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# DOGE Plans to Rebuild SSA Code Base in Months, Risking Benefits and System Collapse
- URL: https://werd.io/doge-plans-to-rebuild-ssa-code-base-in-months-risking/
- Published: 2025-03-29T13:51:29.000Z
- Updated: 2025-03-29T13:51:29.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: Notable links, #Import 2025-06-11 21:47

\[[Makena Kelly at WIRED](https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/)\]

If you know anything about building software, you know that this is an absurd idea:

> "The so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is starting to put together a team to migrate the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) computer systems entirely off one of its oldest programming languages in a matter of months, potentially putting the integrity of the system—and the benefits on which tens of millions of Americans rely—at risk."

Moving a 60 million line COBOL codebase to another language (be it Java or anything else) is not a small undertaking, and the SSA underpins necessary benefits for millions of Americans. Doing it in months likely requires using something like an LLM - and anyone who's used an LLM to code will tell you that the output is riddled with mistakes and inefficiencies. It's not a workable plan.

Or, as [Dan Hon](https://about.danhon.com/) puts it in the piece:

> “If you weren't worried about a whole bunch of people not getting benefits or getting the wrong benefits, or getting the wrong entitlements, or having to wait ages, then sure go ahead.”

A project like this *should* take years. Most of that isn't coding time: it's analysis, writing the tests, rearchitecting, and putting protections in place to ensure that nobody goes without the benefits they need to live. Doing it as a rush job isn't just incompetence; it's indifference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable neighbors. Which, let's face it, is in keeping with everything else going on.

[#Democracy](https://werd.io/tag/Democracy)

\[[Link](https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/)\]