It's the leadership

In September, a blue-ribbon panel of business leaders, lawyers, and academics known as the Markle Foundation Task Force on National Security concluded that "among other things, [the FBI] has failed to develop an adequate strategic plan, has no comprehensive strategic human capital plan, has personnel with inadequate language skills, antiquated computer hardware and software, no enterprise architecture, and several disabling cultural traditions." Three months later, the Department of Justice's inspector general weighed in with a scathing report about the FBI's mismanagement of its information technology (IT) programs: "The FBI continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on IT projects without adequate assurance that these projects will meet their intended goals."

For all the finger-pointing, though, nobody should have been surprised by the sorry state of the FBI's computers. The problems date back at least 10 years. "I wrote a book in 1993 about the FBI and even then I was critical about their computer systems, the fact that they had to double up on computers, and the systems were very backward," says Ronald Kessler, author of The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (St. Martin's Press, 2002). "Some people say, 'FBI agents don't like computers,' but that's not true. They all use computers at home that in many cases are better than what they have at work. It's not the agents, it's the leadership."

Kessler is optimistic about Mueller, an ex-Marine and former federal prosecutor who is reputed to be reform minded and tech friendly. He is said to carry a PDA, use e-mail, and make PowerPoint presentations from his laptop—activities his predecessor, Louis Freeh, seldom if ever engaged in. After becoming the U.S. attorney for San Francisco, Mueller led an overhaul of the office's computer system for tracking cases; the new program, called Alcatraz, is now used by all U.S. attorneys. Upon arriving at the FBI, Mueller asked that Microsoft Office be installed on his desktop. "They told him, 'We can put it on there, but it won't be compatible with anything else in the FBI,' " says Kessler. "He hit the roof."

The fall of 2001 saw the start of an ambitious program of modernization, which seems to recognize that the barriers that prevent the FBI from analyzing and sharing data are as much cultural as technological. As outlined by Mueller and other agency leaders in regular appearances before Congress, these include:

• Accelerating a bureau-wide overhaul of basic computer hardware, software, and network infrastructure. The three-year, US $534 million effort known as Trilogy will eventually give each of the 11 400 FBI agents and 16 400 other employees a Dell Pentium desktop PC running Microsoft Office, with secure, high-speed connections to FBI headquarters and hundreds of field and satellite offices. In early March, Mueller announced that the first phase of this upgrade had been completed.

• Replacing the FBI's ancient DOS-based Automated Case Support (ACS) database with a more user-friendly Windows-based system that can search on not just text but also photos, video, and audio records. Known as the Virtual Case File system, it's set to come online by the end of 2003.

• Web versions of the bureau's most commonly used investigative tools for accessing, organizing, and analyzing data.

• Hiring 350 intelligence analysts and 900 special agents, with special emphasis on those trained in the physical sciences, computer science, and engineering, as well as foreign languages, military intelligence, and counterterrorism.

• Initiating a pilot study for an information-sharing network among field offices located in St. Louis; San Diego. Calif.; Seattle, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; Norfolk, Va.; and Baltimore. If successful, it could link all field offices and other agencies, too.

• Creating a corps of reports officers (long part of the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies) responsible for identifying and collecting intelligence from FBI investigations and sharing that information with the intelligence community.