| Author |
Message |
Robert Myers
Guest
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 Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:50 pm Post subject:
[OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Greetings,
News articles say FBI is probably going to scrap its $170 Million
Virtual Case File system and start over from scratch.
The problem is characterized as a software issue. Not being an
enterprise architect, I would have thought the problem was an enterprise
architecture issue: hardware, software, and mostly organizational wetware.
I'm posting here because of the number of posters and lurkers with
significant architectural experience in mainframe and enterprise systems.
One article says the FBI wants to do prognostic data mining. Who
doesn't? For $170 Million, the FBI is going to invent a new field (for
which there surely must be players on Wall Street who would pay ten
times as much or more for the same capability), replace hardware, create
a nationwide secure network that can handle the most sensitive national
security information _and_ be accessible to garden-variety FBI agents,
_and_ that said agents will be willing to use. Even if they didn't have
to upgrade a system currently in use (which is what Sen. Patrick Leahy
has said is the problem), it sounds like somebody slipped a decimal
point (at least) in time and money.
This is the future of computing as visualized from when spinning tape
drives were the very symbol of the awesome capacity of computers to
acquire and to sort through information: a computer that gobbles up
everything, sifts through it all, and tells the hapless human what to do
next. Still science fiction.
Projects that come to mind that have to work and that historically have
worked are all mainframe-type systems, some of which I think are still
using System 360-vintage software. You don't invent the future all at
once, you do it piece by piece, and you probably hire a mainframe house
to do it for you over a period of decades. SAIC couldn't do it for $170
Million in a few years? Gimme a break.
If space-type programs didn't have such a lousy track record (the
Manhattan and Apollo projects worked, the Space Shuttle, the War on
Cancer, and Japan's Fifth Generation AI Project didn't), I'd say that a
space-type program was what would really be required, with that kind of
visibility and commitment. Won't happen, whether it would be a good
idea or not, because time and the tides have moved past computing for
that sort of attention.
Maybe they should hire Dell and an offshore software house--the
combination that has set the expectation for the price tag and for what
constitutes a working computer architecture.
RM |
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Del Cecchi
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:58 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Robert Myers wrote:
| Quote: | Greetings,
News articles say FBI is probably going to scrap its $170 Million
Virtual Case File system and start over from scratch.
The problem is characterized as a software issue. Not being an
enterprise architect, I would have thought the problem was an enterprise
architecture issue: hardware, software, and mostly organizational wetware.
I'm posting here because of the number of posters and lurkers with
significant architectural experience in mainframe and enterprise systems.
One article says the FBI wants to do prognostic data mining. Who
doesn't? For $170 Million, the FBI is going to invent a new field (for
which there surely must be players on Wall Street who would pay ten
times as much or more for the same capability), replace hardware, create
a nationwide secure network that can handle the most sensitive national
security information _and_ be accessible to garden-variety FBI agents,
_and_ that said agents will be willing to use. Even if they didn't have
to upgrade a system currently in use (which is what Sen. Patrick Leahy
has said is the problem), it sounds like somebody slipped a decimal
point (at least) in time and money.
This is the future of computing as visualized from when spinning tape
drives were the very symbol of the awesome capacity of computers to
acquire and to sort through information: a computer that gobbles up
everything, sifts through it all, and tells the hapless human what to do
next. Still science fiction.
Projects that come to mind that have to work and that historically have
worked are all mainframe-type systems, some of which I think are still
using System 360-vintage software. You don't invent the future all at
once, you do it piece by piece, and you probably hire a mainframe house
to do it for you over a period of decades. SAIC couldn't do it for $170
Million in a few years? Gimme a break.
If space-type programs didn't have such a lousy track record (the
Manhattan and Apollo projects worked, the Space Shuttle, the War on
Cancer, and Japan's Fifth Generation AI Project didn't), I'd say that a
space-type program was what would really be required, with that kind of
visibility and commitment. Won't happen, whether it would be a good
idea or not, because time and the tides have moved past computing for
that sort of attention.
Maybe they should hire Dell and an offshore software house--the
combination that has set the expectation for the price tag and for what
constitutes a working computer architecture.
RM
How about a nice Blue Gene based system like the Mayo Clinic is building |
for genomic medicine and mining patient records? :-)
Maybe they shouldn't have hired the low bidder. And the government gets
what they ask for in the contract. Maybe they asked for the wrong
thing, or maybe they asked for the undoable.
