[email protected] (Phil Smith III) writes: > "Plans to replace the IMF with a twenty-first-century equivalent known as > CADE (Customer Account Data Engine) have faltered. The transition is now > well behind schedule. As a consequence, the likelihood of a catastrophic > computer failure during tax season increases with every passing year. That > may not pose quite the same danger as an errant missile, but the prospect of > lost refund checks, unnecessary audits, and other errors suggests that the > time has come to bring the IRS into the 21st century." > > Because.of bitrot? C'mon. That graf is just stupid: ain't no catastrophic > failure coming because they're running old, well-tested code. SMH. > > Wow, lattice of coincidence: after I hit SEND but before this went, I got > the following from a friend: > > https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/17/irs-tax-payment-site-down-as-agency-works-to > -resolve-issue.html > > Insider news suggests catastrophic system failure. > > Still not due to the software being old, though!
10-15yrs ago got brought in to look at some of it ... beltway bandits had contracts for modernization projects ... where they had bunch of newly minted graduates that went thru process classes on modern project management and modern programming. There was huge amount of mainframe assembler code that the beltway bandits never got to the point of understanding and the projects failed. however, there was article a decade ago about (mostly) dataprocessing modernization projects where the beltway bandits had realized that they made more money off a series of failures ... not just IRS but many other gov. agencies http://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2007/04/the-success-of-failure/24107/ part of it was beltway bandits and other gov. contractors were being bought up by private-equity companies and were under heavy pressure to cut corners every way possible as passing money up to their owners. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/10/barbarians-capitol-private-equity-public-enemy/ Lou Gerstner, former ceo of ibm, now heads the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based global private equity firm whose 2006 revenues of $87 billion were just a few billion below ibm's. Carlyle has boasted George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and former Secretary of State James Baker III on its employee roster. ... snip ... includes buying beltway bandit that will employee Snowden ... intelligence 70% of budget and over half the people http://www.investingdaily.com/17693/spies-like-us part of it is illegal to use gov. contract money for lobbying congress, however private equity owners don't appear to be any such restrictions (so PE operations could buy up beltway bandits and boost revenue with lobbying). -- virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
