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LiberalFighter

(50,504 posts)
Wed May 25, 2016, 02:32 PM May 2016

Huge bill coming due for out-of-date technology

Source: Federal News Radio

“The IT Modernization Fund is a lever for us to change the way we think about how we do IT,” Scott said during the conference. “The longer we wait and the more we sit on our hands, the bigger this problem is likely to get so I think the time is now to do something. I’m open to other suggestions, but I know going out and tin cupping 7,000 different investments or projects to try to fund something or capture savings from somewhere else to start the fund and then to start remediating things is probably not going to have a high probability of success. I feel the urgency of this problem and I know many of you do as well.”

Scott is indirectly responding to Rep. Will Hurd’s (R-Texas) recent comment that the administration should look at taking savings from the data center consolidation effort and applying those savings to fund modernization efforts rather than ask for new appropriations.

Hurd is one of several doubters or skeptics on Capitol Hill when it comes to the IT Modernization Fund. Hurd and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the oversight committee, have been among the most vocal about not wanting to authorize additional money for federal IT.

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“We’re spending money today on stuff that has one-tenth or one-twentieth or one-fiftieth the capacity of what we could be getting for the same money,” he said. “There are systems in the federal government today that run significant capabilities, [but] your iPad has more compute power than some of these platforms. There are cases that it takes 400 to 500 people to support the equivalent of an iPad and it just makes common sense that that is good money after bad and we should stop doing it. Now unfortunately, and this is why ITMF is important, there is a bubble cost. You have to build the new capability before you can get rid of the old. We just can’t cut off government services while we figure it out. We have to keep the old stuff going while we build new capabilities.”


Read more: http://federalnewsradio.com/omb/2016/05/huge-bill-coming-due-date-technology/



I was listening to NPR today and there was mention of floppy disks still being used.

When information technology is outdated it would lead to security risks too.
20 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Huge bill coming due for out-of-date technology (Original Post) LiberalFighter May 2016 OP
Don't forget about vacuum tubes SpankMe May 2016 #1
Eh GummyBearz May 2016 #18
The Feds horrible technology is a thread thru several recent news stories underpants May 2016 #2
As indicated in the OP--Repugs are against funding. riversedge May 2016 #4
Well of course they are underpants May 2016 #6
They'll always been years and years behind. it's the nature of government Blue_Adept May 2016 #3
The silos for Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in Wyoming use 8" floppy disks jakeXT May 2016 #5
Do they even make those floppy disks? LiberalFighter May 2016 #7
They wouldn't need to make them anymore jmowreader May 2016 #9
Remember all the GOP criticism when Obamacare website was overloaded with traffic bucolic_frolic May 2016 #8
Infrastructure is just not noticed. JustABozoOnThisBus May 2016 #11
The reason for all this out-of-date technology is easy to understand jmowreader May 2016 #10
Swipe a few billion off the F35 program... Earth_First May 2016 #12
When my sister was in enginering school in the 60s, she was told Digital was the future... happyslug May 2016 #13
many excellent points GreatGazoo May 2016 #15
The government seems to have a higher standard for contractors milestogo May 2016 #14
By the time Gov writes the Bid Spec One_Life_To_Give May 2016 #16
Government agencies keep sacrificing cash to zombie IT systems, GAO finds bemildred May 2016 #17
not just government. i sell phone and internet services and am no longer shocked dembotoz May 2016 #19
Yeah I know 47of74 May 2016 #20

SpankMe

(2,937 posts)
1. Don't forget about vacuum tubes
Wed May 25, 2016, 02:42 PM
May 2016

When my company started interfacing with USAF Range Safety at Vandenberg AFB in California in 1995, one of the consoles in the chain of components in the system used to blow up rockets in case they veer off course contained vacuum tubes.

Elsewhere in the same room a computer used for testing this command transmitter setup was programmed using a tape with little holes punched in it that was fed through a reader mechanism - basically an upgraded version of punch cards.

Thankfully the Air Force's flight termination command transmitters today are completely modern. But, vacuum tubes and punch tape even in the mid-90's was still pretty shocking.