Really wants one want to have them take over health care, eh?
del cecchi |
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Edward Wolfgram
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:51 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Robert Myers wrote:
| Quote: | Greetings,
News articles say FBI is probably going to scrap its $170 Million
Virtual Case File system and start over from scratch.
The problem is characterized as a software issue. Not being an
enterprise architect, I would have thought the problem was an enterprise
architecture issue: hardware, software, and mostly organizational wetware.
I'm posting here because of the number of posters and lurkers with
significant architectural experience in mainframe and enterprise systems.
.. |
..
| Quote: | Maybe they should hire Dell and an offshore software house--the
combination that has set the expectation for the price tag and for what
constitutes a working computer architecture.
RM
|
Heh. I (half) jokingly said to my wife this morning that I did a design
for the entire FBI computer system. It didn't cost $170 million. She
said I should send in a proposal.
Another sad story of governmental incompetence. Not that government has
a monopoly on that.
Occasionally, good systems *are* written. :)
Edward Wolfgram |
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Robert Myers
Guest
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| Posted:
Fri Jan 14, 2005 11:16 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Del Cecchi wrote:
| Quote: |
How about a nice Blue Gene based system like the Mayo Clinic is building
for genomic medicine and mining patient records? :-)
|
Blue Gene gets more amazing all the time. It now does virtualization? ;-).
A z-series mainframe, I would have thought, with virtualization on
virtualization to monitor and to trap suspicious behavior aimed at such
a high-value target, but what do I know?
If vmware can virtualize garden-variety x86, I'm sure that IBM can
virtualize the Power-based Blue Gene. What's one more ambitious goal,
more or less?
RM |
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Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 2:28 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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there have been quite a few federal dataprocessing modernization
projects ... starting at least in the late 80s ... with quite a few
running into extreme difficulties. in a number of situations it
appeared as if new system integrators were brought in, who appeared to
have the attitude that new technology would automagically solve all
problems; in many situations it would appear that they failed to
appreciate how devilishly innovative and complex the original mainframe
solutions from the 60s actually were (and possibly that just new
technology all by itself doesn't actually, automagically solve all
problems).
even in cases where some of the original system integrators were being
used ... it is likely they weren't actually the exact "same" (people)
as the '60s. |
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Bernd Paysan
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 3:38 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Del Cecchi wrote:
| Quote: | Maybe they shouldn't have hired the low bidder. And the government gets
what they ask for in the contract. Maybe they asked for the wrong
thing, or maybe they asked for the undoable.
|
IMHO, if you are asking for new technology, you should not make a bit, but a
contest. New ideas mean that many people go and head off into the wrong
direction. There's nothing wrong with that, you can stop them pretty soon
(maybe even before they get into the Death Valley of the project).
"Contest" means that you allow all participants to deliver a prototype -
but the price you'll pay is fixed, and unevenly distributed among the
participants (the higher the rank, the more).
I think all the basic components for such a system are already available.
All they need for a start is a hypertext (wiki) system where officers can
enter data, add links and google around (not all free-form, but a
significant part of the case file is like that). A thesaurus should help
officers to enter precise worded entries, but I think that is common
practice for real files, too (the thesaurus should be built into the search
matrix too, e.g. if you search for "body", you should find "corpse", too -
Google doesn't). Biometric data can be automatically put into categories,
too, e.g. run fingerprint and face recognition software to identify
potentially overlapping cases.
Perhaps the FBI aimed much too high - that is the most common problem with
government contracts. They rarely take the approach "start low, with what's
available, and improve gradually", they always want the big thing, and are
willing to wait ten years and hundred millions, and then scrap the whole
thing.
The harder thing is to prevent abuse of such a system. The easy part is to
expire and clear files, though probably nothing will ever get deleted (at
least searching should require a sort of "way back machine", i.e. not in
the normal context). However, criminal officers can use such a virtual file
and the search functions to hide. Therefore, each file should also keep
track of who viewed it - if an officer not in charge views a particular
file quite often, there's a suspect. Version control is also obvious. That
all this should happen within a VPN, too.
The web is a huge public general purpose information system, making a
specialized in-house variant should really not take that much. The search
engine companies sell their technology, they'll probably be happy with
ideas how to make things better (a real-world Google could benefit from a
thesaurus, too).
