LOVE IT! This really paints the grim pix of our IT systems and how Google,
Deloitte and Verizon provided a 3 day fix.
It is not that hard.
Thanks for sharing Rules!
Rico aka Swamp
On Monday, April 20, 2020, 9:24:05 AM PDT, Charles Hopkins
<chopkins294@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I thought you would be interested in the following story from The Wall Street
Journal.
Upgrade Our 8-Track Government
Here is some of it:
Upgrade Our 8-Track Government
Squandered funds lead to ancient software. That gives us crashes and delayed
checks.
By
Andy Kessler
April 19, 2020 1:28 pm ET
I'll admit to using this line all the time: "The Howard Stern Show" asked Ringo
Starr, "What did you do with the money?" "What money?" "The money your mother
gave you for singing lessons."
Earlier this month, Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary told Tucker Carlson
about a much-needed Covid-19 antibody test developed in January that was under
review by the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Makary noted, "And we lost
precious time when one of the original scientist s submitted an application and
was told that he had to submit it also by paper mail with a CD-ROM with
the-files burned on it. " CD-ROM? They might as well have asked for
applications on a deck of IBM punch cards with audio on 8-t rack tapes. The
FDA budget is around $5.8 billion. What did you do with the money?
Last week, New Jersey put out a call for Cobol programmers to update its
unemploymentbenefits software, which runs on mainframes installed 40 years
ago. Cobol was invented in 1959. New Jersey has a $39 billion budget. What
did you do with the money?
I grew up in New Jersey (Exit 14), but this ineptitude is everywhere. A 2018
study revealed that only 42% of all state and local government computer systems
were implemented after Oct. 25, 2001. The rest are "old or broken," including
two-thirds of those used for child support and half of those used for
unemployment or vehicle registration. The feds, who spend $88 billion a year
on information technology, are worse and notorious for ancient systems. The
Pentagon's control of nuclear missiles and bombers until very recently ran on
8-inch floppy disks from the 1970s. Some of the weather-tracking systems of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather
Service were programmed in Fortran, as far back as the 1950s. Or the National
Institutes of Health, which stopped buying fax machines in 2019.
And-yikes-remember the 2018 false alarm? "Ballistic Missile Threat Inbound to
Hawaii. Seek Immediate Shelter. This Is Not a Drill." And don't forget how
HealthCare.gov imploded in 2013.
According to the Government Accountability Office, as of May 2016 two different
Internal Revenue Service computer systems used for tax data and refunds were
written in "low level" assembly language 56 years prior. I get it: It works,
so why mess with success? But in reality, those $1,200 tax rebates granted to
Americans (including deceased ones) in the Cares Act have taken weeks, and if
you expect a check, up to four months. Meanwhile, I can Venmo or Zelle money
to your bank account in seconds. The IRS can do better.
In 1971 IBM introduced the 3270 terminals for data entry, those ubiquitous
green screens, and 44 of the world's top 50 banks still use the technology. It
now has a fancier graphical front end, but maybe you have an eye like I do and
spot its use in stores, airline counters and at every DMV. The problem is that
it takes forever to alter the mainframe software or add new features.
Contrast this with Facebook where new hires and even summer interns could,
within a week of starting, see their features distributed to a billion users.
That's the speed of software in 2020.
On Monday, April 6—10 days after the Cares Act passed—New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo announced a partnership with Google, Deloitte and Verizon to create a
"Tech Surge" portal to handle the jump in unemployment claims. It was ready by
7 pm Thursday. Google claims to have offered other states similar technology
to help scale the massive increase in demand.
Warm Regards,
Rules
+1 (619) 944-2786
Chopkins294@xxxxxxxxx