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Print 18 comment(s) - last by mpjesse.. on Mar 4 at 7:36 PM
SSA will spend $750 million on new IT systems

The U.S. government is rarely accused of being a speedy and efficient organization. The hoards of different governmental agencies are often using technology that would have been retired years ago if it was being used in a commercial organization.

Still many U.S. agencies stumble along on antiquated systems that make Americans wait simply because of the inefficiencies inherit in the many systems. One of the most backlogged and important administrations in America, the Social Security Administration (SSA), is looking to spend millions in stimulus funds to build a better IT system and significantly improve its efficiency.

The SSA now has $1 billion in federal stimulus funds that it plans to use 3/4 of to implement a new data center with a goal of reducing the massive backlog of disability claims and improve overall efficiency. The $750 million data center will be used to store the world's largest repository of digital medical records. The massive repository is expected to grow significantly in the coming years as the baby boomer generation retires and e-health records become standardized.

Currently, the SSA is using a data center that is 30-years-old located in Baltimore. The aging data center is running out of storage space and currently stores over a petabyte of data with terabytes of new data coming in daily. The current data is stored on hard drives and tape backups and includes information on the earnings of over 200 million people and extensive data on 56 million people who are receiving social security benefits.

The SSA is already in the process of building a new backup facility in Durham, North Carolina that will cost $72 million when competed and handle the SSA's critical workload of medical records and other data. However, it will be six months before the center comes on budget and the center won’t be fully functional for an additional 18 months reports InformationWeek.

The stimulus funds will be used to build a new $450 million National Computer Center and an additional $300 million will be spent on hardware and software. $500 million of those funds are coming directly from stimulus funds and the remainder of the cash will come from the SSA's normal budget. The new facility will be built in Baltimore and is expected to be completed in 5 years.

The SSA reports that it will spend an additional $40 million in funds from the stimulus package to replace an antiquated system currently used to process disability claims with a current backlog of 570,000 claims. Currently, only 37% of the claims can be processed without an appeal and they take 100 days to process. Claims that are filed with an appeal can take as long as 850 days to process. InformationWeek reports that the existing system used for the claims uses a processing system called eDib along with 54 different versions of a legacy system programmed in Cobol that differ by state and territory.

The SSA is preparing a request for proposal for a new system that will use a service-oriented architecture that provides a common underpinning and makes updates and maintenance easier. The SSA is also using the stimulus funds to do away with paper records that are faxed or mailed. The new systems will allow medical records to be transmitted digitally and for processing of the records to begin immediately. The new system will receive patient information in under a minute, a huge improvement over the 26 days it now takes to receive records and begin processing claims.


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cant even fathom
By tastyratz on 3/3/2009 8:59:08 AM , Rating: 3
How can equipment that old even be classified as computers? 30 year old data center? I would hope to god it was a typo. might as well be a wall of slide rules and a ladder on wheels.

If this was something we voted on years ago I would have voted for it, running the government is JUST like running a corporation. ROI on IT equipment replacement that old would have made it an obvious choice... I cant fathom the costly amount of labor hours wasted because of that.

5 years to complete though, it will be outdated before they even begin! Even on that level of implementation and consideration of the government, shouldn't they be able to find ways to roll it out faster?




RE: cant even fathom
By rzrshrp on 3/3/2009 9:25:24 AM , Rating: 3
Well the datacenter is just the space. I'm sure the hardware isn't quite that old but behind the times nevertheless.


RE: cant even fathom
By SandmanWN on 3/3/2009 9:54:26 AM , Rating: 2
yeah, seems like a bit of an exaggeration. datacenter = brick walls, really expensive air conditioning, and some generators.


RE: cant even fathom
By tastyratz on 3/3/2009 11:08:32 AM , Rating: 2
Depends:

Brick walls wont decrease processing time from 26 days to under 1 minute.

Maybe there is some construction in there but it sounds to me like some desperately needed hardware


RE: cant even fathom
By Dreifort on 3/3/2009 11:13:58 AM , Rating: 3
Depends on the bricks used in the wall...

Back in 2003, IBM hoped to have built a three-by-three-by-three-brick prototype with a total of 32 terabytes of storage.

The prototype brick system connects each brick to the other using Ethernet networks with a data transmission speed of one gigabit per second, but that version of the technology won't work for actual products because transmission delays, or latencies, are too long.


RE: cant even fathom
By SandmanWN on 3/3/2009 1:15:01 PM , Rating: 2
I would be willing to wager it has nothing to do with the system but rather some damned lazy employees. 850 days to process a claim??? Thats one helluva load time for a browser window! lol

I mean really, the computer does its job in milliseconds. Its the human factor that causes 100-850 day delays.


RE: cant even fathom
By Dreifort on 3/3/2009 1:21:52 PM , Rating: 2
it's called Big Gov't.

And Big Gov't can't rely on a computer to do all their work. It's too reliable and can't be paid a salary.


RE: cant even fathom
By sinful on 3/3/2009 8:49:22 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I would be willing to wager it has nothing to do with the system but rather some damned lazy employees.


You've obviously never had to interact with government computer systems.
Where I work, I tangentially interact with government servers, and it's a mess of ancient technology.
Nothing like entering the exact same data in 3 places only to have it give you some cryptic system error followed by an impossible request ("Press F16 to continue or re-submit your job to the proecessing queue").