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ |
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Robert Myers
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:13 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 23:38:56 +0100, Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de>
wrote:
| Quote: | Del Cecchi wrote:
Maybe they shouldn't have hired the low bidder. And the government gets
what they ask for in the contract. Maybe they asked for the wrong
thing, or maybe they asked for the undoable.
IMHO, if you are asking for new technology, you should not make a bit, but a
contest. New ideas mean that many people go and head off into the wrong
direction. There's nothing wrong with that, you can stop them pretty soon
(maybe even before they get into the Death Valley of the project).
"Contest" means that you allow all participants to deliver a prototype -
but the price you'll pay is fixed, and unevenly distributed among the
participants (the higher the rank, the more).
|
Hasn't gotten DARPA an autonomous land vehicle, so far.
| Quote: | I think all the basic components for such a system are already available.
All they need for a start is a hypertext (wiki) system where officers can
enter data, add links and google around (not all free-form, but a
significant part of the case file is like that). A thesaurus should help
officers to enter precise worded entries, but I think that is common
practice for real files, too (the thesaurus should be built into the search
matrix too, e.g. if you search for "body", you should find "corpse", too -
Google doesn't). Biometric data can be automatically put into categories,
too, e.g. run fingerprint and face recognition software to identify
potentially overlapping cases.
Perhaps the FBI aimed much too high - that is the most common problem with
government contracts. They rarely take the approach "start low, with what's
available, and improve gradually", they always want the big thing, and are
willing to wait ten years and hundred millions, and then scrap the whole
thing.
The harder thing is to prevent abuse of such a system. The easy part is to
expire and clear files, though probably nothing will ever get deleted (at
least searching should require a sort of "way back machine", i.e. not in
the normal context). However, criminal officers can use such a virtual file
and the search functions to hide. Therefore, each file should also keep
track of who viewed it - if an officer not in charge views a particular
file quite often, there's a suspect. Version control is also obvious. That
all this should happen within a VPN, too.
The web is a huge public general purpose information system, making a
specialized in-house variant should really not take that much. The search
engine companies sell their technology, they'll probably be happy with
ideas how to make things better (a real-world Google could benefit from a
thesaurus, too).
|
You're concerned about civil liberties, which is understandable.
That's a much bigger problem than the FBI's proposed
system--computerized collections of personal data or allegations about
indivduals (which the internet already is) and the ability to search
them (which google already is) are inimical to privacy.
The problem for the customer of record here is not civil liberties,
but security. The very same mechanisms that have made the internet so
stunningly powerful (flat resource space, amazing indexes, universal
access) are unacceptable for secure systems.
The security regimes with which I have been acquainted lean heavily on
strict compartmentalization by need to know. That means that access
paths all have to be laid out rigidly and with significant
foreknowledge about what metadata need to be visible--and it means the
metadata have to be tediously created by hand. I don't know how the
FBI has proposed to deal with compartmentalization, but you can't just
dump everything out there in a flat resource space, index it, and let
people do their own searches.
If you didn't have to worry about security, your proposal would be
magic. Digitize everything (although agents have apparently been
resistant to the step of putting things into a scanner), put it where
it can be indexed, index it, and let agents learn to think the way
that people who use and contribute to open source do.
The FBI didn't think this part through clearly, either, and figured
that, if you can correlate the entire planet with a quarter million
PC's (as in google), you should probably be able to cope with just the
FBI's case files for $170 Million and no special magic?
RM |
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mike
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:35 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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You could say "almost all running into extreme difficulties" rather than
"quite a few ...".
There is a long list of reasons:
New software technologies and much faster hardware does little to replace a
deep understanding (usually lacking even in the agency staff) of the problem
to be solved.
The bureaucracy often fights against any new system as a threat to jobs and
personal power unless it enshrines current procedures and organizational
prerogatives in the system workflows and structure.
There is often a firm determination that every system must be proprietary or
at least highly modified, rather than commercial off the shelf (COTS) or
based on COTS components such as work flow management packages.
Under paid, under skilled, under experienced federal contracting officers
and project managers are way over matched by the hired guns brought in to
develop new systems or fix out of control projects thus providing little
management or guidance and resulting in tremendous jealousy.
Policy makers come and go and do not keep pushing for a consistent vision
long enough to implement anything.