 

GummyBearz

(2,931 posts)
18. Eh
Thu May 26, 2016, 11:32 AM
May 2016

We were launching satellites with vacuum tube based traveling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) for space applications as late as 2 years ago (as far as I know, I no longer work in that industry). They are quite robust in space based applications due to their radiation hardness as compared to semiconductor amplifiers

underpants

(182,279 posts)
2. The Feds horrible technology is a thread thru several recent news stories
Wed May 25, 2016, 02:44 PM
May 2016

The VA still runs on paper files
Immigration mostly does too
Email servers? So antiquated that the last 3 SOS's have had to use their own severs.
IRS hoax - can only keep 6 months of emails ....AND 1/2 the tax info is kept on magnetic tape
http://gizmodo.com/john-oliver-begs-you-to-forgive-the-irs-and-its-obsolet-1697448403

the Fed Employee data breach

Not a big recent story but the Secret Service still uses a server from the "War Games" era.

underpants

(182,279 posts)
6. Well of course they are
Wed May 25, 2016, 03:18 PM
May 2016

It's the only thing they have left ....other than the media and gerrymandering.

Blue_Adept

(6,384 posts)
3. They'll always been years and years behind. it's the nature of government
Wed May 25, 2016, 02:55 PM
May 2016

which is why I give a partial pass to what Clinton and others have gone through because things move slowly and glacially when it comes to gov and technology. Add in various funding fights, org jockeying and all sorts of other issues with low/no-bid competitions and it's just a mess.

And we see here that Hurd is one of the main reasons that it's a mess.

jakeXT

(10,575 posts)
5. The silos for Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in Wyoming use 8" floppy disks
Wed May 25, 2016, 03:17 PM
May 2016

America just got a reminder that its nuclear arsenal is old and getting older. On last night's 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl met two “missileers” charged with watching over and controlling Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles in Wyoming, and the control room was not what Stahl—or I—expected: There's no “big button,” but there are floppy disks.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/americas-nuclear-arsenal-still-runs-off-floppy-disks

jmowreader

(50,453 posts)
9. They wouldn't need to make them anymore
Wed May 25, 2016, 03:40 PM
May 2016

When a company prepares to stop making an "industrial" product like 8" floppies, they send a letter to their customers: How many do you want before we shut the machine off? I kinda suspect the government has an ammo bunker on an Army base that's got floppy discs stacked floor-to-ceiling.

bucolic_frolic

(42,676 posts)
8. Remember all the GOP criticism when Obamacare website was overloaded with traffic
Wed May 25, 2016, 03:25 PM
May 2016

Now they don't want the government to spend on IT.

Always cutting the deck to suit their goals.

JustABozoOnThisBus

(23,283 posts)
11. Infrastructure is just not noticed.
Wed May 25, 2016, 06:10 PM
May 2016

Computer systems are like bridge girders. As long as it works, nobody wants to know about it. Certainly, nobody wants to update it.

jmowreader

(50,453 posts)
10. The reason for all this out-of-date technology is easy to understand
Wed May 25, 2016, 04:16 PM
May 2016

They only give you so much money, and there are always new things you want to do.

Pretend you're the IT manager for the CIA's Congo department. You have automated the Congolese Interior Ministry desk with a Univac 1100/42, and it's still chugging right along. Your Congolese Finance Ministry desk is still 100-percent paper based, and it sends messages using OCR forms. The Finance Ministry analysts are pleading with you to automate them. One fine day, a huge truck deposits a shiny new IBM 370/141 on your loading dock to replace the 1100/42. It's got enough horsepower to serve either the Interior Ministry desk or the Finance Ministry desk, but not both. Do you (1) upgrade the Interior Ministry Desk's machine and tell the Finance Ministry Desk they have to continue to work on paper, or (2) put the Finance Ministry Desk on the new machine?

Number (2) is the reason we have all this old IT equipment in the government: NO ONE "upgrades" computers in the government. There is always one more department that needs a computer. If your mission outgrows your old computer, your old computer is going to find a home with someone who doesn't have a computer at all.

Earth_First

(14,910 posts)
12. Swipe a few billion off the F35 program...
Wed May 25, 2016, 07:14 PM
May 2016

...or better yet, slash the DoD budget by 10% and fund a whole bunch of shit!

