After a couple years have lapsed, a costly and long-waited FBI computerized system aiming to manage the caseload of the Federal Bureau is yet to be completed, risking arriving too late that it will be obsolete, a report from the Justice Department has warned.

The system, Sentinel, was designed to be a paperless and user-friendly manner of managing cases, with expectations of completion expected to be by December 2009, with the cost standing at $425 million. This was bound to replace another earlier computer program, whose cost was $170 million and scrapped due to being outdated and full of problems.

The funding of the program was raised in 2008 to a staggering $451 million, although the Department of Justice, Inspector General Office observed that while the project is 100 million dollars over the budget, it is so far from being finished.

The Department warned that in case the Sentinel continue taking time to clear the project, the software and hardware to be implemented might just become obsolete.

In the report, there were recommendations to the FBI that it should reassess it requirements of the program, such as integration of records from its paper based large system and currently in use, and to start focusing on the requirements that currently affect analysts and a score of agents.

The FBI, in a letter to the Inspector General’s Office agreed wholly with the laid out recommendations, claiming that it is currently integrating them.

However, an Associate Deputy Director with the FBI, Thomas Harrington, has rained criticism to the report saying that it relied on cost estimates now outdated and hasn’t given the FBI the right credit in trying to change the current program.

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