Mainframe Mayhem: Here’s Why Government Agencies Need to Pursue Modernization

Many critical government systems were developed in programming languages that are 50+ years old and were never designed to integrate with the internet – and the core of these problems exist in the architecture of their mainframes. In this article, Brandon Edenfield, managing director, app modernization at Modern Systems, advocates modernization to solve this problem.

For decades, the government sector has avoided widespread legacy system modernization, heavily relying on outdated technology to fulfill its ongoing processes. Robust, powerful, and capable of handling complex workloads, there has previously been a minimal incentive for organizations to transform these systems into modernized environments. Many have viewed the task as too risky, costly, and time-consuming to prompt immediate action. 

But in light of COVID-19, the shortcomings of critical government systems have proven detrimental for those who have pushed off modernization. This became further evident in April, when New Jersey’s unemployment system was hit with the sudden influx of claims that put a strain on the entire system and resulted in Governor Phil Murphy calling for programmers fluent in COBOL, the 60-year old language that supports the backend system. It happened again in OregonOpens a new window , when the state’s Employment Department failed to update its legacy systems after years of concern, leaving tens of thousands of jobless Oregonians stranded amidst the pandemic.  

Responding to the Call to Action

These challenges have accelerated mass interest in IT modernization at all levels of government, and have simultaneously condensed expected project timelines from what were typically years to now mere months to complete. In fact, Senate Democrats have pushed to add an additional $1 BillionOpens a new window  to the government’s Technology Modernization Fund to help agencies expedite the modernization process, and address current issues outlinedOpens a new window . These include lack of support for teleworking federal employees, slow claims processing, and increased security risks. 

While this momentum is a step in the right direction and it’s important that the conversation has been brought back to the forefront, many legislators and IT leaders continue to believe that old languages like COBOL are solely to blame for the industry’s issues, and the language itself took quite a bit of heat within the past year because of it. 

But while legacy programming like COBOL was never created with the internet or the cloud in mind, the truth remains that it’s not necessarily the core culprit. Instead, it is the entire architecture of the mainframe it sits on that inhibits innovation and is the barrier for horizontal scalability required for every modern system in the world as well as future integration of new applications and software. Essentially as the pandemic has progressed, the duct tape that has kept these intact is now visibly tearing away. 

Learn More: COVID-19 and Process Automation: Efficiency Guaranteed for Companies in Search of Digital Transformation

Determining the Right Modernization Strategy – and Why It Matters

In order for government enterprises to address this effectively, it’s crucial that they conduct in-depth, automated assessments with experts to help determine the right approach for their modernization project. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and this evaluation will help decide the new target environment and create a realistic roadmap to get there. There are four main tactics organizations can use to do this. 

• The first includes automated refactoring, where procedural codebases are migrated to object-oriented equivalents using specialized tooling fine-tuned by experts. 
• The second is rehosting, where mainframe infrastructure is eliminated, but procedural codebases are retained in a modern computing environment. 
• The third is rewriting, which is much more of an expensive and risky effort, where developers manually recreate the legacy applications from scratch in the desired environment. 
• And the fourth is replacement, where legacy applications are replaced with commercial software solutions. 

All enable companies to update their IT estates, move more of their operations to the cloud, integrate more easily with other applications, and adopt agile application development practices such as DevOps.

Those who choose to avoid modernization, storage, power, and infrastructure maintenance remain incredibly high, and legacy mainframe usage fees will continue to make up a significant component of an organization’s overall IT budget. According to the 2020 Mainframe Modernization Business Barometer Report,Opens a new window those who decide to embark on a modernization project could potentially save around $31 million if they modernize the most urgent aspects of their legacy systems. Many reap these benefits within eight to 18 months. 

By ridding themselves of brittle, complex, and tightly integrated technology, organizations are also much nimbler, more innovative, and productive, and 33% of respondents of the survey said modernization had enabled them to be more reactive to market changes. 

The Department of Work & Pensions in the UK was able to achieve this when they modernized their Job Seeker’s Allowance Payment System (JAPS) application. By re-platforming to a modern operating system, it supported the claimsOpens a new window that rose sharply as a result of COVID-19, immediately improving the working lives of 50,000+ end users, and providing a faster and more responsive service for 18 million UK citizens.

Learn More: IT Is Facing Pressure on Multiple Fronts – Here’s Why

Change on the Horizon

Recent events have completely exposed the underlying weaknesses of government legacy systems and further highlighted why mainframe modernization is paramount moving forward for this industry. While the pandemic was certainly unexpected, any future unforeseen events can further exacerbate these issues, and it’s best to get ahead now before it’s too late. 

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