The Pentagon's Seven Million Lines of Cobol

MrMetlHed writes "A portion of this Reuters article about the Pentagon's inability to manage paying soldiers properly mentions that their payroll program has 'seven million lines of Cobol code that hasn't been updated.' It goes on to mention that the documentation has been lost, and no one really knows how to update it well. In trying to replace the program, the Pentagon spent a billion dollars and wasn't successful."

Everyone's pay get screwed up

[alen]

Army in the 90's
Everyone's pay gets screwed up at least once, then. Uncle Sam takes it back

Mostly minor things like an allowance like jump pay being paid while not on jump status

now there are multitude of pay levels.

[Joe_Dragon]

There is basic pay, plus “entitlements” for everything from serving in a combat zone to housing allowances to re-enlistment bonuses. An individual’s pay can change several times in a day.

likely the old software can't deal with all of that to well.

http://www.informationweek.com/government/state-local/outdated-it-blocks-california-payroll-or/225702383 [informationweek.com]

Re:Cobol is self-documenting

[interval1066]

Far more likely in my opinion that it never existed in the first place, or that at some point they fired everyone, and thus broke the chain of custody.

Being the spouse of some one who works for a Gov. entity (her) AND being in IT (me), its far more likely that the the engineers who created the system(s) have long since retired. Fed workers rarely get 'fired'. And interestingly its more likely that the system was documented to a much higher degree than you would think; there are entire fed. departments devoted to documenting things and creating requirements documents. The problem is once the process is documented and archived, those same sad COBOL systems are used to process the records that describe the location of the documentation

Re:Typical government efficiency...

[cold fjord]

I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but you may have a couple of items swapped.

In 2012, the US federal government spent $3.56 trillion dollars, with revenues of $2.44 trillion, and a deficit of $1.12 trillion.

Entitlement spending was 61.9%, and defense spending was 18.7% (~ $677 billion).

You can find that data here: Federal Spending by the Numbers - 2012 [heritage.org]

You can see the long term trend of defense versus entitlement spending here [heritage.org].

Typical Government Efficiency

[kartaron]

For 33 years the government has been trying to replace the 60 year old air traffic control systems. Three different systems have been tried. The first was a complete write off, meant to be an IBM designed Unix based system, it went overdue by years and billions and was killed off in 1994. http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/The-Ugly-History-of-Tool-Development-at-the-FAA/ [baselinemag.com] The Second named CARTS began in 1996, meant to be a replacement for the aging radar systems the program did replace the older systems in some airports, but again the program was killed for cost overruns and stalled production. http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/tracon-air-traffic-control-modernization-faces-prospect-more-schedule-cost/2013-06-02 [fiercegovernmentit.com] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-31/air-traffic-upgrade-over-budget-facing-delays-report.html [bloomberg.com] In 2003 they revived the project with compartmentalized implementations of an integrated system in order to see short term improvements. The first system, a replacement for CARTS renamed STARS) went in in 2012 and it is costing 60% more than expected, with the remaining systems set to be developed and implemented over the next 13 years. The next system to be implemented, ERAM, is already overdue by 4 years, over budget, and according to FAA reports, subject to critical failures and instability. http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2013/06/nextgen-over-budget-delays-certain-report/http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/eram-continues-undergo-critical-failures/2012-10-02 [airtrafficmanagement.net] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportation_System [wikipedia.org]

Re:Not to shocked

[Areyoukiddingme]

You are correct. And wrong. According to the Reuters article, there were more than 15,000 requirements changes during the lifetime of the project. So you had precisely the right idea. You just underestimated the ability of a bureaucracy to fight back. By an order of magnitude.

And that's what it was, too. Make no mistake, the project failed because a successful software system would reduce the headcount of the DFAS dramatically. That couldn't be allowed to happen, so it was sabotaged by eternal feature creep.

And of course, they started with PeopleSoft, and there's no organization better at absorbing all available money for no return besides the DOD itself. Talk about a match made in hell...