A master database of taxpayer account information used by the Department of Treasury is stored on technology that is more than a half-century-old, according to an audit released by a federal watchdog.
That’s just one example noted in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report disclosed Wednesday on aging information technology systems still in use by federal agencies.
GAO warned that such IT systems are growing increasingly obsolete, less secure, and more costly to maintain.
Included among the aging infrastructure is a 53-year-old IBM computing system used by the Pentagon to coordinate its nuclear forces. The setup still requires the use of 8-inch floppy disks.
“In comparison, a single modern flash drive can contain data from the equivalent of more than 3.2 million floppy disks,” GAO added in a footnote.
While the Defense Department did report firm plans to update this system by the end of fiscal year 2017, the same can’t be said of a number of other agencies using antiquated technology.
Treasury stated that while it has “general plans” to replace its 56-year-old individual and business taxpayers databases, there is “no firm date associated with the transition.”
There’s also no time frame to replace a 51-year-old IT system in use by the Department of Veterans Affairs to track benefit claims and dates of death.
GAO noted that in some instances, vendors don’t offer support for the old systems, “creating security vulnerabilities and additional costs.”
That forces agencies to pay higher salaries for staff or contractors that possess the specific knowledge necessary to maintain the outdated computers.
The spiraling costs of tinkering with old computers has depleted funding that was supposed to be used to modernize the federal tech components.
In 2015, the government spent 75 percent of its IT budget on operations and maintenance (O&M) of mostly aging systems. Between 2010 and 2017, annual O&M spending steadily increased to over $60 billion a year, while annual investments in “development, modernization, and enhancement activities” dropped by $7.3 billion.
GAO noted that “5,233 of the government’s approximately 7,000 IT investments are spending all of their funds on O&M activities.”
There is legislation pending that could inject some cash in the needed modernizing campaign. In April, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) introduced the Information Technology Modernization Act. The bill would set up a $3 billion fund to upgrade or replace obsolete federal IT systems.
