In recent years many have decried Social Security's reliance on old mainframe computers running programs written in the very old COBOL language. Many have thought this to be a major problem holding back progress at Social Security. As this New York Times article demonstrates, maybe using COBOL isn't bad at all. At the least, COBOL remains in common use:
Caitlin Mooney is 24 years old and infatuated with technology that dates to the age of Sputnik.
Mooney, a recent New Jersey Institute of Technology graduate in computer science, is a fan of technologies that were hot a half-century ago, including computer mainframes and software called COBOL that powers them. That stuff won’t win any cool points in Silicon Valley, but it is essential technology at big banks, insurance companies, government agencies and other large institutions.
During Mooney’s job hunt, potential employers saw her expertise and wanted to talk about more senior positions than she was seeking. “They would get really excited,” Mooney told me. She’s now trying to decide between multiple job offers.
The resilience of decades-old computing technologies and the people who specialize in them shows that new technologies are often built on lots of old tech.
When you deposit money using your bank’s iPhone app, behind the scenes it probably involves computers that are the progeny of those used in the Apollo moon missions. (Also, half-century-old computer code is baked into the iPhone software.)
It’s often seen as a problem or a punchline that so much musty technology is still around. But it’s not necessarily an issue.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” joked Ellora Praharaj, director of reliability engineering at Stack Overflow, an online forum popular with tech workers. “Students out of school these days don’t necessarily want to work in uncool older languages. But the reality of the world is this is what powers many of our existing systems.”
Praharaj said she learned COBOL in college in the mid-2000s and “hated it.” But until about five years ago, she was regularly using a 1950s computer programming technology called Fortran in a former job in the financial services industry. The old stuff is everywhere.
Latin is dead, but old computer programming languages like COBOL live on. ...
9 comments:
WOW! I learned COBOL in high school (I chose another path in life as programming isn't the most exciting thing to do), it was old then! That was 30 years ago! That being said....even BASIC is still being used for certain things, not sure about FORTRAN. (sp?). COBOL has its uses still! For sure! But outdated? VERY much so. But certainly not dead! I would never go back to writing code. I had never fell asleep on a keyboard before learning COBOL, and I have yet to do so since. d;-)
We still have candles too, but it isnt seen as the optimal tool for light.
One reason that COBOL is still around is that it is still doing the job. I assume that newer features, such as ERE, were programmed with a more modern language.
Rather than rewriting all the COBOL programs, I would rather have SSA develop an online system allowing attorneys and eligible reps to upload their paper 1696 and fee agreements and enter the 1696/1695 information into the system (perhaps subject to review by an SSA employee) to speed up getting reps on the record. I realize that SSA already has an "online 1696" but for many clients this does not work well.
The advantage of this system is that attorneys/eligible reps would get a receipt for their filings and would not have to continually call and fax to make sure they are on the record. This would save considerable time for SSA employees and would be a good use of limited programing resources.
Sounds like that may be beneficial for both side but that just means it won’t happen.
I think system we have now is as good as it’s gonna get anytime soon.
I believe the claims signature is required on the 1696. So the options are attestation or paper form. We have to call and verify electronic signatures so that’s not a time savings. In fact, that’s a hurdle.
But sometimes a candle is the exact light source you need.
There are so many ways SSA could improve IT systems to enable attorneys to more work for them. The 1696 process cited above is a prime example. Simplify the appointemnt process too.
Just having more interoperable systems between different parts of agency would help tremendously. I am dealing with a case that was approved in March of this year--my clinet still has not been paid becuase the local FO did not notify the national payment cetner that she is not collecting SSI. Why in the heck is this even necessary? She did not even apply for title 16 benefits, but now her payment is being held up for months (partly b/c the FO provided us misinformation when we called intitally to find out what was going on.).
It’s necessarily because the person who took the T2 claim coded it with SSI Windfall involved.
This shouldn’t have been coded if no SSI claim was taken or if it was denied for non-medical reasons.
However, I know from my own office, we are making careless mistakes by the droves because we’re understaffed and the staff we do have is 75% trainees.
Things are being done carelessly by the experienced technicians because of the pressure to push out work. And the work being done by the trainees is either pushed through wrong just to move it or it sits and sits and sits until someone has time to review it…which is never.
Simple things like the Windfall coding are just the top of the iceberg. The cumulative effect of all these tiny mistakes is a log jam in the entire process.
I still use Fortran (granted an update from the original, Fortran 90/95, released in the 1990s). I sometimes work with a guy at the National Science Foundation, and he still uses Fortran 77, from the 1970s. Fortran's a good language for number crunching.
The COBOL system (pcom) is much simpler to use than the clunky, crash probe web based program that’s slowly being introduced. Over 30 clicks to change a payee’s telephone for SSI. A LP RZ would take 5 minutes pre-web based, now you’re lucky to get through the basic questions in 5 minutes.
Mock COBOL all you want, but a huge part of the slow crawl at SSA is due to the intros of modern web based programs.
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