Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks

[Are_grits_groceries]

WASHINGTON — The technology troubles that plagued the HealthCare.gov website rollout may not have come as a shock to people who work for certain agencies of the government — especially those who still use floppy disks, the cutting-edge technology of the 1980s.

Every day, The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States government, publishes on its website and in a thick booklet around 100 executive orders, proclamations, proposed rule changes and other government notices that federal agencies are mandated to submit for public inspection.

So far, so good.

It turns out, however, that the Federal Register employees who take in the information for publication from across the government still receive some of it on the 3.5-inch plastic storage squares that have become all but obsolete in the United States.

Now government infrastructure experts are hoping that public embarrassments like the HealthCare.gov debacle will prompt a closer look at the government’s technological prowess, especially if it might mean getting rid of floppy disks.

“You’ve got this antiquated system that still works but is not nearly as efficient as it could be,” said Stan Soloway, chief executive of the Professional Services Council, which represents more than 370 government contractors. “Companies that work with the government, whether longstanding or newcomers, are all hamstrung by the same limitations.”
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More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/us/politics/slowly-they-modernize-a-federal-agency-that-still-uses-floppy-disks.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

It's a wonder that the ACA website works at all.
One of the issues nobody is talking about is the procurement process. It is unwieldy to say the least. In addition, politicians try to get their faves a leg up in the process.

The other huge problem are all of the different systems and computers in use. I'll bet if they look there is probably an Eniac in use somewhere and Univacs being given to peons. I wouldn't rule out the use of punch cards in the bowels of one of those government buildings.

[Yavin4]

1. You may have to explain to the kids here what a floppy disk is

Seriously. Most kids won't even know what you're talking about.

[JHB]

4. I'd forgotten that 3.5s were called floppies too...

...since they don't actually flop. The 5 inchers were bendy, and I can only guess about the older, larger ones (8 inch?)

[pipoman]

6. magnetic tapes

Predated 5" floppies iirc...

[JHB]

9. Yes, but that wasn't called "floppies"...

...or is that a bit of tech-trivia I didn't know about?

[RC]

16. Actually the 5 and quarter floppy is newer that the 8 inch floppy.

They are called floppys because of the magnetic disk inside, not the bendy outside. So both the 5 1/4 and the 3 1/2 are properly called floppies.

[pipoman]

17. True

The first floppy (5.25) I remember was on my 8088...

[Aerows]

34. I remember 8" floppies

that were truly floppy, but I was barely able to turn on the computer that used them (because I was unable to reach the button since I was about 10). I've been around computers for a long time. That was a Tandy with an amber monochrome monitor.

[notadmblnd]

39. I remember disks being huge platters (between 12 and 15 inches) sorta like LPs

Some of them were swappable between systems. They ran on old Digital Dec10s and 20s. They had to be washed in a machine every so often and removed them from their unit with what looked like a big cake cover. We would screw it down tight and pull about 6 platters at a time, put it in a machine with some special solution and let it go through the wash cycle.

[Aerows]

41. Way before my time :D

Always neat historical anecdotes in the computer industry, though, thanks for sharing yours!

[drm604]

43. I remember those platter stacks with the plastic cover.

As you say, we'd put the stack in the drive (a separate unit practically as big as the mainframe) and screw it down. However, I don't recall washing them, and I was the system operator. Maybe only some types required washing.

We also had the big vertical standing tape drives like you see in old movies; and punch cards.

And now I do web development, something we had no concept of back then. There was ARPANET (the forerunner of the internet) and email, but those were for military, universities, and some government contractors.

[jmowreader]

53. 300MB CDCs didn't need washing

They did require purging. You put the disc pack in the drive, turned the head motor off, started the spindle motor and let the drive run for 5 to 10 minutes to get the dust off the platters.

I think your DECs needed washing because the oxide flaked off the platters. CDC made them differently.

[notadmblnd]

56. gawd we're getting old.

And I'm not liking it.

[jmowreader]

57. This is how old I am...

In the early 80s my Army unit put in a requisition for a little mainframe we could mount in a truck and take to the woods.

Six weeks later the huge scandal where the Soviet Navy was busted trying to buy a VAX 11/780 to model submarine propellers came to light. The CIA intercepted the package (that computer is the size of a chest freezer and comes in a wood crate), removed the computer, filled the crate with concrete and sent it on its way.

Two weeks later a VAX 11/780 showed up on the division property book officer's loading dock in a refrigerator box. We were positive it was the same VAX.

[NaturalHigh]

31. I worked with those when I was in the Air Force.

All of PCs were pretty up to date, but those big mainframes were dinosaurs.

[CTyankee]

10. All of the papers from my Master's Degree program are on 3.5 floppy discs.

I can't bear to part with them even though I do have lots of paper files with them, too...to be published, of course, upon my death...