 

happyslug

(14,779 posts)
13. When my sister was in enginering school in the 60s, she was told Digital was the future...
Wed May 25, 2016, 09:44 PM
May 2016
Just because something is old, does not mean it no longer function.


My sister was also told analog was dead and that she would be taught it for historical purposes only, then over the next 40 years all she ran into was analog equipment still being used (an she worked in private enterprise NOT the Government).

The private sector is not that much different from the government, You upgrade the easy stuff, the harder stuff you delay till something better comes along (and when it does, you still wait for something better, till it breaks and you replace it).

I remember my father talking about working for a farmer in the 1930s. He was told to use the horses, for they had to be feed everyday whether they were used or not. The tractor had to be filled with gasoline only when it was used, thus cold sit alone till the horses grew to old to work. In many ways, the old technology is like the horses my father used in the 1930s, good enough to do the job required and given tractors cost money, good enough till the horse became old. When it came time to replace the horse, the farmers replaced the horse with a tractor, for the tractor was more efficient. The problem was, yes tractors were more efficient if you looked from the buying of the tractor and the buying of a horse, then training that horse, but the tractor was NOT more efficient if you have already invested in the horse by buying one and training one. Once the horse was purchased and trained, the only real cost was feed, thus it was NOT cost efficient to replaced trained horses with tractors. On the other hand, it was most cost efficient to buy a tractor new, then to buy a new horse and train the horse.

I have seen this over and over again, is the system working? if the Answer is yes, it is left alone. If something breaks, then you look for replacement. For example the flopping discs running Minuteman Missiles, are they working? the answer is yes, then no need to replace them. Remember those missiles are off the grid, to a degree the system is set up so no one from outside the complex can launch those missiles. Getting the orders to fire has been upgraded, but the system is still set up for manual firing of those missiles (and then by two people at the same time, so that any one person can not fire them). To upgrade that system means to remove the old system and replace it with a "modern system" that has been tested to make sure it can not be connected to the net and fire without human input. Such an upgrade would cost millions and all you have is the same speed and accuracy you have today, for the human check on the system is what is slowing the system down, not that they are using floppy discs.

Thus a lot of these systems are like the Analog system my sister keeps running into (and the horses my father used on farms in the 1930s), they function, they work, they do what is required of them, there is no need replace them.

Just making a comment that just because something is obsolete does not make it bad. For a lot of purposes, typewriters can be more useful than a word processor (a Manual typewriter can still type letters even if all power is loss and the battery backups do not work). Do to what Snowden revealed as to data mining by the NSA, Germany went back to typewriters for various high security papers that they did not want people on the net to be able to obtain.

The second problem is to replace the paper system with a computer system required the system to do two things:

1. Maintain privacy of those records
2. Provide easy access to those people who need those records.

Notice the second requirement is in direct conflict with the first. The more people who have access to the data, the less secure it is. Worse, modern computers put a greater value on access to all of the data then to securing it from outside users. Thus putting the data in the "Cloud" is like publishing in the largest paper of general circulation a generation ago. Millions, if not billions of people will have access to it unless you secure it somehow, and any security immediately includes cutting back access to people who MIGHT need that data.

As to the VA system, that needs a complete overhaul and replacement to do these two things, but you are also talking about the single largest medical provider in the nation. You are NOT talking about replacing millions of records, but billions and trillions of records that affect millions of people. How do you do that AND MAINTAIN PRIVACY? One thing about paper files, only the people who has PHYSICAL access to that file can get at that file. That is one of the most secure way to keep files. How do you duplicate that ability? You have to have very good controls to do so, and that is expensive to develop and operate. I suspect a lot of things are on paper only for that reason. Older computers with no ability to be connected to the net, are also secure from people using the nets to get that data.

