The Center for Public Integrity

The government’s ability to protect critical technology in the hands of the private sector has been repeatedly called into question, most prominently by the Government Accountability Office (GAO); in fact, the government’s performance in this area has been designated “high risk” by the GAO since 2007. “The technologies that underpin U.S. military and economic strength continue to be targets for theft, espionage, reverse engineering, and illegal export,” the GAO has warned. Among the problems the agency highlighted: inefficient programs, poor interagency coordination, and decades-old programs ill-equipped to weigh competing U.S. interests in the 21st Century. The various programs cover everything from monitoring arms exports to vetting foreign takeovers of U.S. firms whose work has national security implications. Part of the problem is rooted in the fact that these protection responsibilities are scattered across various agencies in the State, Defense, and Commerce departments. The Department of Defense (DOD)’s Defense Security Service, which oversees contractors across most of the government, was “broken across the board” when Director Kathleen Watson took over in 2006, according to Watson’s testimony before Congress in April 2008. And the situation hasn’t fared much better elsewhere; the GAO reported in 2008 that both the State Department and the Department of Commerce “have not managed their respective export licensing processes to ensure their effective operations.” In 2007, defense contractor ITT pled guilty to illegally sending classified military information to other countries — China among them — and agreed to pay a $100 million penalty. It was “the first conviction of a major defense contractor for a violation of the Arms Export Control Act,” according to a statement by then-U.S. attorney John Brownlee in Roanoke, Virginia.

“Prior to 9/11, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did not have an adequate ability to know what it knew,” said a statement from the staff of the 9/11 Commission. The commission faulted the FBI and other agencies for failing to “connect the dots” in a way that might have uncovered the 9/11 plot; the “dots” referred to suspicious activities by the hijackers that had been uncovered, in some cases, by the bureau’s field offices. Yet seven years after the attacks, the FBI is still largely unable to electronically share investigative information among its agents that could help it solve crimes and stop terrorist plots. The bureau embarked on a program known as Trilogy that was designed to weave the FBI’s information together — and make it accessible to agents — using new computers, electronic networks, and software. But the software, called the Virtual Case File (VCF), turned out to be a spectacular failure — and a waste of at least $100 million — as a result of missteps by both the bureau and its main contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Among the problems: poorly defined design requirements and a lack of management continuity and oversight. “The urgent need within the FBI to create, organize, share, and analyze investigative leads and case files on an ongoing basis remains unmet,” a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General concluded in February 2005. This failure to provide modern information technology to FBI agents put them at “a severe disadvantage in performing their duties,” the report added. The FBI officially killed VCF in April 2005. "We had information that could have stopped 9/11," Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, told The Washington Post. "It was sitting there and was not acted upon. . . . We might be in the 22nd century before we get the 21st-century technology."

To compile this list of the most important federal failures of the past eight years, a team of 13 reporters sifted through hundreds of inspectors general reports, Government Accountability Office assessments, congressional oversight investigations, and news stories. The team interviewed dozens of experts, congressional staffers, and leaders of government watchdog organizations and sent e-mails to more than 4,800 federal government employees to solicit nominations for inclusion in this project. Some 250 failures were nominated, from which editors selected more than 125 — those that elicited some level of bipartisan criticism, but also had a discernible impact on ordinary people.

The Team

Editorial Team:
Bill Buzenberg, executive director
David E. Kaplan, editorial director
Gordon Witkin, managing editor
Josh Israel, project coordinator
Tom Stites, consulting editor
Michael Zuckerman, consulting editor

Reporting Team:
Katherine Aaron, Sara Bularzik, Te-Ping Chen, Caitlin Ginley, Andrew Green, M. Asif Ismail, Josh Israel, Sarah Laskow, Marianne Lavelle, Matt Lewis, Aaron Mehta, Nick Schwellenbach, Kate Willson

Fact-checking:
Laura Cheek, Joe Eaton, Caitlin Ginley, Aaron Mehta, Peter Smith

Copy-editing:
Sara Bularzik, Andrew Green, Ariel Olson Surowidjojo

Web Design:
Stephen Rountree, www.rountreegraphics.com
Top Dead Center Design, www.tdcdesign.com

Technical Team:
David Donald
Andrew Green
Tuan Lee
Jeremy Lewis
Ariel Olson Surowidjojo

Media Team:
Steve Carpinelli
The Hatcher Group, www.thehatchergroup.com