Social Security: Back Up Goofiness
March 1, 2009
I don’t know much about Federal News Radio. I don’t listen to the radio when I am in DC and I don’t look at the radio station’s Web site. But this headline stopped me in my webby tracks. Federal News Radio reported in “SSA Data Backup Six Months Away” here is interesting. A chatty Cathy told me that the SSA (Social Security Administration) has a mashup of mainframes, branded servers, and other gear that are loosely federated. (This is a nice way of saying that the architecture is approaching entropy.) The article presents some government double talk about the special needs of the SSA. But the comment that I found most interesting was this:
The data backup problem is part of a larger technology challenge SSA faces. Astrue (an SSA executive) says the agency still is using more than 38 million lines of Cobol code in a siloed and mainframe environment.
Yep, 38 million lines of Cobol and a mainframe. Wow and double wow. I wondered why my father couldn’t check his benefits online. Now I know why. The Web site has to hook into the mainframe without losing state and the connection. I think the system was unable to reset his password either. Maybe a crash would be the best approach. Think of a greenfields project or a phone call to Google. I wonder of the SSA thinks its data are bigger than Google’s?
Stephen Arnold, February 28, 2009
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