Feb 25, 2009

No Backup

Social Security Commissioner Astrue gave an interview to WFED radio. He revealed that Social Security has no backup for its computer data and is about six months from having any kind of backup and eighteen months from having full backup.

I find this stunning. Having data backup is absolutely essential on any computer network of any size. I know it is much easier to do in a small lawfirm like mine, but I cannot believe that this could happen. Database corruption is a very real problem. There is always the danger of natural disaster or, in Social Security's case, terrorist attack. You have to be able to restore from a clean backup from time to time. This failing is an indictment of Social Security Commissioners going back decades. This should have been a panic button item beginning a long time ago. The agency has been and still is dodging bullets.

Astrue also talked about hiring 3,000 to 6,000 new employees this fiscal year, instead of the 5,000 to 6,000 he was talking about last week. Was this a mistake by him or the radio station or a sign that there will be fewer hires?

Update: I posted this based upon WFED's summary of the interview. I have now listened to the interview or at least as much as WFED has posted. What they posted seems to begin in the middle of something. The WFED summary is seriously misleading. Social Security is currently backing up its data to some extent with a commercial service at a cost of $3 million per year. Apparently, that service is inadequate.

The interview that I heard makes no reference to the number of employees to be hired at Social Security.

Interestingly, Commissioner Astrue makes reference to commercial tax preparation software such as Turbotax as a model for Social Security's online services. His point is that as complicated as Social Security is, it is not as complex as the tax codes. If Turbotax can do it, so can Social Security. The only problem with this reference is that most people preparing their tax returns do not suffer from significant mental illness. Virtually everyone filing a Social Security disability claim suffers from at least moderate depression and many suffer from much more severe mood or thought disorders. At ground level, it is obvious that there are limits to how far Social Security can go with online filing.

By the way, there was a lot of background noise on the WFED interview. Perhaps a noisy restaurant? The interviewer definitely neeeded a directional microphone.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't be silly - of course they backup their data. They just don't OWN a second (or third) data center to run things if the NCC goes down for any reason (terrorist attack, pipes bursting, etc.). Instead, they have a contract with an extremely expensive private "hot site" that would let them run some of the most important functions temporarily. SSA is building a second data center in Durham to take on some of the work full time, and, purportedly, to be able to run all of the work if need be.