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The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

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Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#121

Post by epmaybe »

woobar wrote: post #95
jacquesm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small contracts are an entirely different matter. Try bagging something >> $1M or defense related. I've worked for the government on small jobs here in the EU a couple of times, as long as you stay below a certain amount you can bypass a ton of requirements. But once you go above that threshold the number of players drops very rapidly and there is no escaping the formal process. If you are capable of selling large co…

Here is one of the two young entrepreneurs (19 and 23 years old) that secured ~$300M DoD contract. So obviously, it is not as bad. ;) In 2005, Packouz (23 years old at the time) joined Efraim Diveroli (19 years old at the time) in Diveroli's arms company AEY Inc. By the end of 2006, the company had won 149 contracts worth around $10.5 million.[1] In early 2007, AEY secured a nearly $300 million U.S. government contra…

since nobody mentioned already, there is an enjoyable film that was recently made about these two individuals called "War Dogs".

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#122

Post by [deleted] »

aninteger wrote: post #73
jimrandomh wrote: post #8

> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform…

$103k-$134k sounds very market rate to me... Maybe not for the San Francisco Bay Area but for areas outside of that it seems fine.

[deleted]

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#124

Post by tytytytytytytyt »

jmclnx wrote: post #123

Well, I guess once the system is rewritten, we will not get our refunds until 3 years later. I wonder if I get 2x by expected refund the IRS can come at me to claim the extra amount :)

Wow, that joke would have been hilarious back in 2000.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#125

Post by lazaroclapp »

TimJYoung wrote: post #7

Wow, what a cool project to work on: working out the logic flows in assembler and breaking them out so that they can be translated into a higher-level language. I've always thought that this type of government work should be open to bids from anyone . If the government is worried about trojans, malware, etc., then they can easily hire an auditor to audit the code and vouch for its authenticity. The fact that only ver…

> If the government is worried about trojans, malware, etc., then they can easily hire an auditor to audit the code and vouch for its authenticity.

Not that I disagree with the general idea of democratizing this sort of big government contract, but, well, this is a much bigger hurdle than you are making it sound like. Audits can be good at finding unintentional flaws, but a skilled adversary can often create code that looks safe, but in fact, isn't. Consider the underhanded C contest: http://www.underhanded-c.org/

On a personal note: I once worked on a large research project for detecting malicious behavior on Android apps, where the idea was to produce tooling to find underhanded/undocumented behavior automatically. The project had a red team. By the final rounds, we were getting code from them where the malicious functionality was extremely hard to find via either tooling or manual inspection. Keep in mind these were simple programs, rarely over 10k lines of code, written in Java which is a remarkably transparent language to read, and that we were allowed to ban features like reflection or raise the alarm on anything that looked like intentionally obfuscated code. Additionally, we knew each of those programs had malware in them. Reporting 'clean' was often just saying 'you win, we give up, couldn't find it after staring at this 2k lines file for a week'.

In theory, when working with a large contractor, you can put controls on how the software is built, not just the final code, and you can hold them accountable for backdoors discovered long after the fact. Now, not saying this always works that way, but it might still be better than accepting a system built by someone you only know from their Github handle and who might or might not live within your jurisdiction. The state of the art in software verification would need to change a great deal before that is a good idea.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#126

Post by etrevino »

vkou wrote: post #113
evilduck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not a single "federal employee medical plan", there's a set of insurance plan choices like most large employers and you choose what level of risk/deductible and coverage you want for what you're willing to pay. Standard Flex Savings and Health Savings plans are also available. AFAIK you're eligible to sign up on day one of employment just like most employers. My wife is a fed, last year the government contrib…

So, your medical plan evaporates the moment you stop working for most federal agencies? Just like my private employer's medical plan? And guaranteed pensions are no longer a thing? What is left as a justification for below-market salaries? Employment opportunities in government-dominated towns (which do not have healthy private-sector economies), and more job security?

> So, your medical plan evaporates the moment you stop working for most federal agencies? Just like my private employer's medical plan?

Yes.

>And guaranteed pensions are no longer a thing?

They pitch it as a three legged stool: social security, your 401k, and then a pension that pays out according to a formula (the amount you get in a year is calculated somewhat like pension := (1% of the average salary of the three highest paid contiguous years of service) * number of years of service, up to 20 (after 20 years the percentage goes down). Between the three legs of the stool you can probably get to about 60% of your income, which is supposed to be reasonable for retirement.

> What is left as a justification for below-market salaries? Employment opportunities in government-dominated towns (which do not have healthy private-sector economies), and more job security?

The salary isn't at all bad. For some specialties it's below market, but for the average joe it's pretty decent. But it's worth noting that, for me, the job security is key. I've made more money contracting, but contracts end, sometimes abruptly, and the peace of mind you get from having security is very valuable.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#127

Post by wtf_is_up »

vkou wrote: post #113
evilduck wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not a single "federal employee medical plan", there's a set of insurance plan choices like most large employers and you choose what level of risk/deductible and coverage you want for what you're willing to pay. Standard Flex Savings and Health Savings plans are also available. AFAIK you're eligible to sign up on day one of employment just like most employers. My wife is a fed, last year the government contrib…

So, your medical plan evaporates the moment you stop working for most federal agencies? Just like my private employer's medical plan? And guaranteed pensions are no longer a thing? What is left as a justification for below-market salaries? Employment opportunities in government-dominated towns (which do not have healthy private-sector economies), and more job security?

The justification for below-market salaries is that you aren't expected to actually produce anything and are almost impossible to terminate unless you commit fraud or harassment. This comes from first hand experience as a federal engineer for almost a decade.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#128

Post by dragonwriter »

ww520 wrote: post #84
makmanalp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nail down all the functionality the assembly program This often proves to be much harder than expected which is /why/ people almost never touch systems like this where the creators are long gone

It's the most difficult part of the project. However, nailing down the functionality upfront separates a successful project from a failed one. The implementation is the easy part. The functionality documentation will provide great value beyond this project. I assume this assembly program does the tax calculation, so the IRS tax code can be consulted to verify the functionality. Functional tests can be written against…

> It's the most difficult part of the project. However, nailing down the functionality upfront separates a successful project from a failed one.

Yes, in that projects which try to reimplement large existing systems from the ground up by nailing down the requirements and working from there, almost invariably fail (even if they formally “succeed” in the sense of being accepted and then facing years of remediation.)

You always want to do a Ship of Theseus replacement rather than all-at-once, if possible, and finding a way to lift-and-shift the existing implementation to a platform that supports the way you'd like to replace thing in the long term is a way of getting as close as possible to that when you can't practically do it directly.

Re: The IRS’s Effort to Convert Its Assembly Codebase to Java

#130

Post by snowwrestler »

abtinf wrote: post #32
jimrandomh wrote: post #8

> Wang was working under streamlined critical pay authority the agency has had since its landmark 1998 restructuring. It gave the IRS 40 slots under which it could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates. Former Commissioner John Koskinen pointed out Congress did not re-up this authority in 2013, despite his entreaties to former Congressman Jason Chaffetz’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform…

The actual federal pay schedules are here: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... The GS-15 range for the DC area is $135k-164k. For federal government employees, salary only represents about half of their total compensation, which includes a lifetime inflation adjusted pension and medical benefits.

> For federal government employees, salary only represents about half of their total compensation, which includes a lifetime inflation adjusted pension and medical benefits.

A relative of mine has been a federal employee for over a decade and gets neither of those. She has a TSP (like a government 401k) and that's it.

Maybe some federal employees got something like this at some point, but it's very misleading to just drop that into conversation like it's true across the board.

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