What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase.
1 min read
Summary
There are growing fears that the Trump administration’s push to migrate the US Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems off COBOL and onto a more modern programming language such as Java could put benefit payments to more than 65 million Americans at risk.
The project is being organised by Steve Davis, a lieutenant of Elon Musk, and will have a very tight timeframe of a few months.
An SSA technologist warned of the risk of “invisible errors and omissions” in such a hurried project.
This is not the first time the SSA has attempted such a migration, but in 2017 it predicted that it would take five years to complete the modernization.
The project was put on hold due to the pandemic and the subsequent tightening of budgets.
The SSA is currently facing significant cuts after coming under increasing scrutiny from President Trump’s administration.
