WIRED: DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Codebase In Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse

[Wiz Imp]

120. Having worked in state Government for about 35 years on Federal programs

I dealt with many of these systems built in the 60's and 70's, and believe me, they were problematic. Any time a problem came up or say some change in regulations necessitated an update to the computer system, all that could be done was to write in a patch to try to keep it working. After a while, one of these systems might have dozens of patches, meaning if something went wrong it could cause additional problems i other areas of the system.

While I never dealt with a totally catastrophic failure, in 35 years, I had to deal with numerous times where a system failed in some key area. Sometimes those could be fixed in a matter of hours but other times it could be months, meaning workarounds had to be developed to allow for vital operations to continue. Those workaround were usually outside the system, meaning it could complicate processes to do even routine work. And after that, at some point it would still need to be integrated in with the main system.

This is what I meant by unstable systems and it was a very real issue we had to deal with until these systems began to be modernized.