How the 60-Year-Old IRS Computer System Failed on Tax Day
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
George
My very first job while in college back in 1989, was to work as a -tape monkey- on IBM mainframes. The processes would fire up requests for a numbered tape or a -scratch- ( blank ) tape, we'd load it and close the door. It would unroll the tape into a suciton tube, then reverse blow the tape up to the head, then do the same on the empty reel side, the tape would then spool on and start working. The odd thing, tapes are read-only by default but to make a tape read/write you'd take a plastic ring about 4- diameter and push it into the back of a tape and put it into the machine. The rings where slightly rubbery and would sometime snag on the little write-enable pin in the tape box, bend the pin over and then that tape box would fault as it couldn't be used to write data, call out an IBM engineer at 2am to replace a little metal pin about half inch! Jobs were to throw out busted rings, check racks of thousands of tapes for rings left in place so the tape would be read-only, vaccum the air tubes in the tape machines.
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My very first job while in college back in 1989, was to work as a -tape monkey- on IBM mainframes. The processes would fire up requests for a numbered tape or a -scratch- ( blank ) tape, we'd load it and close the door. It would unroll the tape into a suciton tube, then reverse blow the tape up to the head, then do the same on the empty reel side, the tape would then spool on and start working. The odd thing, tapes are read-only by default but to make a tape read/write you'd take a plastic ring about 4- diameter and push it into the back of a tape and put it into the machine. The rings where slightly rubbery and would sometime snag on the little write-enable pin in the tape box, bend the pin over and then that tape box would fault as it couldn't be used to write data, call out an IBM engineer at 2am to replace a little metal pin about half inch! Jobs were to throw out busted rings, check racks of thousands of tapes for rings left in place so the tape would be read-only, vaccum the air tubes in the tape machines.
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DaSmoools
Well this is a government that also pays some of its officials anywhere between $100, 000 to $400, 000 of the taxpayers hard earned cash for basically treating the US Citizen as a means to an end of their own career and life. US Politics revolves around not what best serves the American People, but what best results in that official's career and life being set up for good. The hell is a single person being paid upto $400, 000 a year for? being a public servant? thats. thats not how a non corrupt system should work. Then again you pay for that road infrastructure to be nice and maintained but is it? nah, likely funneled either into paying those ridiculous paychecks or into paying for something to make your lives even harder, OR paying for the worst developed modern jet to date! F-35, what a wonderful waste of taxpayer money so far.
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Well this is a government that also pays some of its officials anywhere between $100, 000 to $400, 000 of the taxpayers hard earned cash for basically treating the US Citizen as a means to an end of their own career and life. US Politics revolves around not what best serves the American People, but what best results in that official's career and life being set up for good. The hell is a single person being paid upto $400, 000 a year for? being a public servant? thats. thats not how a non corrupt system should work. Then again you pay for that road infrastructure to be nice and maintained but is it? nah, likely funneled either into paying those ridiculous paychecks or into paying for something to make your lives even harder, OR paying for the worst developed modern jet to date! F-35, what a wonderful waste of taxpayer money so far.
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Just
My dad-s company have a similar situation. Literally, they rely on radar machines from the 1940-s. Most of their systems come from the 1950-s and 60s, but lots of 1970-s systems are still in use. It-s honestly incredible. Apparently they are experts at maintaining old hardware, and tend to prefer keeping 1960-s systems running rather than their more modern replacements, as if you break it down enough the 1960-s equipment is simply transistors and switches, and dad-s company are really good at replacing these components to keep it running.
The other day, I received from them a bunch of components from a 1982 286 DOS machine, which had been doing important work for 40 years nearly. It also came from a 2005 monitor. It-s only being replaced now, and I think it might well be being replaced with another 286 rather than a modern PC.
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My dad-s company have a similar situation. Literally, they rely on radar machines from the 1940-s. Most of their systems come from the 1950-s and 60s, but lots of 1970-s systems are still in use. It-s honestly incredible. Apparently they are experts at maintaining old hardware, and tend to prefer keeping 1960-s systems running rather than their more modern replacements, as if you break it down enough the 1960-s equipment is simply transistors and switches, and dad-s company are really good at replacing these components to keep it running.
The other day, I received from them a bunch of components from a 1982 286 DOS machine, which had been doing important work for 40 years nearly. It also came from a 2005 monitor. It-s only being replaced now, and I think it might well be being replaced with another 286 rather than a modern PC.
