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FBI taps Lockheed Martin for $425M case-file system

16.03.2006
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has hired defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. to build a new case management and information-sharing system that will cost US$425 million, take six years to complete and move the bureau from a still largely paper-based system to an electronic one.

The latest effort at modernization replaces an earlier $170 million effort that was begun before the terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001 but abandoned last year after FBI officials decided it was unworkable. That project had been dubbed Virtual Case File.

The new initiative, called Sentinel, is a complete makeover and expansion of the earlier effort. Gone is the proprietary code on which that system was based. Instead, Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin will turn to commercially available software and a service-oriented architecture (SOA), FBI CIO Zalmai Azmi said at a news conference Thursday.

Sentinel includes the FBI's broader goal of seamless information sharing with other law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, "our mission has changed," said Azmi, who meets regularly with his IT counterparts, including the CIO of the CIA.

The end goal is to provide "one-stop shopping" to FBI agents, who must now log into different databases to search for information, said Azmi.

The reason for using SOA, said Azmi, "is to make sure we are interoperable with the systems that will come in the future and the systems that are currently in place."