FAA Computer Crash Signals More of the Same?

Could the causes of an air-traffic-control computer system crash last week, which delayed flights for hours, be a harbinger for what other government agencies with antiquated systems (which is almost every agency) could be facing in the future?

The computer in question is a 1988 mainframe called the National Aerospace Data Interchange Network. Air traffic controllers use the internal system to obtain thousands of flight plans a day from pilots. The controllers use the plans to manage the nation's air traffic. When part of the system based in Atlanta started malfunctioning, the FAA rerouted much of the data to another system in Salt Lake City, which overloaded that system.

David Spero, a regional vice president for Professional Airways Systems Specialists, the union that represents FAA technical workers, told the Associated Press that the system went down for two reasons: The FAA has been slow to replace the nearly 20-year-old system, and few computer specialists have the training needed to know how to repair the outdated technology.

That sounds like an explanation that can be applied to just about any government agency. Stories abound about the Cobol-based systems that the government still relies on every day. The computer programmers who know the computer language are retiring and not many are left in government with that skill set if anything goes wrong. How many more events like the one the FAA went through last week will occur at other agencies in the years ahead?