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Screw
ITs funny because when I do my usual research into orders of magnitude and the histories of when things were implemented technology wise, even other parts of the government are so behind, they were asking google years ago if hundreds of terabytes would be enough to replace their aged systems. Google said no, because a few hundred petabytes, even 2 or 3 hundred would be enough for even the FBi or Cia. When asked if thats what google would use themselve, s they replaied that they accumulated hundreds of petabytes by the late 2000s, slowly needing dozens of exabytes by the end of the next decade just to consolidate and ready themselves for the 2020s, when a few hundred petabytes might eventually not be enough to see them into the 2030s, and so on. Yottabytes on the way in the next few years, less than 10 in theory. lol
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ITs funny because when I do my usual research into orders of magnitude and the histories of when things were implemented technology wise, even other parts of the government are so behind, they were asking google years ago if hundreds of terabytes would be enough to replace their aged systems. Google said no, because a few hundred petabytes, even 2 or 3 hundred would be enough for even the FBi or Cia. When asked if thats what google would use themselve, s they replaied that they accumulated hundreds of petabytes by the late 2000s, slowly needing dozens of exabytes by the end of the next decade just to consolidate and ready themselves for the 2020s, when a few hundred petabytes might eventually not be enough to see them into the 2030s, and so on. Yottabytes on the way in the next few years, less than 10 in theory. lol
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Mike
The upgrade requirements are insanely complex. Forgetting for a moment about upgrading the code, which is a complete rewrite, the data wouldn't even be transferrable! Those systems used a text format called EBCDIC which is not readable on modern systems. To do any work they would need to access prior data after the upgrade. That means all those tapes you saw would need to be translated into ASCII or unicode and stored somewhere. The sorting code that depends on EBCDIC will have to be redesigned. It would be a complete redesign from the ground up including data. This isn't an upgrade, it's a replacement! Millions of lines of code and 100 BILLION tax returns and a billion audits converted! Basically, the IRS will have to be replaced!
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The upgrade requirements are insanely complex. Forgetting for a moment about upgrading the code, which is a complete rewrite, the data wouldn't even be transferrable! Those systems used a text format called EBCDIC which is not readable on modern systems. To do any work they would need to access prior data after the upgrade. That means all those tapes you saw would need to be translated into ASCII or unicode and stored somewhere. The sorting code that depends on EBCDIC will have to be redesigned. It would be a complete redesign from the ground up including data. This isn't an upgrade, it's a replacement! Millions of lines of code and 100 BILLION tax returns and a billion audits converted! Basically, the IRS will have to be replaced!
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CR
Fascinating. How a complete kludge of software built on outdated hardware with software piled up one another on newer hardware using different languages with any changes to the compilers used, not withstanding any querks or -features- in those compilers timelines, all piled on top of each other to create a teetering wobbling mess be made to function at all. Bewilders me. The real heroes are the unmentioned poor sods tasked with the unenviable job of keeping this whole morass working. The best thing for it? Kill it with fire. Start over.
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Fascinating. How a complete kludge of software built on outdated hardware with software piled up one another on newer hardware using different languages with any changes to the compilers used, not withstanding any querks or -features- in those compilers timelines, all piled on top of each other to create a teetering wobbling mess be made to function at all. Bewilders me. The real heroes are the unmentioned poor sods tasked with the unenviable job of keeping this whole morass working. The best thing for it? Kill it with fire. Start over.
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dlarge6502
So basically, the old software and the old data in its old file format work perfectly fine and have done so for decades. Yet the whole system fell over due to a bug in NEW hardware that was not patched because SOMEONE thought it might not be worth doing.
Solution: High availability and redundancy.
Implemented by: Creating a second mirror system that is ready for rollover at a moments notice.
Everyone who has critical systems should be doing this.
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So basically, the old software and the old data in its old file format work perfectly fine and have done so for decades. Yet the whole system fell over due to a bug in NEW hardware that was not patched because SOMEONE thought it might not be worth doing.
Solution: High availability and redundancy.
Implemented by: Creating a second mirror system that is ready for rollover at a moments notice.
Everyone who has critical systems should be doing this.
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Alex
A storage array failing sounds like something that would happen with modern software too. Especially since the hardware in question was only 18 months old. And it was a firmware bug - that sort of thing doesn't happen on old systems because if there was a such a bug, you're more likely to have found it ages ago. So unfortunately that problem validates their decision to continue using the known working software.
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A storage array failing sounds like something that would happen with modern software too. Especially since the hardware in question was only 18 months old. And it was a firmware bug - that sort of thing doesn't happen on old systems because if there was a such a bug, you're more likely to have found it ages ago. So unfortunately that problem validates their decision to continue using the known working software.
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ApolloVIII
Bro. Pateron. Tech Tail. Series. Tier
You get the funding to more of these, its clearly what you love and what die hard LGR nerds enjoy.
We will pay.
I sense that you'd love top do a full documentary and I think you should talk Blake J Harris, the Author of Console Wars.
I know a while a go he wanted to do a doc version of the book and tech tails are mini documentaries.
I can dream.
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Bro. Pateron. Tech Tail. Series. Tier
You get the funding to more of these, its clearly what you love and what die hard LGR nerds enjoy.
We will pay.
I sense that you'd love top do a full documentary and I think you should talk Blake J Harris, the Author of Console Wars.
I know a while a go he wanted to do a doc version of the book and tech tails are mini documentaries.
I can dream.
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Smasheded
Implying that COBOL is the problem is wrong. It is leaps and bound faster than java when working with this amount of data, I heard the reason CADE was cut was because it took 3 days to do the work the COBOL system did overnight on 90's hardware on modern hardware. You could get those speeds with C sure but the gov doesn't want to spend that kind of money when people say they could do it cheaper.
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Implying that COBOL is the problem is wrong. It is leaps and bound faster than java when working with this amount of data, I heard the reason CADE was cut was because it took 3 days to do the work the COBOL system did overnight on 90's hardware on modern hardware. You could get those speeds with C sure but the gov doesn't want to spend that kind of money when people say they could do it cheaper.
reply
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