U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530

The Justice Management Division has received your Draft Audit Report as captioned above and we appreciate your efforts, and those of your staff, in assessing the progress of the Litigation Case Management System (LCMS). We look forward to your observations and final recommendation.

We have completed our review of the report and have enclosed our response to your preliminary findings and recommendation.

Please contact me at 202-514-0507or Mr. John Murray at 202-305-5936 if you have any questions.

The Justice Management Division (JMD) Response to the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Draft Audit Report: Litigation Case Management System

Response to the Recommendation:

The CIO believes that it has followed very acceptable practices in selecting, applying and providing oversight of the LCMS performance based contract for IT integration services. The contract wherein the contractor was risking 25% of its fees and the contractual milestones for performance evaluation were deemed appropriate based on the functional risk (upgrade of existing litigation case management system), IT technical risk (COTS – Siebel Government Sector Software) and the experience of the contractors that were evaluated during the procurement process. Also, a part of the risk inherent in basing systems development on a software product was mitigated by contracting to only pay for the software licenses as the system was deployed to users.

Further, the CIO believes the PMO was staffed with appropriate expertise given the risk of the project and staffing was increased as risks materialized. In addition to the PMO, an equally important government role on the project is performed by personnel from EOUSA who were and are integrally involved in developing and approving requirements, process work flows, training and user acceptance testing.

Concerning oversight activities, the CIO believes many oversight activities were performed on the program (design review by Oracle-Siebel, regular CSC quality assurance reviews by independent evaluators, EVM surveillance reviews by independent EVM experts, as well as current re-evaluations of the program by a CSC Tiger Team of independent IT experts, by the CTO working with MITRE, and an independent Oracle-Siebel expert working with the PMO. At a pivotal point in the project as soon as the government became aware of quality and completeness issues, it inserted additional testing rigor on the contractor. Also, because of this program’s importance and issues the CIO and Deputy CIO have spent considerable time with contractor executives to focus attention on problem areas.

Also, the OIG report indicates that the CIO has not continued systems development work with the contractor for the other litigating divisions. This action was taken because of the issues that had materialized with the current work and our belief that it was in the government’s best interest to have the contractor focus attention and resources on resolution of these issues. The CIO plans to and firmly endorses the recommendation of OIG that the CIO reevaluate the viability of continuing towards the implementation of the system in the other litigating divisions.

The Recommendation #1: We recommend that the CIO reevaluate the viability of continuing towards implementation in the other seven litigating divisions. At a minimum, the reevaluation should consider whether:

• adequate funding will be made available to continue system development,
  
  
• the LCMS should be implemented in the National Security Division,
  
  
• the other six litigating divisions remain committed to implementation of the LCMS within their divisions,
  
  
• the system requirements for the remaining litigating divisions are appropriately identified and understood before further development,
  
  
• the defects identified from additional system integration and user testing are minimized, and
  
  
• controls are established to ensure that adequate government and contractor oversight will be performed on future development activities to minimize future schedule and cost overruns.

JMD Response – Agree. The Department’s Chief Information Officer will reevaluate the viability of continuing towards implementation in the other seven litigating divisions. This reevaluation will address, at a minimum, the six bulleted items identified above.

In addition, the OIG’s recommendation is consistent with the planning approach that has been developed and discussed with the litigating divisions. This planning approach is centered on the analysis of the business and technical solution architectures. Development of the Business Solutions Architecture will include analyzing the business needs of the litigating divisions and assessing them relative to the business capabilities supported by LCMS. Development of the Technical Solutions Architecture will include analyzing the existing LCMS software assets and recommending the optimal technical approach for meeting the business requirements. The results from these analyses will drive the implementation approach across the seven litigating divisions.