The US Social Security Administration (SSA) is planning, for the third time, to start reducing its dependence on mainframe systems and COBOL code, according to a story in Federal Computer Week.
Testifying before the US House Ways and Means Committee, SSA Commissioner Michael Astrue said that the SSA would hopefully soon start moving to "a unified information technology system to replace the current 54 separate COBOL-based systems." Those 54 systems consist of some 36 million lines of COBOL.
Assuming that all the stakeholders can agree and resources can be found, this will mark the third such attempt by SSA to try to modernize its systems in the past 25 years. The first attempt began in 1982 as a ten-year, $500 million System Modernization Plan (SMP). It was canceled in 1988 after modest improvements to SSA systems.
In 1992, SSA began another effort called the Engineered Disability System "collapsed" (Astrue's characterization) in 1999 after costing $71 million.
Given that the first "baby boomer" retired last year, and she will soon be followed 80 million more in the next 21 years, SSA better hurry up, and get it right this time.
