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FBI software doesn't exactly work
The Washington Post reports that the FBI's new software system had to be scrapped since it doesn't work. The $170 million project turned out to be nothing but 730, 000 lines of unusable code. It is tragic really. The software problem reports (SPR's) with the system numbered in the hundreds, just as Zalmai Azmi (FBI technology chief) thought the project was mere weeks from completion. Many critics point to bad management and sloppy work by the contractor for this large scale snafu. It is kinda unnerving that one of the foremost agencies fighting terrorists is the most outdated in the computing department. Kinda makes you want to lock your doors at night and invest in body armor. One thing is for sure, the FBI needs to get with the program. It isn't like they don't have the resources to do it. The $170 million could have bought them a ton more than it has. With that kind of money, you could hire the best code hackers from the world's largest software companies and do the job right. That is if you feed them enough junk food, Bawls, and have all-night code jams (aka hacker parties). Oh, yeah, and you could still have money to spare. And 730,000 lines of code is no problem for the elite (l337). How many lines does Windows XP or Linux have?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
z0iid said 6:34PM on 8-19-2006
40 million + lines of code in Windows XP.
Which version of Linux? Debian 3.1 has 213 mil + of code.
"David A. Wheeler studied the Red Hat distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system, and reported that Red Hat Linux version 7.1 (released April 2001) contained over 30 million physical SLOC. He also determined that, had it been developed by conventional proprietary means, it would have required about 8,000 person-years of development effort and would have cost over $1 billion (in year 2000 U.S. dollars)."
If we take inflation at a rate of 2%, then the cost is around 1.17 Bil for numbers above.
So, in theory, it should have only cost between 30 and 40 million.
But whatever....school teachers still have to hold bake sales and pay for supplies out of their own pocket to get through a school year.
Fun times.
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Ryan Carter said 10:00PM on 8-19-2006
Thank you. My point exactly.
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will said 11:18PM on 8-19-2006
Having worked for a federal IT contractor for a couple of years, I have seen first hand the problems with this sort of thing. The reason the government likes hiring contractors is because they have someone to blame for their own shortcomings and disorganization.
On the contractor side, you have to provide what the client wants, and most of the time, the client doesn't know what they want. Or they change the specs over and over during development. Or they argue for so many months about the best way to do it, deadlines come and go without being met.
I worked for a small USAF opertation for which I was doing web development. I shudder to think what something larger-scale would be like.
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jp said 5:51AM on 8-21-2006
So FBI tried to develop MS windows XP ?
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Robert said 8:14AM on 8-21-2006
I thought from the headline that the NEW system had been scrapped... Most of this story is about the project scrapped 3 years ago. The new one, contracted by Lockheed-Martin should be operational by 2009!! I wish I had a project timeline like that!!
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Chris Cardinal said 9:58AM on 8-21-2006
200 million lines in Windows Vista, for what it's worth.
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Ivan Minic said 11:14AM on 8-21-2006
Khm.. khm... LAME... khm :)
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rich said 11:37AM on 8-21-2006
$170 Million / 730K Lines = $232/Line of code. Gasp!
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Brandon Wittwer said 1:10PM on 8-21-2006
170 million = 3400 unemployed developers get 1 year of 50k salary. Or it sustain a power team of developers for 2 decades. This is why we have no jobs... because Government contracts are so filty frikin stupid.
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AndieR said 2:52PM on 8-21-2006
Amazing really... is there any way to know who was the contractor and where he was located?
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IKnow said 5:47PM on 8-21-2006
The contractor was SIAC, and I believe the program in question was calleD Trilogy. As I recall, the GAO or CBO looked into this and reported that the government managers were to blame. Pretty slick on the part of SAIC.
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