Senior staff often view technology as a magic bullet that is outside their
understanding so they order systems based on vendor promises and then think
they and their staff can return to business as usual until it is delivered.
Therefore, what detailed problem area knowledge that does exist is not
mobilized to build the system or even define requirements.
Congress usually appropriates funds to legislated programs not agencies. As
a result agencies like Immigration & Naturalization end up with 11 separate
databases, one for foreign students, one for vacation visa's, one for terror
suspects... with no money or authority to integrate systems.
- - - and many others
Mike Sicilian
<lynn@garlic.com> wrote in message
news:1105738136.181988.297280@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | there have been quite a few federal dataprocessing modernization
projects ... starting at least in the late 80s ... with quite a few
running into extreme difficulties. in a number of situations it
appeared as if new system integrators were brought in, who appeared to
have the attitude that new technology would automagically solve all
problems; in many situations it would appear that they failed to
appreciate how devilishly innovative and complex the original mainframe
solutions from the 60s actually were (and possibly that just new
technology all by itself doesn't actually, automagically solve all
problems).
even in cases where some of the original system integrators were being
used ... it is likely they weren't actually the exact "same" (people)
as the '60s.
|
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del cecchi
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:30 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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<jgrove24@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1105753363.277144.148110@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
snip
| Quote: |
The features the FBI looked for are easy using UNIX, and a tool like
Documentum. They were looking to manage CASE FILES, you know like
paper
documents. And the ability to search or GREP in UNIX. A Grand Jury
examination of this folly is in order.
JG
If you believe that then you are an idiot, and a psychiatric examination |
is in order. |
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Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 6:42 am Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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|
Robert Myers wrote:
| Quote: | Greetings,
News articles say FBI is probably going to scrap its $170 Million
Virtual Case File system and start over from scratch.
The problem is characterized as a software issue. Not being an
enterprise architect, I would have thought the problem was an
enterprise
architecture issue: hardware, software, and mostly organizational
wetware.
I'm posting here because of the number of posters and lurkers with
significant architectural experience in mainframe and enterprise
systems.
|
The features the FBI looked for are easy using UNIX, and a tool like
Documentum. They were looking to manage CASE FILES, you know like paper
documents. And the ability to search or GREP in UNIX. A Grand Jury
examination of this folly is in order.
JG |
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Nick Maclaren
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 4:22 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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|
In article <34rbkmF4cstohU1@individual.net>,
del cecchi <dcecchi.nojunk@att.net> wrote:
| Quote: | jgrove24@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1105753363.277144.148110@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
snip
The features the FBI looked for are easy using UNIX, and a tool like
Documentum. They were looking to manage CASE FILES, you know like
paper
documents. And the ability to search or GREP in UNIX. A Grand Jury
examination of this folly is in order.
If you believe that then you are an idiot, and a psychiatric examination
is in order.
|
Well, that may be so, but I doubt that the combined resources of the
USA federal government agencies are enough to examine every idiot in
the USA.
His generic point is sound, though. There are a vast number of such
projects where a less fancy approach would have delivered 90% of the
claimed advantages of the fancy one, at 10% of the cost, on time and
on budget. Oh, and actually delivered it, rather than being cancelled.
No, I am NOT saying that his proposed solution makes sense.
It is also fairly common for a delivered 'solution' to be not even
as effective as grep, despite being potentially far more powerful,
because it is so complex it is (a) as buggy as hell, (b) as slow as
treacle and (c) beyond the ability of its (largely non-technical)
users to drive effectively. Most large computer company problem
diagnosis databases seem to fall into this category :-(
Regards,
Nick Maclaren. |
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Robert Myers
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:07 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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|
On 15 Jan 2005 11:22:09 GMT, nmm1@cus.cam.ac.uk (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
| Quote: | In article <34rbkmF4cstohU1@individual.net>,
del cecchi <dcecchi.nojunk@att.net> wrote:
jgrove24@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1105753363.277144.148110@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
snip
The features the FBI looked for are easy using UNIX, and a tool like
Documentum. They were looking to manage CASE FILES, you know like
paper
documents. And the ability to search or GREP in UNIX. A Grand Jury
examination of this folly is in order.
If you believe that then you are an idiot, and a psychiatric examination
is in order.
Well, that may be so, but I doubt that the combined resources of the
USA federal government agencies are enough to examine every idiot in
the USA.