Or, even better, after selecting "John Smith", it decides you really wanted to see "Ronald McDonald" for no apparent reason.

Fortunately we only have to work with them tangentially... but I can imagine the nightmare they have to deal with.

Of course, they "save" money by not upgrading, and then wonder why they need 50 people doing data entry.
Any attempt to upgrade is met with the cries "Oh noes the dems will raise yer taxes and make big gubbament to pay for that, elect me and keep our gubberment at teh same efficieny as it was in the 1970's!

Penny wise, dollar dumb...


RE: cant even fathom
By arazok on 3/3/2009 10:39:56 AM , Rating: 2
I couldn’t begin to count the number of companies I have worked with who run their entire billing system on some old 1970’s COBOL system. Big, rich, massive utilities and fortune 500 companies. If you’re an Enbridge customer in Canada, check your bills when you get them. I’m amazed they manage to get a single invoice in the mail.


RE: cant even fathom
By Reclaimer77 on 3/3/2009 3:40:13 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
, running the government is JUST like running a corporation.


Uhhh...

No.


Don't count on it yet
By SnakeBlitzken on 3/3/2009 11:55:40 AM , Rating: 3
Knowing how the federal gov't works, this project will cost 3 times as much and take 4 times as long to complete. It's so hard to build IT systems this large. Requirements get out of hand and circumstances keep changing before the systems can get built.

Where I work, we have programmers maintaining systems that were written before they were born. Everything is being replaced by .Net applications but it's been a nightmare.




RE: Don't count on it yet
By mpjesse on 3/4/2009 7:36:14 PM , Rating: 2
I happen to have some inside info on the DOC (data operations center) that's just been completed in NC. That project didn't run over budget... It is a little bit behind though. Regardless, when it comes to brick and mortar projects with the US Govt, they're rarely over budget. It's all the "research" stuff that the DoD does that ends up being overbudget. GSA is pretty good about projects based in the U.S.


this is a prefect example
By Dreifort on 3/3/2009 10:35:34 AM , Rating: 1
A perfect example of a government controlled company/service.

Now imagine our banks and our healthcare system under their control.... sorry, we've never heard of cancer - come back in 20 yrs when we get around to that file.

Obama: "Change"
The ppl: "yaaaaaayy!"
Obama: "Postitive"
The ppl: "yaaaaay!"
Obama: "Difference"
The ppl: "yaaayyyy!"
Obama: "Gov't run healthcare and banking"
The ppl: "oops, my butt hung up on you."

http://forums.pinstack.com/showthread.php?t=102082




RE: this is a prefect example
By ekv on 3/3/2009 2:42:18 PM , Rating: 2
In the late 90's the IRS was upgrading their computers, and somebody [Rush?] suggested they use Abacus' 8)

Given that Obama has spent 2 Trillion in about 30 days, I'm not sure I want the government "helping" much more.


3 points in the agenda
By iheartzoloft on 3/3/2009 8:52:34 AM , Rating: 2
1. I kept getting images of die hard 4 in my head while reading this entire article.
2. Lets learn from nasa and their lack of updates to our space shuttles. Now we soon wont be able to use existing systems as they have rarely been updated compared to current technology, my phone has several times the processing power of our current shuttles.
3. Something as important as social security for those who legitimately need it, heck yes, update the system... 1 minute from 26 days to upload data.. sheesh.




Thank God
By mvpx02 on 3/3/2009 1:33:01 PM , Rating: 2
I was growing concerned that old technology was hampering the rate at which handouts flowed to the people.

I'm all for taking care of those who ABSOLUTELY NEED it, but an office staffed with 40 apes would be efficient enough to process the claims for cases that legitimately should be receiving government funds.

The SSA's stimulous package would be better spent to demolishing the data center, not replacing it.




By roostitup on 3/4/2009 4:35:32 AM , Rating: 2
It would be nice if they would instead spend the time and money on improving how the SS system works. Maybe I could then count on actually getting my social security benefits later in life.

I understand that there is a need for new computer systems, but this to me seems to be a less important than having a reliable SS system.




$750 million?
By hackedtwice on 3/4/2009 5:06:41 AM , Rating: 2
I do understand that in government things seem to cost considerably more than in the private sector, but does $300 million dollars on a building to house your servers seem excessive to anyone else? Not to mention simply the hardware and software expenses. Let's see, current market price for a terabyte hard drive at newegg is around $100-$130 so a petabyte is 1024 terabytes so 1024x 100= $102,400 per petabyte (let's assume they're not paying taxes), and they'll want redundancy and room to store future info so let's say they buy 20 petabytes worth of storage so that's roughly $2.05million, not an insignificant figure for storage but not $750m for sure.

Then they'll need terminals to work at, I'm sure at this point even systems with atom processors would be like light speed, and hopefully they won't be streaming 1080p video on their lunch break. You can build an atom pc for roughly $250, so multiply that times the number of workers at the SSA, how many of which there are I have no idea, but let's say 10,000, so that's another $2.5mill.

Ok then for software, how about Linux? $0. But of course you have to have special software to access your records so let's pay a software company oh, maybe $4million to write us the software we need.

Also let's say the country's in a financial crisis and we don't need to be spending $300 million on the building, so let's rent a costco size warehouse, or maybe buy one of those prefab steel buildings you see available on late night television.

Total cost = no where near $750million ( even though this is a horribly sloppy example)




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