Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Sentinel Program

Publisher Marketing: The FBI implemented Sentinel in July 2012 as an electronic information and case management system that includes records management, workflow management, evidence management, search and reporting capabilities, and information sharing with other law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community. Development of Sentinel first began in 2006 and at the time it was expected to be completed in December 2009 at a cost of $425 million. This report, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General's tenth report on Sentinel, examines Sentinel's effect on the FBI's daily operations while also reviewing Sentinel's project costs and the updates made to the program since it was deployed. This report focuses on users' experiences with Sentinel's functionality and their ability to effectively and efficiently enter, search, and share information in the FBI's case management system. To accomplish this audit, we surveyed and interviewed Sentinel users to assess user satisfaction with the system, examined Sentinel's budget and incurred costs, and reviewed the improvements that were made to or planned for Sentinel as of July 2014. Our review found that most FBI employees routinely used Sentinel to perform their daily investigative activities. The majority of FBI employees responding to our survey reported that Sentinel has had an overall positive impact on the FBI's operations, making the FBI better able to carry out its mission, and better able to share information. The majority of survey respondents also reported that Sentinel had a positive impact on the FBI's efficiency, by allowing improvements such as reducing the number of lost documents, decreasing the amount of time that it takes to get documents approved and improving the FBI's ability to share documents within the FBI.