Enhanced Promis Contract
In 1981, Edwin Meese, then an advisor to President Ronald Reagan, announced an $800 million budget in an effort to overhaul the computer systems of the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other law enforcement agencies. The following year, the Department of Justice awarded Inslaw a $9.6 million, three-year, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to implement a pilot program in 22 of the largest Offices of the United States Attorneys using the older 16-bit architecture Prime version (as in Wang, or IBM), which the government had a license to use.
While Promis could have gone a long way toward correcting the Department's longstanding need for a standardized case-management system, the contract between Inslaw and Justice quickly became embroiled for over two decades in bitter controversy. The conflict centered on whether or not the Justice Department owed Inslaw license fees for the new, 32-bit architecture VAX version if the government substituted that version for the older 16-bit Prime version which had been the subject of the original contract.
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