FBI officials attribute a further delay in rollout of a $451 million troubled digital case management effort known as Sentinel primarily to insufficient hardware capacity.

In a Justice Department inspector general report posted online Dec. 23, auditors say a 2010 schedule revision--there have been several schedule changes over the life of the project--called for bureauwide Sentinel deployment in November. But, following an October test that revealed poor system performance, the FBI is now aiming for May 2012.

The test, which included 743 participants from all 56 FBI field offices, overseas offices and several headquarters divisions, suffered two outages during its 4-hour timeframe. FBI Chief Information Officer Chad Fulgham told auditors the problems have been traced to insufficient hardware capacity and that the bureau is in negotiations with Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) to buy more.

The delay is just the latest in a years' long saga of attempts to replace the FBI's current case management system, the highly-criticized Automated Case Support system. Until October 2010, Lockheed Martin was the Sentinel prime contractor, having been hired in 2006 for $305 million for system development. Following a 2010 estimate from Mitre Corp. that Sentinel would likely require an additional 6 years and $351 million to complete, the FBI assumed itself prime responsibility for system development and instituted a project management methodology known as Agile--specifically, Scrum.

Although observers have questioned the FBI's ability to successfully adopt Agile, that approach has "reduced the risk that Sentinel will either exceed its budget or fail to deliver the expected functionality," auditors say.

Auditors nonetheless sound warnings that although the FBI doesn't envision busting its $451 million budget (already an increase of the original estimate of $425 million), they are "concerned about the FBI's ability to remain" within projected costs. In fact, the FBI may arguably already be over budget since the $451 million estimate included 2 years' worth of operations and maintenance costs after full implementation, but the bureau now intends to consume the full amount on development alone.

And despite the risk-reduction properties of agile, auditors note that the FBI still has outstanding software requirements it has yet to program. The bureau intends to officially close project development on Feb 10.

Inspector general officials also say the bureau has limited access of independent verification and validation contractors to Sentinel information. An IV&V contractor told auditors the FBI broadened access in April 2011, but that nonetheless some restrictions have remained in place.

For more:
- download the December 2011 DOJ OIG audit of Sentinel (.pdf)

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