If COBOL is so problematic, why does the US government still use it?

Matthew Busch for The Washington Post via Getty Images Some people think tens of millions of dead people are collecting Social Security checks. That's not true. What's really going on is people don't understand its old, underlying technology. The saga of 150-year-old Social Security recipients is a tale that intertwines aging technology, government systems, and modern misunderstandings by the youthful Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) IT people. At the heart of this story lies COBOL, a programming language that has been Social Security's backbone for decades. COBOL code and arcane standards COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, was developed in the 1950s and has become a critical component of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) IT infrastructure. The SSA maintains over 60 million lines of COBOL code, which powers its core business functions, including processing retirement and disability claims. Also: The best AI for coding in 2025 (and what not to use) One ... Read full article.