Episode 1760 • • 1:35:41 - 1:45:00
1760: Mercenary Spyware
DOGE Department and the US Digital Service COBOL Debate
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly clashing with the United States Digital Service (USDS) over federal data management and legacy systems. A USDS data scientist criticized DOGE's "junior" staffers for not understanding the complexity of 1960s-era COBOL systems used by Social Security. However, proponents of DOGE argue that COBOL is a relatively simple language and that the real issue is the mismanagement of records, such as the thousands of "150-year-old" individuals found in government databases.