The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network announced on Thursday that it is permanently halting its Bank Secrecy Act Direct Retrieval and Sharing Component project. FinCEN said the project has repeatedly missed program milestones and performance objectives and will not meet the needs of FinCEN's users. FinCEN launched the data warehouse and information retrieval system project in July 2004. It was designed to use data warehousing technology to structure the BSA data into a single, integrated, secure Web-based environment, and provide sophisticated business intelligence and other analytical tools though a Web portal. In March, FinCEN Director Robert W. Werner started a stop-work evaluation period. The project was originally expected to cost $8.9 million and had climbed to $14.4 million when work was halted. Werner said it was estimated to cost another $8 million to complete the system. Going forward, FinCEN said it would “inventory its capacity, assess its needs and the needs of its customers, and begin planning for future capabilities for retrieval, sharing and enhanced analysis of the Bank Secrecy Act data.” More information about the decision is at  http://www.fincen.gov/bsa_direct_nr.html