U.S. Secret Service Uses 1980s Mainframe
February 28th, 2010Via: ABC News:
A classified review of the United States Secret Service’s computer technology found that the agency’s computers were fully operational only 60 percent of the time because of outdated systems and a reliance on a computer mainframe that dates to the 1980s, according to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
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Sources tell ABC News that the Secret Service was so plagued by computer problems that the agency invited the National Security Agency to formally review its information technology systems. The Secret Service’s databases are outdated and users are at times unable to conduct searches from one system to another.
Not necessarily an identical situation, but that has shades of these core computer systems that San Francisco uses, where the whole byzantine operation relies on a keystone fussy administrator w/o whom the whole thing would collapse, http://www.infoworld.com/t/security/terry-childs-admin-gone-rogue-708 or a multimillion school payroll program where it is impossible to export the old database into normal standard software- so index cards would be cheaper. http://thefloridamasochist.blogspot.com/2006/09/payback.html
Over $55 Billion for Black Budget Pentagon Projects alone, but DHS can’t scrape up a enough money to get the Secret Service off of 1980’s style mainframes?
Over 40 mission oriented apps with a 68% performance reliability rating?!
That’s a far cry from the triple-nines which is considered a reasonable level of reliability for most non-mission critical systems and frighteningly distant from the five-nines minimum that you want to see when lives are on the line.
The cynic in me suggests that if something bad were to happen, something which the Secret Service failed to prevent, it would provide ample political impetus to erode even more civil liberties, quash political dissent, and roll out the Domestic Police State with renewed vigor.
So for some people, there’s no downside to an underfunded and operationally hampered Secret Service.