Case Study: SAIC'S Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Interstate Identification Index (III) Program
Challenge:
In the early 1990's, the FBI and their federal, state and local law enforcement partners determined a need to improve the response time required to identify subjects of criminal investigations. The existing system (Identification Division Automated Services), which houses the U.S. Criminal History Database, is a legacy system that is heavily dependent on paper transfers and manual input. When a federal, state or local law enforcement organization or civilian agency makes a request to the database, it often takes as long as 10 days to receive a response.
Issues:
One of the primary problems associated with this program is the migration of the Criminal History Database to a client/server environment. The final system must provide the same level of control and reliability as the legacy system, while providing additional flexibility and expandability. In addition, the system must integrate seamlessly into the overall Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) program.
Solution:
The SAIC solution uses a mature base of unmodified commercial-off-the-shelf software and reengineered software components from the existing IDAS system to reduce risk and limit new software development to 41% of the total III software. SAIC has selected and is implementing an open systems-based, centralized solution using a redundant pair of Challenge XL symmetric multi-processor servers from Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) hosting parallel instances of an ORACLE relational database management system.
We are developing the III system to allow law enforcement agencies to access national records via the National Crime Information Center network and providing criminal and civil subject search capabilities, criminal history record maintenance, ad hoc queries of the criminal history file, and storage and retrieval of digital photo images (mugshots).
SAIC performed system analysis and derived system requirements from a comprehensive performance model that incorporated our knowledge of performance constraints for the current system, the database design, TPC-B benchmark results, and RAID benchmark results. Our resultant design, using the redundant Challenge XL servers, guarantees that, should one server fail, the remaining server will automatically take over all processing. Additional reliability is gained through use of RAID storage.
SAIC is reengineering major portions of the existing IDAS software for reuse in III by analyzing the IDAS software and identifying the components for reuse. We selected ORACLE because of its unique high-performance features such as hash-key access. SAIC will capitalize on its successful experience in converting the earlier AI-II/ATS-II database to the current IDAS system on time and with no loss of data to drive our approach to the conversion to III file structures.
SAIC is working closely with the other IAFIS prime contractors and the FBI through the IAFIS Management Council, the Software Development Managers Working Group, the Interface Control Working Group and the Intersegment Interface Testing Working Group to improve intersegment integration. SAIC developed the IIT Test Tool, which is being used by all prime contractors as an early capability to test intersegment interfaces and software and an early indicator of potential problems. In addition, SAIC, in cooperation with the integration contractor and the customers, is conducting dry runs and rehearsals for all major events to gain confidence and learn from experience.
Benefits:
The new III system will provide nearly instantaneous response in some instances and 24 hour turnaround in most other instances.
SAIC's design provides an open systems centralized solution with the power and reliability of a mainframe solution. The hardware design supports incremental enhancements that will exceed all requirements through 2008 using current COTS hardware. The system design is 41% new development, 24% reengineered from IDAS and 35% COTS.
SAIC's design exceeds all reliability, maintainability and availability requirements through multilayered redundancy of both hardware and software. Our solution of mature, fully symmetric multiprocessing technology provides the best cost/performance ratio available.
Close cooperation with the FBI customer, the integration contractor and the other prime contractors on IAFIS provides an early identification of intersegment integration risk and provides the maximum flexibility in meeting integration challenges.