His generic point is sound, though. There are a vast number of such
projects where a less fancy approach would have delivered 90% of the
claimed advantages of the fancy one, at 10% of the cost, on time and
on budget. Oh, and actually delivered it, rather than being cancelled.
No, I am NOT saying that his proposed solution makes sense.
It is also fairly common for a delivered 'solution' to be not even
as effective as grep, despite being potentially far more powerful,
because it is so complex it is (a) as buggy as hell, (b) as slow as
treacle and (c) beyond the ability of its (largely non-technical)
users to drive effectively. Most large computer company problem
diagnosis databases seem to fall into this category :-(
|
The US has no corner on idiots:
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3603/5648
"UK Government hit by a wave of IT problems"
The article is reproduced in its entirety below; google said it was
one place--it was a broken link; the site's own advanced search
feature couldn't find the article by searching on terms from google's
cached copy; I finally found the article by searching by hand from the
site map.
Too bad I couldn't just grep the site? I can't grep my own document
stores in reasonable time. People use indices for a reason, and
indices have to be kept up to date. Maybe I'm odd, but I lean heavily
on regular expressions to use grep effectively, and it took me a
little while to learn to use them effectively. I can just picture the
announcements for the classes: "Starting next week. Regular
expressions for bureaucrats. Bring high school transcript. If you
didn't get at least a B in algebra, look for another job."
That leaves aside serious questions about security and accountability.
The judge leaned forward with a dark look. "And you have *how* many
different versions of this document? And *how* many different people
could have edited them? And you have no clear trail?"
When I read the latest about the FBI Virtual Case File system, I
envisioned NSA versions of LaGrande technology as the only plausible
way to have security and accountability in such a system. I'm sure
there are plenty of problems and solutions that haven't occurred to
me, but I don't think a switched network of PC's run by a bunch of
Linux geeks is going to do the job.
As to your 90% and 10% and all that, I don't know what goes on with
your installation... maybe you have some subaltern to deal with it
all... but there is *nothing* I can do administratively to my systems
where a disproportionate amount of the effort isn't taken up with
security issues that have nothing whatever to do with the main task at
hand. Sure, the part you can think of easily, the equivalent of
googling the internet in a chaotic, unmanaged, flat resource space is
easy and sounds like magic.
It's the rest: making it so that someone who will never understand
regular expressions and probably isn't all that effective with google
can use it, and so that it is reliable, auditable, available, and
secure (you know, RAAS).
The FBI Case File system has been discussed here before. There is a
surreal disconnect between how well technical people understand parts
of the problem, the total absence of knowledgeable and forceful
leadership about the problem in its entirety (where is IBM's muscle
when we need it?), and the endless denial that goes on about how badly
huge sums of money are spent on systems that don't work using
technology that was figured out four decades ago.
RM
UK Government hit by a wave of IT problems
eGovernment News – 30 November 2004 – United Kingdom
Several UK Government departments have recently been hit by serious IT
problems, leading in some cases to service disruption. These ‘IT
disasters’, which have tarnished the image of e-government and raised
doubts about the capacity of Government to deliver large IT projects,
prompted members of parliament to call for increased transparency in
the management of e-government projects.
The UK benefits system was hit by a large IT problem in recent days,
described by some parties as the biggest computer crash in government
history. Pension and benefit payments faced disruption as up top
80,000 civil servants were unable to access the Department for Work
and Pensions computer system and had to revert to writing down cheques
by hand.
According to press reports, the problem lasted a week and created a
massive backlog of unprocessed claims. Work and Pensions Secretary
Alan Johnson has ordered an internal inquiry into the problem – which
reportedly occurred following a blunder during routine system
maintenance. The inquiry should help clarify responsibilities for the
crash, including the role of suppliers Microsoft and EDS. The two
companies run the department's network as part of a GBP 2bn (EUR
2.9bn) IT services deal.
The IT crisis at the DWP prompted trade union leaders to ask
Government to drop plans to cut 104,000 jobs in the UK civil service,
including 30,000 jobs in the DWP. "The department and the government
are hell-bent on axing thousands of civil and public servants, saying
IT will enable them to do so, but yet again we are seeing IT systems
come to a grinding halt and fail”, said Mark Serwotka, general
secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union. Reacting to
criticism, the DWP said the IT failure had been "blown out of
proportion". The department admitted 80,000 staff were not able to
process new pensions and benefits claims for several days, but
affirmed that regular payments were unaffected.
