InformationWeek

January 12, 1998

Social Security Gets It Right

By Edward Cone

ot every federal agency is an IT disaster. One with a good track record on large systems is the Social Security Administration, which has employed sound management to modernize its vast data center and deploy a nationwide network of desktop workstations.

The job is huge: The agency has more than 35 million lines of code, processes more than 25 million transactions per day, and caters to a large number of demanding clients. "Social Security is kind of amazing," says Bill Greenwalt, a staffer for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "They're at the top of the heap for federal systems."

The key to Social Security's success, says Greenwalt: "They got out from under Health and Human Services and started approaching things like a company."

Like an insurance company, to be exact, says Dean Mesterharm, Social Security's deputy commissioner for systems. "We depend on automation and data processing as manufacturing functions," he says.

The Clinger-Cohen Act, the 1996 law that requires federal agencies to appoint CIOs, didn't change much at Social Security because "IT has been seen as a major part of getting the work done here," explains Mesterharm, a 12-year agency veteran. "At many agencies, the tech group is not a major player and is down several layers in the organization, where they are not able to communicate well. Here, systems and automation have had a seat at the table." Specifically, the agency's deputies from other areas provide business perspective and play a part in IT acquisitions.

Also, Social Security has adopted a conservative approach to modernization, avoiding the mega-project grandiosity that has helped undo many other government programs. "We've never been ones to reinvent the wheel if it's not necessary," says Mesterharm. "We don't believe in chang ing something just because the infrastructure is there. When we see the benefit, we'll do that."

Social Security has also made great progress with its data center, which once required several football fields worth of storage space for more than 500,000 reels of tape. Now the agency has reduced its dependence on mainframes, converting some 80 applications to Windows NT servers, and reduced access time for important records to 30 seconds from several minutes.

Social Security is also about halfway through a $280 million rollout of some 60,000 workstations to 1,400 offices. It's also upgrading the communications network. "We're on budget, and the timing is going along fine," says Mesterharm. "We got the funding after discussing our projects with the General Accounting Office and congressional staffs."

Summing up the agency's IT success, Mesterharm states a principle obvious to almost anyone outside of Washington, but painfully absent inside the Beltway: "We have a strategic plan."

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