Social Security Information Systems Near Collapse 279
matty619 writes "An Information Week article warns that the computer systems that run the Social Security Administration may collapse by 2012 due to increased workload, and a half-billion-dollar upgrade won't be ready until 2015. One of the biggest problems is the agency's transition to a new data center, according to a report (PDF) by the SSA's Inspector General. The IG has characterized the replacement of the SSA's National Computer Center — built in 1979 — as the SSA's 'primary IT investment' in the next few years."
2012 (Score:4, Funny)
obvious solution (Score:5, Funny)
Just use facebook ID's instead.
Re:2012 (Score:5, Funny)
They already were. Nobody noticed.
Re:2012 (Score:4, Funny)
Flash... (Score:5, Funny)
In a related story, it has been reported that top officials at the Social Security Administration are prepared to reduced the entire Social Security System to a Web App and run it on the Amazon Cloud.
Re:2012 (Score:5, Funny)
If I was an alien, I'd invade the US first, and only the US.
And I'd invade China and only China. Your planet would owe its ass to my planet.
Re:*HOW* Much?! (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, a lot of it is written in COBOL, as the article states.
Yes, and upgrading legacy code to become a modern data center is hard. Why, I remember how I struggled to turn a simple Pascal Hello World into a cafeteria. Can you believe there's no open source tool to translate for loops into pretzels?
Hint: It's a building. With computers. And data.
Re:2012 (Score:5, Funny)
If I was an alien, I'd invade the US first, and only the US.
If I was an alien, I'd invade France, always do the easy problems first.