Turnaround in case management system marks CIO's tenure

Zalmai Azmi, the chief information officer at the FBI, says he will leave the bureau in a good position to finish a massive case management system that agents can use to share evidence and manage cases more efficiently.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Azmi came to the FBI in 2003 and was named CIO in May 2004, when the bureau was struggling to field its Virtual Case File system, a network that was supposed to allow agents to better manage cases electronically and to share evidence, including videos. But the system suffered from cost overruns, missed deadlines and poor performance, and a year after Azmi arrived, the FBI killed the project.

That same month, Azmi launched the Sentinel program, a six-year, $451 million program to develop an online case management system. So far, the system has received mostly positive development reports. A Government Accountability Office report released this week states the bureau has made progress on Sentinel and it is nearing the halfway point toward completion.

"The [Sentinel] program is doing very well," said Azmi, who talked with Nextgov this week about his tenure at the FBI. "We delivered phase I in 2007, and it was very well received by the FBI community."

Azmi, a native of Afghanistan, is choosing this time to step down as the FBI's top technology official and leave the government after 25 years of service (his last day is Oct. 17) to spend more time with his three young children. He joined the FBI in 2004, just six months after getting married.

"I waited a long time to start a family, but I couldn't say no to the FBI job," he said. "I took it, and quite frankly it's a hard job, a difficult task. We're at the point where the organization is doing great; we've achieved a lot in the last five years. I thought this was the appropriate time to transition to the private sector."

The Sentinel project is comprised of four phases, an approach the National Research Council, which advised the FBI on the VCF project, suggested the bureau should follow in 2004. Phase 1 was completed last year and involved building a Web portal for the Sentinel system, which was developed by prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp.

Under phase 2, the FBI will build the functionality to place case files on the system and allow agents to manage cases, write reports and share evidence. While phase 2 originally was expected to take 18 months to complete, Azmi said the project was broken down into five or six smaller segments so capabilities could be delivered more quickly. "We've done 12 or 13 deliveries since last year, all successful," he said.

Azmi's office has delivered new capabilities to users and kept communications open for user feedback. The bureau set up a Web site where users can comment and make suggestion after each delivery so the FBI can incorporate the changes into the next tech delivery.

Azmi said the bureau was still on track to deliver phases 2 through 4 by 2010, and users have gained confidence in the system because of the capabilities that already are available. That confidence was hard-won after Sentinel's predecessor, the $170 Virtual Case File system failed in 2004, becoming a symbol of failed IT investment practices.

"Virtual Case File was a single application that failed, but we wanted not to repeat the mistake again," he said.

To avoid doing so, Azmi said the FBI focused on strengthening the program management, acquisition management and information assurance fields within the bureau, another recommendation included in the 2004 NRC report. "In 2004, we had only two people certified by the Program Management Institute," he said. "Today, we have over 80 people trained by PMI and 200 with [program management] training."

While the FBI has made progress in managing its IT investments, Azmi said work remains to be done. Managing projects to meet cost and schedule deadlines and transitioning programs to operational use remain the focus of his office, regardless of who was in charge. He emphasized that retiring legacy systems that are no longer beneficial to the bureau's operations and investing in training and development for younger IT personnel, including encouraging employees to pursue technical certifications and CIO certification, are also top priorities.

Azmi said he has interviewed four of the candidates to take over the CIO job and is confident that they will be able to "easily do this job."