Evidentaly, over 800 government contractors are incapable of designing or maintaining the National Counterterrorism Center’s integrated terrorist intelligence database with 500,000 names! The TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment) database is supposed to be the “mother of all databases” that interconnected the various enforcement and policing agencies in the country and allowed them to exchange and share data.
From the cnet article:
Miller noted the problems with TIDE and Railhead stem from “fundamental design flaws,” namely their reliance on Structured Query Language (SQL) to search the database. SQL is a computer code that uses sentence structures to conduct queries, as opposed to using text-based searches, like search engines such as Google do.
Due to faulty searches, tens of thousands of CIA messages to the NCTC have not been properly processed or reviewed, or may not have even reached the TIDE database.
On top of that, the TIDE database has reportedly crashed several times in recent months, delaying the delivery of updated terrorist intelligence data to the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center.
The article further states that the project has cost the U.S. taxpayers over $500 million dollars thus far with a good portion of the money not even being spent on the project! Over $200 million of the $500 million budget went to rennovating a building owned by Boeing?!?
Additionally, the staff’s sources allege that the government misused funds by spending nearly $200 million to retrofit a building in Herndon, Va., belonging to one of the project’s main contractors, Boeing.
Representatives from Boeing and SRI did not respond to requests for comments.
Well TIDE was supposed to get upgraded to another new DB called RAILHEAD. What is the status of the project now?
The number of contractors has shrunk from more than 800 to just a few dozen. The state of the program is now in jeopardy.
The project is not only flawed but also behind schedule. Thirty-four of Railhead’s 72 “action items” are past due, and two are behind schedule. Ten more tasks–five of them costing more than $92 million–are “significantly off-task.”
Well, at least Boeing got a nice building out of it…Your tax dollars at work here people.
Tags: Boeing, Corruption, National Counterterrorism Center, Railhead, SQL, TIDE