The money Congress provided to upgrade technology was aimed more at the VA and other similar government agencies, than replacing floppy disc on minuteman missiles. These system needs to be redesigned from the bottom to the top and that means adopting a system across millions of access points that is both private AND accessible. Any such system will be obsolete the minute it is fully implemented given the huge size of the system. That is something the developers have to accept (and so does Congress). You can not have an up to date system (for example the Defense Department can not be audited for its system is so muddy that it does not know what it is actually spending on what, you have to work on that system for years before you can get an handle on it, and the Defense Department has supposedly been trying to do so since the end of the Cold War in 1989). This will take years to implement and cutting the funding because the VA is using 30 year old computers and paper files is NOT the way to do it.

GreatGazoo

(3,937 posts)
15. many excellent points
Thu May 26, 2016, 02:50 AM
May 2016

there was a study done in 1995 showing that the first 10 years of adopting PCs into the workplace had zero impact on productivity (it increased AFTER that). I think it is always easy to think that newer technology will improve things but there is a semi-hidden uncertainty in any such transition. The promises made by marketing often exceed what the developers would have said. In 1984 there was a commercial for IBM that showed a PC taking complex dictation. As a person speaks the screen instantly transcribes: "Write a letter to Mrs Wright right now..." 30 years later software still can't do that (at least not in real time).

milestogo

(16,829 posts)
14. The government seems to have a higher standard for contractors
Thu May 26, 2016, 02:27 AM
May 2016

than for themselves. I've worked in IT at a DoD contractor and a Medicare processing contractor- and they won the contracts by having a very secure IT structure. Its odd that the federal government is so far out of date.

One_Life_To_Give

(6,036 posts)
16. By the time Gov writes the Bid Spec
Thu May 26, 2016, 10:16 AM
May 2016

By the time Gov writes the Bid Spec the tech is already obsolete. Then it has to be put into the budget voted and approved. Consumer tech updates every 3 to 6 months. There is no way gov can keep up with that rate of change.

bemildred

(90,061 posts)
17. Government agencies keep sacrificing cash to zombie IT systems, GAO finds
Thu May 26, 2016, 10:17 AM
May 2016

Some of the most critical business systems run by US government agencies are older than many of the IT people who support them, written in mainframe assembler code or COBOL. That might not shock or surprise anyone who works in mainframe-centric industries like insurance and finance, where the time-tested reliability of some systems has granted them lives that reach back to the Johnson administration. But a new GAO report has called out some of these systems as being so archaic that they're consuming increasingly larger portions of agencies' IT budgets just for operation and maintenance. As the breach at the Office of Personnel Management demonstrated, old systems are also a security risk—particularly when they've been "updated" with now-unsupported versions of Windows Server and Internet and database components that were end-of-life'd by their creators years ago.

To drive those points home, the report—written by David A. Powner, GAO's Director for Information Technology Management Issues—called out specific legacy systems from multiple agencies that are particularly obsolete, reliant on older programming languages and older computing technology that are no longer supported. To help members of Congress too young to remember them, the report also included an infographic (as show above) to explain what an 8-inch floppy disk was.

Of the top ten oldest systems cited by GAO, six are over 50 years old—and five of the ten oldest systems, all dating from before the 1980s, are not slated to be replaced anytime soon. And it should come as no surprise that the two oldest systems in government are at the Internal Revenue Service, and both will remain in place for some time.

To be fair, the "ages" of these systems represent how long the agencies have been investing in them and not necessarily their technology base. Many of them have had major updates to their components, if not their core code. But for the most part, those that have been updated are still based on more recent—but still obsolete and unsupported—operating systems and software.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/government-agencies-keep-sacrificing-cash-to-zombie-it-systems-gao-finds/

dembotoz

(16,739 posts)
19. not just government. i sell phone and internet services and am no longer shocked
Thu May 26, 2016, 11:39 AM
May 2016

at how old some equipment is.

the trick is getting the old stuff to work with the new stuff.

becoming more interesting....

 

47of74

(18,470 posts)
20. Yeah I know
Thu May 26, 2016, 02:24 PM
May 2016

At one of my previous jobs they were still using DLT IV media and drives for backups when I was there. We were fixing them ourselves because of the difficulty in getting spare parts - they had stopped making new drives that could support the DLT IV tapes a number of years ago. We also had servers that were 15 years old that were not only on their last legs but could barely keep up. Our jobs got quite a bit easier once those servers were finally replaced with modern hardware and software.



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