Another delay for FBI's sentinel system.

• Position: GOVERNMENT RECORDS - Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) $451 million case management system, coined the "Sentinel," has been delayed yet again. According to media reports, the full deployment of the system, which will be used to search and analyze criminal and national security data, has been pushed back to September 2010.

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The ease management system was started in 2005 and is being developed by Lockheed Martin. It is expected to replace the FBI's largely paper-based operation with a single digital system. In November 2007, the FBI extended the completion date from December 2009 to June 2010, Information Week reported. The latest delay was reported in an audit by the FBI's inspector general.

Sentinel is supposed to replace the agency's web-based Virtual Case File program, which was scrapped after the FBI spent $170 million on the program. Despite the delays, Sentinel won't be a similar disappointment, according to the Government Accountability Office, which has recommended the system as a model for the rest of the FBI, InformationWeek said.

The agency is rolling out Sentinel in phases. The first phase, completed in June 2007, offered a new user interface and improved...