COBOL

At last Congress goes along with an IT modernizing revolving fund … but the horses mostly stay away from the trough.

The Technology Modernization Fund doesn’t appear aimed at helping agencies replace legacy systems, as the name implies.

Sean Brune, chief program officer for IT modernization, said the Social Security Administration’s modernization efforts aim to update software’s programming language and improve systems already used by the public.

Modernization can mean a lot of things, even if you keep your COBOL systems.

COBOL itself, while expensive and increasingly difficult to maintain, stands as the proxy for the actual modernization difficulties.

Applicants, especially students, want jobs they’re excited about and will enjoy doing, and they want to be nicely compensated for it. Well, duh.

Vendors chide the government for keeping programs running that were coded in COBOL. But there’s still life in the market of this much maligned language.

Carolyn Watts Colvin, the nominee to be Social Security Administration commissioner, vowed to Senate lawmakers to soothe turbulent relations between the agency and its labor unions. Colvin also said she plans to tackle troubled IT systems that still run COBOL.

The National Academy of Public Administration says the Social Security Administration is not ready for the challenges of the future. NAPA says shrinking budgets, retiring workers and rapidly changing technology are all issues that need to be addressed in the next 15 years.

Ram Murthy, the RRB chief information officer, is following a four-year IT enterprise roadmap to modernize his agency’s back-office systems. January 30, 2014