Distinguished Educator. Tech & Business Professor at Boston College, Textbook Author, Courses on YouTube, Advisor to Student Entrepreneurs
Tech professors, yet another teaching opportunity from DOGE claims. Thousands of social security checks sent to 150 year olds? Well, it turns out that in many iterations of COBOL, the “older than me” programing language on which many government systems are based, missing or corrupted dates default to 1875-01-01. Curiously that’s 150 years ago. Is there waste in government? Absolutely, as you’d find in any large organization. But when you have unskilled auditors drawing conclusions without appropriate domain knowledge, if this were really “run like a business” you’d fire the auditors. If the CEO sanctioned procedures that compromised security, the CEO would be forced out. Think what happened after breaches like Target and Equifax.
John Gallaugher, strategic system modernization remains crucial, yet we must acknowledge the complexity behind legacy infrastructure challenges. how can we effectively bridge this gap?
Distinguished Educator. Tech & Business Professor at Boston College, Textbook Author, Courses on YouTube, Advisor to Student Entrepreneurs
1moLinkedIn trolls but there’s a good block & delete feature here. Have had multiple randos post lie responses. Some more important info: there’s a 115 year old presumed dead clause in social security https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0202602578 the willingness of some to consume mflat out lies is such a threat to science, policy, democracy. Some more info on the topic in the AP link - again the claims are demonstrably false. And if you were a journo who found it was true, it’s a career-making investigative scoop. The penchant for lying really hurts those trying to find the true balance between free markets and society-protecting regulation. Having an untrustworthy broker on one side really sets back the back and forth balance we’ve seen in a state like (gasp) Blue Massachusetts, which has regularly sent Republicans governors to the state house. That balance has likely kept us an innovation hub while also fueling our US leading schools, health care, and so much more. I fear we’ve lost this balance for a generation due to a willingness to push flat out lies. https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased-false-claims-doge-ed2885f5769f368853ac3615b4852cf7