SOA tops FBI's Most-Wanted List -- for Technology, That Is

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October 20, 2006

SOA tops FBI's Most-Wanted List -- for Technology, That Is

The title on Ronan Bradley's recent post, "FBI Accuses Some SOA Vendors" caught my eye, thinking that maybe more vendor CEOs got caught "pretexting" board members and journalists. Or, perhaps they were simply being accused of inflating customer expectations about what SOA will do for them.

It turns out that the FBI itself had inflated expectations about SOA, and has become a little more realistic about the limitations -- and possibilities -- of service-orienting.

Ronan observes that the FBI had its share of technology debacles, including the FBI Virtual Case Manager, which cost a cool $104 million in tax dollars. The latest attempt, using SOA methodologies -- is project" Sentinel," a new digital information sharing modernization project. However, moving to SOA involved another "a rapid and painful learning curve" for the FBI, as Ronan puts it.

Ronan surfaced a recent article in Government Executive which described the FBI's pain in detail. "We were in a frenzy about [SOA] a year or so ago, when we were writing Sentinel requirements," Jerome "Jack" Israel, the FBI's chief technology officer, is quoted as saying. But the SOA revolution has been postponed in favor of gradual change. "We've gone from maybe hyped-up about it to the cold realization that 'Hey, this SOA is a lot harder than industry is making it out to be,' " Israel says.

What happened? First, the Web services standards aren't quite developed yet, and vendors were continuing to incorporate proprietary elements into their SOA products, Israel is quoted as saying.

The FBI's efforts to service-oriented its internal systems may have gone to a slower track, but the bureau has seen impressive results from a more outward-facing -- and smaller-scale -- SOA project. The agency launched a Regional Data Exchange, or R-DEx, a series of information sharing pilots with regional databases. Under R-DEx, the FBI has created plug-ins to Justice Department databases for four regional law enforcement data sharing associations, with more to come -- using an SOA registry built with off-the-shelf IT products.

Because the project is built using SOA methodologies, the bureau has already been able to pull out and swap some of R-DEx's components, including an underused portal function and search engines, project manager Margie Lonergan is quoted as saying.

An interesting effect of this swappability is that it has kept "vendors on their toes," she added. The knowledge that they're easily replaced, "entices them to make sure they stay best of breed."

Posted by joemckendrick in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us