From COBOL To Crisis? DOGE's Plan To Rewrite Social Security's Code In Months Sparks Fears Of Payment Disruptions

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DOGE has outlined a connection to regenerate the halfway programming of the SSA, which has been moving connected COBOL—a connection created successful the precocious 1950s. According to WIRED, DOGE's squad is pushing to implicit this modulation successful conscionable a substance of months. This connection is raising reddish flags crossed the tech community. Modernizing specified a monolithic strategy is already a monumental task, but attempting to bash truthful successful specified a compressed timeframe could pb to costly errors.

Many critics of the SSA's infrastructure constituent to its reliance connected COBOL, which, contempt its age, remains a workhorse for galore fiscal systems. According to Reuters, COBOL is inactive wide utilized to process 95% of ATM transactions worldwide. The programming language’s longevity is simply a testament to its stableness and efficiency, peculiarly erstwhile handling ample datasets, specified arsenic those needed to cipher and administer Social Security benefits.

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The SSA has relied connected COBOL since its creation. In 2023, the SSA distributed implicit $1.3 trillion successful benefits to 70 cardinal beneficiaries, showing the system’s continued quality to process payments connected a ample scale. Critics are acrophobic that replacing COBOL with a caller programming language, specified arsenic Java, could airs important risks with changes that whitethorn spell unnoticed successful the unreserved to implicit the migration.

One of the astir pressing concerns is the anticipation of outgo errors oregon strategy outages. The SSA handles an tremendous measurement of fiscal transactions each year—840 cardinal to beryllium exact. Small discrepancies successful calculations could effect successful catastrophic errors. A erstwhile SSA technologist told WIRED that COBOL processes decimal values otherwise than newer languages similar Java, meaning that adjacent a insignificant mistake could pb to incorrect payments for recipients, further straining an already analyzable system.