The DWP disruption was the latest in a series of high-profile computer
problems. In mid-November, the Head of the DWP’s Child Support Agency
(CSA), resigned after it was revealed that single parents were waiting
an average of 4-5 months for maintenance payments. Moreover, further
to the introduction of a new IT system by EDS 18 months ago, only one
in eight parents were paid the correct amount. Alan Johnson made clear
he had not ruled out scrapping the GBP 456m (EUR 661m) computer system
blamed for creating chaos at the CSA, although he said its performance
was improving. The crisis reached Prime Minister Tony Blair, who told
the House of Commons that the agency failings were “not acceptable”.
Earlier this year UK school tests were plagued by errors, which
according to a report published on 17/11/2004 were caused by poor
management and failures in the implementation of IT. The report, which
details the problems experienced during the attempted modernisation of
the exams system that resulted in delays in schools receiving test
papers and in thousands of students being forced to wait for their
grades, prompted the managing director of the National Assessment
Agency (NAA) to resign from his position.
In 2003, the Inland Revenue's tax credits system was also disrupted by
a glitch in new software that stopped crucial payments. Following this
failure, the Inland Revenue demanded compensations from its IT
services supplier EDS and did not renew its contract.
Other recent problems include the delay in delivering the student
support online application, due to performance and deployment issues
with a new loan claims processing software, and in launching the
Transport Direct portal. Bringing together real-time road and public
transport information, this portal aims to provide a comprehensive,
easy-to-use and integrated travel information, journey planning and
ticketing service for moving around the UK. Launched in July 2004, the
GBP 14.9m (EUR 21.5m) portal is currently in a second trial version
and claims to link transport information for all 141 local authorities
in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as air and train journey
information. However, a recent test by newspaper The Daily Telegraph
has found that the information provided was often unreliable and that
the site performance compared poorly with other travel information
online services.
According to press reports, the UK Government has spent about GBP
1.5bn (EUR 2.2bn) on over-budget or scrapped computer projects since
1997, many of them inherited from previous Governments.
While several IT projects have been running into technical problems,
others have seen their costs ballooning and sometimes running out of
control. In October 2004, members of the Government provided
contradictory information regarding the estimated costs of running the
UK National Health Service’s future IT systems for booking hospital
appointments, holding patient records and transferring medical data.
In 48 hours, estimates for 10 years varied between GBP 10bn (EUR
14.5bn) according to Health Minister John Hutton, and GBP 40bn (EUR
58bn) or GBP 15-30bn (EUR 22-43.5bn) according to two different
statements by the Department of Health.
In order to avoid the repetition of large IT failures in the future,
many are calling for strengthening the Gateway review process and
increasing the transparency of Government IT projects. A report
published on 5 November 2004 by the National Audit Office (NAO)
revealed that many projects were entering the Gateway process too late
– after the business case had been prepared – and leaving it too early
– before the assessment of benefits. Moreover, the NAO found that some
projects were avoiding the mandatory review process. Reacting to the
findings of the report, the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) said
it was taking steps to discourage departments from avoiding Gateway
reviews of high-risk IT projects.
Meanwhile, the UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee is demanding
further transparency and accountability on public sector IT projects.
Among other things, members of the Committee want Gateway review
assessments to be made available to the public. The UK Government has
however resisted such calls, saying the secrecy of the process created
a "safe space" for frank discussion. However, with the Freedom of
Information Act coming into force in the UK in January 2005, the
confidentiality of Government IT projects could soon be further
challenged. |
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Bernd Paysan
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 7:46 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Robert Myers wrote:
| Quote: | The security regimes with which I have been acquainted lean heavily on
strict compartmentalization by need to know. That means that access
paths all have to be laid out rigidly and with significant
foreknowledge about what metadata need to be visible--and it means the
metadata have to be tediously created by hand. I don't know how the
FBI has proposed to deal with compartmentalization, but you can't just
dump everything out there in a flat resource space, index it, and let
people do their own searches.
|
As far as I know the FBI (and even more the secret services) have troubles
with "left hand doesn't know what right hand does". This is a consequence
of security regimes like the "need to know" principle. Since the FBI is a
federal police, the "need to know" regime should happen at the border to
the FBI, not within. Crimes that are no concern to the FBI don't go into
the FBI database, and crimes that do should allow to be linked relatively
freely. Organized crime needs correlation between seemingly unrelated
cases. Organized crimes also requires surveillance of the officers in
charge, as the combination of "need to know" and corruption is an easy way
for organized crime to continue their work even though the FBI has been set
on them.
