First, let's talk basics: It's a NBN 3/1 agenda with an effect that boosts your defences in the long run. Which is bad for several reasons.
First, it's a 3/1 agenda. 3/1s are uncomfortably to score and don't really give that much points towards a victory. NBN decks may include up to 4 2/1s which are easier to fast advance and 6 3/2s which give you double the points for the same effort as a 3/1. Half of NBNs 3/2s even give you a fast advace tool at hand! (I'm assuming everyone knows the core set agenda AstroScript Pilot Program and how it helps at scoring agendas, especially ones with an advancement requirement of 3.)
So what does it give you? You don't get an instant money refund like from Superior Cyberwalls or Encrypted Portals, which is okay, I guess, because you get something else instead: A boost to base trace strength. But there are some problems with that, too, I'll talk about later. First, as it doesn't give you instant money it's a hefty invstment. Advancing this normally costs a card, 4 and 3, which sets you back in early game. But in order to make use of it you want to score it out early! A defense Boost is great for glacier archetypes, which are slow already and this kind of boost makes them even slower. So in the end, you are just slowing down your buildup to a point were everyone with a full rig doesn't care about your defences anyways, because they had enough time to set up as well.
Improved Tracers boosts trace strength, which is great! But sadly, it doesn't boost all your traces. Not even all traces during a run. No, not even all traces started by your ICE. TMI and Troll are sad. I know, they're not technically Tracers, but they could have used the boost.
So the problem is, the effect of this agenda is relying on ICE subroutines successfully firing. As soon as the runner is properly prepared that's only going to happen under his conditions. And the only time whenhe is unprepared is the early game. Agains, slow moving glaciers are sad here.
No synergy with Bernice Mai, Ash 2X3ZB9CY or Manhunt here as well, but I guess that's good. The agenda could easily be overpowered if it worked on non-ICE as well.
So how can we make proper use of Improved Tracers? I guess there's a pretty narrow room for fast, but defensive, NBN tagstorm decks that try to Fast Track this out and score it early behind a cheap ETR like Caduceus or Viper. Well, I'm not really sold on that idea, but I'm looking forward to someone building a competitive deck utilising Improved Tracers that does not become better when you score out a 3/2 instead.
I'm not writing all of this as pure theorycrafting. I have actually tested the agenda in my deck All Traces, No Tags. And it's a fun deck! I really enjoy it. It's crappy and looses all the time but it's fun to play! And I managed to actually score out Improved Tracers with it several times. One game I even had a Rutherford Grid installed in R&D, HQ and the scoring remote with 2 Improved Tracers scored. It was ridiculous. Trace strengthes of all subroutines were increased by 4, making it absurdly taxing to beat any trace. Well, I still lost that game, but it made for a great WTF moment when the runner was looking at Viper with it's 3 rez cost, 6 strength and two 7-strength-traces.
This brings me to my personal conclusion... The ICE I really want to use this with are Viper, Caduceus, Taurus and Sagittarius, which all are Weyland or HB.
My personal greatest problem with this agenda: It should be neutral!
Every faction has Tracers and uses traces, but for my personal taste there are two factions I really want to use Improved Tracers with: Weyland and HB!
Weyland was always the glacier faction and has some crappy advanceble ICE that could really use this boost along with some great tracers that could be even greater with this agenda. I so want to build this deck!
Haas-Bioroid on the other hand has a lot of bioroid ICE that already are taxing because of their high strength and would be extremly strong with even more strength: Viktor 2.0, Ichi 1.0, Ichi 2.0, Sherlock 1.0. All these bioroids have a low base trace strength which could make great use of Improved Tracers! Add Viper as cheap early game ETR and Sagittarius just because it's a cool ICE and you've got some nasty defences for a slow ETF campaign-driven glacier. Plus, If anyone can easily score out a 3/1 it's the faction with the most possibilities to accuire a 4th ! I really really want to build this deck!