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IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

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Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#61

Post by mysterydip »

mbell wrote: post #32
johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

The people in the trenches most likely prefer that (I know I did). The problem is convincing the people higher up to spend part of a tight budget (money and manhours) every year without an easily-defined return.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#62

Post by cmiles74 »

js8 wrote: post #56

What kind of hardware was it running on? The article is not very specific about that. (At first I thought that they upgraded IBM mainframe to z14, and that caused the crash, but it's not yet 60 years old.)

While the code is 60 years old, the hardware is modern. According to this article, the component that failed is about 18 months old. When they talk about the software and hardware "no longer being supported", I think they really mean that the original target platforms are only present in the form of emulated software. IBM still supports execution of System/360 software on the System z. [1]

"Overall IRS maintains over 20 million lines of assembly code. These millions of lines of archaic software, and hardware, that is no longer supported become more difficult and costly to maintain each year, and poses significant cybersecurity risks. To IRS’ credit it keeps these old systems running during filing season, but relying on these antiquated systems for our nation’s primary source of revenue is highly risky, meaning that the chance of having a failure during the filing season is continually increasing." - David Powner, director of IT management issues for the Government Accountability Office [0]

"[IRS Chief Information Officer Gina Garza] explained the code for the IMF was written in the 1960s, but the hardware it runs on is modern." [0]

[0] https://federalnewsradio.com/technology-main/2017/10/a-sense...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/50-ye...

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#63

Post by reaperducer »

cptskippy wrote: post #54

I feel like the authors of this article are being very misleading by using broader terms where they could be more specific, like using system where they could instead say software. The IRS isn't running 60 year old hardware, and the failure was in hardware that was just 18 months old. But because the IRS is running software that is 60 years old, the authors can claim the "system" dates back to the 1960s. It's also cl…

It's general reporting by general reporters using general language for the general public. It's not a tech publication.

Joe Lunchbucket doesn't care if it's hardware that failed or software. The system failed. That's what his tax dollars pay for.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#64

Post by dsr_ »

occams_chainsaw wrote: post #53
johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Why wouldn't "the kids of IT today" ever learn that?

Some of them will, by which point they won't be kids.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#65

Post by favorited »

jacquesm wrote: post #35
favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

> Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. Why is that scary? It has decades of real life testing applied to it if there were any obvious bugs they would have been found by now. Assembly is just another language, it is slower to develop in but there are many examples of high level language issues that are at least as scary as what you could do in assembly. In the end…

But it's not something that was written once and has been used as-is for 40 years – it has constantly changed to match the tax code. The IRS has claimed that it is difficult for them to find engineers who can maintain it. After all, they didn't start a major project to port it to Java for no reason.

I also disagree with Mayer's assertions about LOC. In my professional experience, the best ways to avoid bugs are optimizing for clarity as well as continuously grooming your codebase (including modernizing when possible). Obviously the latter is not an option for safety-critical software, and probably not suitable for the tax system either. But in general, those practices have worked better for me than have others.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#66

Post by Lionsion »

johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

> The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money.

This is factually wrong (at least for the most current effort): https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2018/01/ir...

An eight person IRS development team nearly finished building a replacement, but the main developers were hired on a special program to pay them at above-GSA rates, and that program expired before they could put it into production.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#68

Post by Lionsion »

favorited wrote: post #2

Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed. They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

> Fun (scary) fact – significant portions of the IRS tax system is still written in assembly. It's basically the original codebase plus 40 years of additions and patches as the tax code changed.

> They were working on projects to "elevate" it to Java, because it's pretty difficult to maintain it as-is.

Yeah, apparently an eight person IRS development team nearly developed a replacement, but the main developers were hired on a special program to pay them at above-GSA rates, and that program expired before they could put it into production:

https://federalnewsradio.com/tom-temin-commentary/2018/01/ir...

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#69

Post by monocasa »

conanbatt wrote: post #60
monocasa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can stay away from regressive schemes like a flat tax, and have a tax system with a rubberstamp level of UX. That's how it works in most of Europe and could work here. The IRS already has all of the information needed outside of gambling and stocks, and could simply send you forms already filled out for you to sign. H&R Block and TurboTax simply heavily lobby to keep this from happening to keep their business mod…

Whats interesting about the flat taxes is that it makes it hard to avoid at the highest levels, where complex tax structures end up having a very variant level of taxation. Much like corporate taxation is 35%, but google or facebook pay only 11%. Milton Friedman used to say that a flat tax of 15% would be enough to replace the entire scheme of income tax. There is also one major boon: lots of capital is spent on taxe…

First off, the difference between regressive and progressive says nothing about how the taxes are spent. A flat tax is regressive by definition.

Secondly, I'm not a big fan of how you (and quite a few economists) conflate personal and corporate income taxes. It really muddies the water as even questions like "what even is income" is different between the two.

Additionally, flat tax doesn't go well with the left. On the corporate end, exemptions in a lot of ways are the carrot to the sticks of fines and penalties that we use to regulate business (encouraging positive behavior). On the personal end, you greatly increase the tax burden on those least able to bear it, with an increase in benefits being totally orthogonal (most flat tax proposals intend to be revenue neutral). Someone making $25k nearly doubles their tax burden with a 15% flat tax.

Re: IRS’ 60-Year-Old IT System Failed on Tax Day Due to New Hardware

#70

Post by reaperducer »

mbell wrote: post #32
johnklos wrote: post #18

Something that the kids of IT today will never learn: Never replace anything unless the thing doing the replacing is better than the thing being replaced. The IRS' IT "upgrade" is just a huge money grab. Nobody has the slightest interest or desire to do anything properly - they simply want in on that lucrative IRS money. It's like the saying: "Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no ac…

Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date and never get wedged into a nearly impossible situation of having to rewrite 60 year old code (which likely has nothing resembling a test suite nor even a spare piece of compatible hardware to test on).

> Or you can continuously keep your code / systems up to date

Easy to say as a grunt, but businesses (and governments) are run by managers and accountants.

What you describe is upgrading for upgrading's sake. If a system isn't broken, there's no point or financial reason to replace it.

Imagine trying to upgrade a system with incredibly complex data on a BILLION users that has to work 24/7, then deal with massive data influx four times a year plus catastrophic data ingestion one time a year.

And not only take in and sort those records, but validate the data and perform calculations based on rules that change almost monthly, and that sometimes must be applied to years-old data and sometimes not.

Plus, you're dealing with people's money. You don't fuck around with people's money.

It would be easier to merge Facebook and Google's databases.

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