The "need to know" principle does not help civil liberties. The Gestapo was
clearly organized that way, too. It's a two-sided sword - it helps to hide
crimes by those organizations as well as it helps to hide well enough
organized criminals.
Systems like that need boundaries. Some material needs to be classified
internally, too. However, it's dangerous to allow material to be locked in
(like the notebook from the suspected 9/11 highjacker which was caught a
month before). I'm quite sure that the inner boundaries, the virtual
cubicle walls inside the FBI are there for the same reasons many
programmers in classical corporate environments don't want other people to
look into their sources: They are there as job protection mean, to hide
errors, not to help nation security or civil liberties.
Sure, the database should not be searched that easily. At least a "four
eyes" approach or something like that is needed. Internal communication
within the team may be concealed from non-members (the same thing is even
possible on Sourceforge). For things like that (mailing lists), you don't
need special infrastructure, not even for a very tough security regime on
those mails (OpenPGP or S/MIME is clearly sufficient).
| Quote: | If you didn't have to worry about security, your proposal would be
magic. Digitize everything (although agents have apparently been
resistant to the step of putting things into a scanner), put it where
it can be indexed, index it, and let agents learn to think the way
that people who use and contribute to open source do.
|
Hm, requires at least three silver bullets ;-). FBI agents are far away from
open source contributors.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ |
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Casper H.S. Dik
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 8:13 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> writes:
| Quote: | Sure, the database should not be searched that easily. At least a "four
eyes" approach or something like that is needed. Internal communication
within the team may be concealed from non-members (the same thing is even
possible on Sourceforge). For things like that (mailing lists), you don't
need special infrastructure, not even for a very tough security regime on
those mails (OpenPGP or S/MIME is clearly sufficient).
|
Data would need to be labeled so only sufficient cleared personel
and personel with a stated interest in certain data can see it;
that, of course, makes searching/fishing a task which is not something
everybody is allowed to do, at least not in the whole database.
Making sure that some part of the system knows who accessed what and
when is also very important: it serves both as a deterrent from abuse
and may allow tracing leaked documents.
| Quote: | If you didn't have to worry about security, your proposal would be
magic. Digitize everything (although agents have apparently been
resistant to the step of putting things into a scanner), put it where
it can be indexed, index it, and let agents learn to think the way
that people who use and contribute to open source do.
Hm, requires at least three silver bullets ;-). FBI agents are far away from
open source contributors.
|
A lot of the data the FBI gathers is not computerized; to go from
hand written notes to a searchable index is quite a step.
Casper |
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Bernd Paysan
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Jan 15, 2005 9:51 pm Post subject:
Re: [OT?] FBI Virtual Case File is even possible? |
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Del Cecchi wrote:
| Quote: | Maybe they shouldn't have hired the low bidder. And the government gets
what they ask for in the contract. Maybe they asked for the wrong
thing, or maybe they asked for the undoable.
|
According to Heise online, one of the problems the FBI has is that the first
deliverable doesn't work perfect. Duh. This is to be expected, software
simply doesn't do that. An iteration cycle is necessary. Government
contracts are especially difficult to deal with, since the customer both
doesn't know what he wants *and* wants a perfect solution on the first
shot. Commercial development is easier, since while the customer there
doesn't know what he wants either, a perfect solution is not necessary.
Economic pressure makes sure that the customer will live with the 90%
solution, and allows for gradual improvement.
According to recent news on Heise, FBI also doesn't use "Carnivore", but
some unnamed commercial systems. They don't seem to have much luck with the
software development they initiate.
| Quote: | Really wants one want to have them take over health care, eh?
|
Hm, the US system, as it is now, is nothing to be proud of, either. And you
can't say that the state is not already involved deeply - the FDA does such
weird things on pharmacy prices and availability that even MCs go to Canada
to buy cheaper drugs (or drugs unavailable in the USA).
So: given how much the state now already manages to mess up health care, no,
you wouldn't want more of that.
--
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/ |
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