Friday, February 04, 2005

Trilogy and SAIC--Big Computer Projects

In a typical piece of grandstanding back in early February, the Senate subcommittee had witnesses on the Trilogy project to grab attention, but ran out of time for the testimony from SAIC.

SAIC: Arnold Punaro's Record Testimony, Prepared for the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations: "The September 11, 2001, attacks had as profound an affect on this project as it did elsewhere in the nation. Following 9/11, the Bureau faced enormous and sometimes conflicting pressures. Prior to the attack, the Bureau was dealing with revelations that a spy, Robert Hansen, had plundered FBI secrets. Security and integrity of information is a fundamental issue for the FBI. After the attack, it faced three often conflicting demands:

* The need to share information in the post-9/11 world so authorized personnel could both see and connect the dots to analyze and exploit intelligence.
* The need, in the post-Hansen world, to prevent all but a few specifically authorized people from seeing truly sensitive information.
* The need to ensure admissibility of investigative information in court in keeping with the complex body of legal, policy, and Attorney General Guidelines under which the Bureau operates.

Thus, the FBI faces a task of great difficulty and complexity in building an information technology system that simultaneously meets all three imperatives"

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