DOGE plans to rebuild the Social Security Administration COBAL code base in months. Doing so is a danger to benefits and could cause a system collapse. [More inside] (archive.ph)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by InevitableSwing@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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Social Security systems contain tens of millions of lines of code written in COBOL, an archaic programming language. Safely rewriting that code would take years—DOGE wants it done in months.

65 million people in the US currently receive Social Security benefits. They're considering Java as a replacement.

The project is being organized by Elon Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, multiple sources who were not given permission to talk to the media tell WIRED, and aims to migrate all SSA systems off COBOL, one of the first common business-oriented programming languages, and onto a more modern replacement like Java within a scheduled tight timeframe of a few months.

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SSA’s core “logic” is also written largely in COBOL. This is the code that issues social security numbers, manages payments, and even calculates the total amount beneficiaries should receive for different services, a former senior SSA technologist who worked in the office of the chief information officer says. Even minor changes could result in cascading failures across programs.

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[-] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 11 points 4 days ago

Why would you even want to move from COBOL anyway? Why not just train people to learn it despite it's age?

[-] PKMKII@hexbear.net 12 points 4 days ago

This is a bit apples to oranges, but a few years back the DoD transferred their logistics system from COBOL to Java for the following given reasons:

A major component of the system is 54 years old, written in COBOL, and provides retail-level business logic. The component runs on mainframes that have proven to be extremely difficult to change and manage, and the DoD needed to modernize the component to drive down operating costs and move to an open platform, while retaining all functionality...

After 54 years of operations, maintenance, and extensions, the component’s code had become poorly documented. The technical design of the existing system, which was needed to support the modernization effort, had to be derived from the existing system and code.

There’s a sensibility to that; logistics is an area that’s more likely to be interfacing with more modern systems than payments, and if the documentation has become an indecipherable mess, that’s a problem waiting to happen if something goes wrong. Oh, and worth noting that relatively small system took nearly three years to transfer to Java.

However, as I noted, I don’t think any of that is the motivation here, it’s all about placing the SSA system under Musk’s umbrella.

[-] SuperZutsuki@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago

Couldn't the part running on a mainframe be virtualized and run on basically anything at this point?

[-] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 8 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It could, but this only solves the problem of hardware availability and throughput. It does noting with regards to maintenance, system architecture, or adapting the implementation to new requirements imposed either by legislation, policy, or changing technology (or mission creep, in the case of the DoD). You're still stuck with a hundred or so million lines of code which nobody understands.