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Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

breakingdefense.com

41–50 of 279 posts

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#41

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

I would love to perform static security code analysis to that code.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#43

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

Start paying 250k a year for cobol developers and the problem fixes itself really fast. That or start migrating the system. Or more likely they keep using it until it completely breaks and then run to the government for a big handout to fix it.

Easy to be irresponsible with other peoples money.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#44

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

Of course, devil's advocate would point out COBOL in 60s was written with a lot more focus on lasting in general. They didn't largely have the same general attitude of 'we iterate quickly with our script kiddies' as is prevalent today.

Not that all software from then was wonderful. Or that COBOL magically guarantees great code.

But, on the flip side, you can't say the code base isn't battle-hardened (to various literal degrees).

* edit: corrected sp

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#45

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

I can imagine a future where new software is, mainly, written by humans while legacy software is maintained by ai.

It can take months for a new developer to understand a legacy code base but an LLM with a big enough context window would be instantly productive.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#46
post #43

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

Start paying 250k a year for cobol developers and the problem fixes itself really fast. That or start migrating the system. Or more likely they keep using it until it completely breaks and then run to the government for a big handout to fix it. Easy to be irresponsible with other peoples money.

Don't they have caps and levels for federal employee salaries? I agree that raising the salary would decrease the issues. I think that they'd need exceptions to account for these increases though.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#47

Why would anyone care about an audit if there are no repercussions?

Why do you say there are no reprocussions? It's a signicant issue in Congress, which writes all of the Department of Defense's checks, oversees them, investigates them, confirms their leaders, and makes laws controlling everything they do.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#48
post #43

Worked with a guy ten years ago that would obsessively read these reports from the Pentagon. Here's a couple of his stories about the matter: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/ and https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-mari... (very old and I apologize for my horrific javascript at the time.) It sounds like nothing has changed. Relevant to this crowd, maybe: "Most of the Cobol code the P…

Start paying 250k a year for cobol developers and the problem fixes itself really fast. That or start migrating the system. Or more likely they keep using it until it completely breaks and then run to the government for a big handout to fix it. Easy to be irresponsible with other peoples money.

Part of the problem is, you tend to need cobol experts to actually have any hope of successfully transitioning to another technology, and if we had enough cobol experts would look at the cost of migrating and say, “who needs to, we have a bunch of cobol developers?”

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start paying 250k a year for cobol developers and the problem fixes itself really fast. That or start migrating the system. Or more likely they keep using it until it completely breaks and then run to the government for a big handout to fix it. Easy to be irresponsible with other peoples money.

Don't they have caps and levels for federal employee salaries? I agree that raising the salary would decrease the issues. I think that they'd need exceptions to account for these increases though.

Yes, but not for contractors. Most software sustainment ultimately ends up in the hands of contractors with government supervision in the form of program offices. Not all, though, many programs are also "organic", primarily or fully staffed by government employees and managed by government employees.

Re: Pentagon fails audit for sixth year in a row

#50
post #4

It's important to understand the history here. Failing the audit isn't necessarily due to some sort of fraud or abuse (although there likely are isolated instances). The problem is that for decades Congress never allocated funds to put proper financial controls in place so naturally the accounting systems are a disconnected jumbled mess. When they started annual audits everyone knew they would fail so that was no sur…

Eisenhower warned this would be a thing and here we are, it's a thing. The best we will ever get is the illusion of spending being under control. It's wild, but whenever a big change occurs there's always smart folks who knew what was going to happen and exactly called it out. Usually as a "ok guys be careful cause X could happen" and X inevitably does.

Equally wild is when "fiscal conservatives" complain about spending, it's only on social programs they disagree with.

Fraud and/or waste should be a subject of concern regardless of the program that experiences it.

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