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Given that this was written in 2016, I wonder if these agencies ever successfully migrated to the newer systems? For example, the VA migrating to the new HR sys

by xyst 7y ago

Given that this was written in 2016, I wonder if these agencies ever successfully migrated to the newer systems? For example, the VA migrating to the new HR system by 2017. This is something that has been long overdue. The usage of mainframe technologies from IBM just shows how much power and influence IBM wielded at the time. Personally, I have seen the effects of “big blue” in a company that used IBM tech as their foundation and the increasingly poor attempts to modernize on top of that infrastructure instead of re-writing it. From the management perspective, rewriting code that “already works” seems “unproductive.” This shortsighted perspective that appears to be the standard across the industry has caused billions of dollars of technical debt. Unfortunately, this is not limited to the government sector but also affects the private sector. Hospital systems, airlines, hotels, banks, and many others have at least one system that is reliant on some form of mainframe technology.

linuxftw 7y ago
Often times, these legacy systems were custom built, as far as the applications go. Decades of institutional knowledge that is documented no where, without the application running, no one could replicate it. Couple that with all the other systems that are integrated to read and write from the 'legacy' system. Couple that with the fact that the government has almost no in-house development talent for most agencies. Couple that with the fact that they don't have someone that can understand and articulate the requirements to a vendor. What you end up with is an open-ended pay-as-you-go contract that runs up into the billions. Oops! This field was supposed to be 16 bytes, not 32, so there was an undetected buffer overflow on some down stream system and now your last 6 months of transactions were invalid? Oops, the government didn't specify 16 bytes in the contract, so the fault isn't on the vendor because they have no control over the downstream? Rinse, repeat. It's a real boondoggle out there.
rbanffy 7y ago
> rewriting code that “already works” seems “unproductive.” It is, but you need to make sure there's people qualified to maintain it when you need.
1MachineElf 7y ago
Can confirm VA has several mainframes still in operation. They also have a container working group evaluating kubernetes, and some active cloud deployments. Two extremes in a gargantuan organization.

by xyst 7y ago

linuxftw 7y ago

Often times, these legacy systems were custom built, as far as the applications go. Decades of institutional knowledge that is documented no where, without the application running, no one could replicate it. Couple that with all the other systems that are integrated to read and write from the 'legacy' system. Couple that with the fact that the government has almost no in-house development talent for most agencies. Couple that with the fact that they don't have someone that can understand and articulate the requirements to a vendor. What you end up with is an open-ended pay-as-you-go contract that runs up into the billions. Oops! This field was supposed to be 16 bytes, not 32, so there was an undetected buffer overflow on some down stream system and now your last 6 months of transactions were invalid? Oops, the government didn't specify 16 bytes in the contract, so the fault isn't on the vendor because they have no control over the downstream? Rinse, repeat. It's a real boondoggle out there.

rbanffy 7y ago

> rewriting code that “already works” seems “unproductive.” It is, but you need to make sure there's people qualified to maintain it when you need.

1MachineElf 7y ago

Can confirm VA has several mainframes still in operation. They also have a container working group evaluating kubernetes, and some active cloud deployments. Two extremes in a gargantuan organization.