Oversight Committee Reports Fed $500M Counterterrorism Db "Railhead" A Train Wreck

In a stinging report, The House Science Oversight Subcommittee has found poor government oversight and possible contractor mismanagement in a $500M upgrade to a key Fed counter-terrorism database.  The program, dubbed Railhead, was conceived to help agencies share information — but the report suggests that “Railhead may actually degrade the ability to provide intelligence data for use in the consolidated terrorist watch list”.  This “mother of all databases” collects information on more than 400,000 people on the watch list and is central to Fed security efforts. The project is yet another example of the difficulties that have plagued the Feds when rolling out massive IT projects.