Uncle Sam Still Using Floppy Disks: An unfunny joke? A silly government IT embarrassment? or A deeper problem for Federal IT?

 A few days ago the New York Times reported on the continued use of floppy disks and CD-ROM in Federal government operations.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/us/politics/slowly-they-modernize-a-federal-agency-that-still-uses-floppy-disks.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131207&_r=0

 Yup, it’s not a joke.  The National Archives continues to receive floppies and CD-ROMS from agencies for publishing items in the Federal Register (FR).  On the one hand the FR has been online to the public in text and PDF formats since 1994, long before most Federal agencies put anything ‘out there’. So it’s not the National Archives that is behind the times, but it is mostly because they are trapped in a ‘lowest-common-denominator’ dilemma of those that provide content for the FR.  It seems that inadequate funding combined with congressional and executive inattention have allowed these small federal fish swim in the backwaters of the Federal IT infrastructure.  It can’t be cheap to maintain capability to create and read outmoded media, nor do the bicycling messenger services or Fedex overnight packages come free.

 This is due, in part to the legislation requiring the Fed Register to continue to accept these now-outdated media.  One might ask “who even has the capability to produce or read floppies”?  The truth lies in the budgets, and perhaps the vision of some of the very small commissions, rulemaking boards, regulatory bodies and others that promulgate the guts of what makes government run and makes the notices and proposed rules of engagement visible to all. 

 When I hear stories about the inadequacy of Federal IT professionals, or contracting problems, or lazy Federal employees…. I try to look deeper for the root causes.  Even as some in Congress rail against bureaucrats, and cheer or bristle at Federal IT problems and failures, the Congressional contribution to the underlying problems cannot be exaggerated.  Are IRS’s problems with modernizing the coded logic in its systems due to its IT weaknesses or is it  the annual changes to the 73,900+ pages of the Tax Code? 

 The hidden hand in many of the most intractable IT issues are buried in the actions and inaction of the Congress more than the lack of vision or ability of any Administration. …. Healthcare.gov notwithstanding.