s office of the Justice Department quoted in the Times saying that they were unsure whether the new system, “even if successful, would allow the bureau to share information adequately with other intelligence and law enforcement agencies". The lack of information sharing was one of the main issues pointed out by the 9/11 commission, and yet, after investing a billion dollars, information sharing is not built into the system. It seems to me that the project would benefit enormously from the insights organizational researchers have into information networks. For example, my research shows that large IT projects that start off with an exploration of informational needs are more successful in the “exploitation", or implementation phase. Rather than focusing solely on network technology, the F.B.I. should devote some resources to finding out who needs to talk to whom. Have researchers conduct interviews, run focus groups, maybe even do an ethnography to identify the information network, then build the computer network to support it.
Posted by Maria Binz-Scharf at March 23, 2006 8:28 PM
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Comments
Excellent suggestions Maria. But they will never follow them.
IMHO, the achilles heal of the intelligence community is "need to know". Until they realize that rule is not just for "exclusion", but for "inclusion" also, they will be stuck in their self-made trap.
I also wrote a quick analysis on this topic back when they were discussing the intelligence czar...
Posted by: Valdis at March 26, 2006 10:51 AM
Well, there are two issues. I agree with Valdis that there is an enormous cultural barrier to information sharing in this community, in part built from legitimate needs to restrict the flow of information. But the challenges that Maria talks about run in parallel to these issues, which is how to build computer systems that talk to each other, in turn allowing people to access information. These are issues that are pervasive in government, well beyond the intelligence community. (I can also point to some successes in government, including in law enforcement, which has similar, in some ways worse, institutional barriers to information sharing.) The technological systems do not guarantee interpersonal knowledge sharing (although they can guarantee data sharing), and the cultural barriers may make it harder to build such systems. However, these are not insurmountable issues, and I think the staged processes of an inclusive, bottom up, exploratory beginning, followed by a more centralized, top down, implementation conclusion, that Maria has written about, offers a pathway to potential success.
Posted by: David Lazer at March 29, 2006 12:10 AM
David, we agree. Maria suggestions are spot on. I have seen it work in business.
Before I became a social network consultant I was an I/T project manager, responsible for the implementation of HR info systems in several Fortune 100 companies. I know exactly what Maria is talking about. In fact, we used to practice some of her suggestions when time/budget would allow.
I had originally developed InFlow to aid project managers, like myself, to reveal the social side of I/T projects -- we already had great tools for the data side. Why did I do this? I was a member of several project teams where I had seen the resulting I/T system implementations fail, and not for technical reasons. They had failed for "social" reasons. Even though the systems were completed on time/on budget/on spec they failed because no one had looked at the social side of changing the information flows and work transactions of the departments/processes we installed the systems for. People used the new systems incorrectly, or they tried using them like the old systems, or they routed around the new systems, all to maintain the social structure of the work that was there before the new I/T system. Especially strong resistance came from the "emergent experts" in the old system -- their place on pedestal of local inluence was removed with the new technology. Ironically, these were just the people that the I/T folks should have included in the new project team for their accumulated practical knowledge and their local influence.
Posted by: Valdis at April 16, 2006 2:09 PM