To understand why the VCF was so important, you've got to understand the FBI. And to understand the FBI, you've got to understand its organization and its agents. The bureau, headquartered in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D. C., currently has 23 divisions, including counterintelligence, criminal investigation, and cybercrime. The divisions fall under the control of five executive assistant directors responsible for intelligence, counterterrorism and counterintelligence, criminal investigations, law enforcement services (such as labs and training), and administration. Until last year, each division had its own IT budget and systems. And because divisions had the freedom and money to develop their own software, the FBI now has 40 to 50 different investigative databases and applications, many duplicating the functions and information found in others. Last year, in an effort to centralize IT operations and eliminate needless redundancies, the FBI's chief information officer, who reports to the director, took charge of all its IT budgets and systems.

The bureau's 12 400 agents work out of 56 field offices and 400 satellite—or resident agency—offices, as well as 51 Legal Attach offices scattered across the globe in U.S. embassies and consulates. A field agent works as part of a squad; each squad has a supervisor, who reports to the assistant special agent in charge, who in turn reports to the special agent in charge of the field office. Agents investigate everything from counterterrorism leads to bankruptcy fraud, online child pornography rings to corrupt public officials, art thefts to kidnappings. They interview witnesses, develop informants, conduct surveillance, hunt for clues, and collaborate with local law enforcement to find and arrest criminals. Agents document every step and methodically build case files. They spend a tremendous amount of time processing paperwork, faxing and FedEx-ing standardized memo and requisition forms through the approval chain—up to the squad supervisor and eventually to the special agent in charge. This system of forms and approvals stretches back to the 1920s, when J. Edgar Hoover, director from 1924 to 1972, standardized all of the bureau's investigative reports on forms, so an agent could walk into any FBI office and find the same system.

Today, the bureau has hundreds of standard forms. To record contact with an informant, fill out Form FD-209. When getting married or divorced, complete Form FD-292. To report information gleaned from an interview that may later become testimony, use Form FD-302. To conduct a wiretap, file Form FD-472. To wire an informant with a body recorder and transmitter, submit Form FD-473. After traveling overseas for business or pleasure, report the experience on Form FD-772. Plan an arrest with Form FD-888. Open a drug investigation with Form FD-920.

Forms related to investigations, such as those used to report interviews with witnesses, wend their way up and down the approval chain. Once the appropriate supervisors sign off on the form, it goes back to the agent, who gives it to a clerk to enter into the ACS system. From there, the paper form is filed as part of the official record of the case.

Sometimes, though the FBI officially denies this, an agent doesn't enter all case notes into ACS. Some agents think, "If I don't trust ACS because I don't think it will protect my informant or my asset, I'm not putting the data in there," said Depew, an avid user of ACS who touted the electronic system to his fellow agents as safer than a paper filing system.

FBI spokesperson Megan Baroska emphasized in an e-mail that Depew did not speak for the bureau in this instance. "The FBI policy is for all official records to be entered into ACS. Additionally, 'notes' per say [sic] are not entered into ACS; they are first memorialized in a 302 form, and that form is entered into ACS. As for the 'notes,' they are kept in storage as a paper file because they legally have to be discoverable."

When asked during an interview at FBI headquarters if agents felt uncomfortable about exchanging a paper-based system for an electronic one, the FBI's current CIO, Zalmai Azmi, didn't think agents would find it hard to get into the habit of processing forms electronically. But introducing an electronic record-keeping system does raise legal policy questions in their minds. "What is a record and what is available under discovery? In a paper world, you do your job, you do your notes, and if you don't like it, it goes somewhere," Azmi said. "In an electronic world, nothing really is destroyed; it's always somewhere."