'Red-rated' legacy IT gets refresh in UK as US battles theirs with bills
- Reference: 1654866007
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/10/uk_government_legacy_systems/
- Source link:
In a [1]policy paper released yesterday, the Central Digital & Data Office (CDDO) said the costly issue of technical debt had been allowed to build up over multiple financial cycles and was now a barrier to the delivery of policy and services.
In the US, according to a [2]report by the Government Accountability Office , the government spent over $100bn in fiscal 2021 on IT.
[3]
Most of it was for operating and maintaining existing tech, including legacy systems. The GAO analyzed 65 federal legacy systems, and identified the country's Social Security Administration (SSA) as having one of the 10 "most critical" high risk legacy systems – and was forced had to rehire retired employees to maintain SSA's COBOL systems in 2016.
[4]
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The systems were eight to 51 years old, with three agencies – the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation – having no documented plans to modernize.
A bipartisan effort earlier this year from US senators Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) is attempting to get the US to bring some transparency to its own legacy goverment IT problem with the [6]Legacy IT Reduction Act of 2022 [PDF].
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The bill is currently before [8]Congress after being introdcued to the Senate in March 2022.
Very experienced CIOs sometimes...aren't listened to because the non-digital leader can't really understand...what the CIO might be telling them about some of the risks and complexity involved
The UK government, meanwhile, is using the current overhaul to judge which chunks of the technology estate are set for a refresh and which will be left to soldier on.
Under the policy's "Mission Four: Efficient, Secure and Sustainable Technology," the CDDO said: "All 'red-rated' legacy systems identified through an agreed cross-government framework will have an agreed remediation plan in place."
We asked the Cabinet Office, which oversees the CDDO, how applications and infrastructure will be red rated. There is likely to be no shortage of candidates.
Chancellor of the Exchequer [9]Rishi Sunak last month blamed legacy IT for his decision not to increase social security payments as inflation hits the highest rate in 30 years.
[10]UK police to spend tens of millions on legacy comms network kit
[11]UK Home Office awards Oracle a deal extension worth tens of millions
[12]UK opens up 'high-potential individual route' for tech worker immigration
[13]Capita to see wave of UK government contracts come to an end by 2025
Another contender is HMRC's Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight (CHIEF) system, which originated in 1994 but had its life extended when the IBM system intended replace it was delayed. The system is set to retire in 2023, so may be outside the scope of the CDDO program.
Last year a report by the [14]National Audit Office found that a legacy ICL-era mainframe, which dates back to the 1980s, was one of the causes behind the failure to pay more than £1 billion ($1.25 billion) in state pensions.
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In March, Yvonne Gallagher, digital director of the public spending watchdog, said problems created by a lack of digital knowledge in senior management extended to managing and migrating from legacy systems. "It means that whilst we have in government a lot of very experienced CIOs, sometimes they just aren't listened to because the non-digital leader can't really understand or fathom what it is that the CIO might be telling them about some of the risks and complexity involved," Gallagher said.
The new CDDO strategy promises that 50 of the most frequently used digital government services will be upgraded by 2025. It said that more than 6,500 senior civil servants would be upskilled through digital boot camps. The strategy would save more than £1 billion ($1.25 billion) by updating old tech and streamlining processes, it said.
Minister Heather Wheeler, Parliamentary undersecretary in the Cabinet Office, said: "This new strategy will put us in lockstep with the private sector, transforming the delivery of key services that people rely on so that they are simpler and faster to use while also cutting costs."
According to [16]Organising for Digital Delivery , an independent report written by the Digital Economy Council [17]last summer , the UK spends half of its $5.832 billion (£4.7 billion) IT spend on "keep the lights on activities" on "outdated systems". ®
Get our [18]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/roadmap-for-digital-and-data-2022-to-2025
[2] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-524t
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YqNqoN5rNPW9yosgOqrCkgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqNqoN5rNPW9yosgOqrCkgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqNqoN5rNPW9yosgOqrCkgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.hassan.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/legacy_it.pdf
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqNqoN5rNPW9yosgOqrCkgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/3897
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/legacy_it_benefits_delay/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/09/uk_police_legacy_airwave_bill/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/07/home_office_oracle_31m/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/01/uk_opens_up_highpotential_individual/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/31/capita_government_contracts_ending/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/22/icl_mainframe_uk_pension_errors/
[15] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqNqoN5rNPW9yosgOqrCkgAAABM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[16] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/organising-for-digital-delivery/organising-for-digital-delivery
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/mckinsey_awarded_3m_8_week_contract/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "The systems were eight to 51 years old"
Ah but this is where you are wrong. If it is not in the public cloud then it is "Legacy" even if it is a month old. The snake-oil salesmen will be hounding directors with presentations and all sorts of scare stories about how their existing systems are "Legacy" and are doomed to fail.
All sorts of improbably savings will be quoted and funky PowerPoint presentations showing have slick everything is.
That is will end in failure, not deliver the improvements, zero savings and cost billions more over the lifetime of the system than on-prem is irrelevant.
It is often said that if a politician's lips are moving, then they are lying.
"They are simpler and faster to use while also cutting costs."
We are talking about major government IT projects here. Sorry, but I simply do not believe you.
50 of the most frequently used digital government services will be upgraded by 2025
So these will all be done over the next three years then? Best of luck with that.
It'll take 12 months to set up the teams, especially as it'll need to be outsourced. Then they expect to analyse the existing business processes and the legacy systems that support them (including finding the non-existent/out of date/contradictory existing documentation), work out how it needs to be done now, code that up, test it and move it all into Prod over the next two years? For 50 of the "most used" systems? With doubtless the usual suspects like Craptia at the wheel?
Maybe I'll come out of retirement. If this is going to happen they will need to be throwing a hell of a lot of money at it.
"Digital Boot Camps"
I will be interested to see whether these "boot camps" can actually get across to these 6500 senior public servants the actual complexity of business-supporting large systems, and the inherent difficulties of both maintaining and replacing them.
Or are they just going to be taught a bit of HTML?
Re: "Digital Boot Camps"
To be effective, the lessons would have to be framed in Latin or Ancient Greek.
"Mission Four: Efficient, Secure and Sustainable Technology"
That was one of the Hartnell Dr Who episodes wasn't it? The one with Zoe lovingly strewn across the Tardis console....
lovingly? no, I meant artfully....
"Or are they just going to be taught a bit of HTML?"
Probably javascript rather than HTML.
"The systems were eight to 51 years old"
That's quite a range to be classified as 'legacy'. One might reasonably question a 50 year old application's relevance given changes in government processes (quite apart from support), but eight years seems a quite short lifetime for taxpayer funded IT. Unless of course a key purpose of our paying taxes is to support vendor revenue streams. it should be possible to implement systems that last much longer than that - as indeed was the case in the mainframe era (which incidentally is not yet over).