What can I tell you...it was one of the happiest experiences of my life. I'm sure my grandchildren just LOVE to hear about that terrific paper I did on "The Transcendent Voice of Emily Dickinson."

[JHB]

14. I recently found an old box of 3.5s. Bought a reader with USB bus to transfer them

Practically an archeological expedition.

[CTyankee]

18. It wasn't that long ago! I started my Masters in the fall of 1998 and finished in the spring

of 2003! But I guess in technology it is light years...

[JHB]

20. Once writable CDs came around, the 3.5's days were numbered

CDs and Zip drives could hold more, and were as easy or easier to use.

And just think: who even uses those anymore?

[CTyankee]

23. Ah, Zip drives we hardly knew ye! You were gone so soon!

[tosh]

13. Yes, the 8" ones were bendy, too.

Those were antiquated even in MY younger days. Mr tosh is saving a few for his future museum along with an IBM 5120.

[jmowreader]

52. The eight-inchers were so floppy you had to put them in with both hands

[Scootaloo]

5. Might want to explain what a babbage engine is and how to work one, instead

...You can do that for us "kids" right, grandpa? Want some coal to get the boiler going?

[GladRagDahl]

2. Oh. Wow.

What else is there to say?

[Rex]

3. Meh, that's not a floppy disk.

Now 5.25 or the big 8 inch diskette...now that was a disk! Made great throwing stars and frisbees.

3.5 is the best legacy money can buy! Should be happy dam them!

[pipoman]

7. Who had the magnetic

Cassette like tape system? The one that the tape wore out in about a week because it had to keep rewinding and fast forwarding?

[Rex]

8. YES!

Had one of those for my C64. Dam thing took 30 minutes to load anything worth my time back then.

EDIT - Always thought the 3.5 should have been called a Rigid Disk...since they hurt a lot worse in house ninja wars in the 80s.

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. Hey, watch that! I was driving a truck for FoMoCo when I saw my first UNIX mini with

a Panasonic tape player load a program and then record the output onto another cassette for me to drop of at another warehouse I was going to. That little scenario radically changed my life.

God, I'm old...

[csziggy]

37. There were programs for my Apple ][ that called for tapes

But it had been upgraded - we had TWO 5 1/4" drives! They were perfect, sitting on the back of the computer and holding the monitor at just the right height. That was a major thing since we could keep a program in one drive and write data to the other one instead of having to swap out floppies as we worked.

And it was an Apple ][, not ][+ or ][e - just ][.

[Le Taz Hot]

49. I actually worked on one of these in 1973.

It was actually a prototype of an early word processing machine (If you remember "Lanier" that will give you an idea). In the office they called it an "automatic typewriter." It was a good idea, BUT, when you had to access an existing file you better hope that file was somewhere near the area of the tape you were currently working in or you'd spend 10 minutes waiting for it to find the correct spot on the tape. I used to complain that, "I could have manually typed this order 6 times by now."

[Xithras]

12. I still have a USB floppy drive and a Zip drive

Just when I think they're finally extinct, a client will walk in to my office and hand me a disk I need to read.

[CTyankee]

15. If you don't have hard copies of your stuff you are SOL...

[Xithras]

19. I have hard copies of my stuff. Still lots of people with floppy libraries though.

If you want to pay me to write some code for you, and you're handing me your data in an obsolete format, I'm going to do my damnedest to read it. I can't tell them to go copy it onto some other device (well, I COULD, but the fact that I bend over backwards for my clients is part of the reason why I have the highest client retention rate at my company). If I have to keep a floppy and a zip drive in a drawer to keep people happy, it's a small price.

[CTyankee]

22. Oh, yes, of course...for you I can see it...I was just thinking about my stuff...

I no longer have the computer capacity to retrieve off of my floppy disks, hence my file folders of all of my Master's Degree coursework...sadly, I can't part with them.

[JHB]

24. It's not the files that are tough, it's the software

A USB external 3.5 disk drive is under 20 bucks. The tricky part is finding what you need to open them because you don't have anything that opens those file types anymore... and when you do, there's version incompatibilities...

[CTyankee]

25. Yeah, I kinda figured that...it's OK, tho...I got over it...

Strangely, I still like my paper files, tho. In particular, my Econ class stuff...it explains a LOT of how we got to where we are in the world of Economics...

[csziggy]

40. I've still got some documents I created with PC Write on an XT clone

Converted them to WordPerfect format when I upgraded and got WP5.1 on the new machine. I should covert all of them to PDF and Word format to keep them usable, but my current WP X6 can still read most of those old format files. Sometimes I run into formatting problems, but WordPerfect is pretty damn good at preserving the old formatting across versions - unlike Word in its many iterations.

Even the databases I made with PC File can be read by most of the modern database/spreadsheet programs. Heck, I can import them into WordPerfect and create tables from most of them since they are mostly Comma Separated Value files.

I guess I was just lucky with my choices of programs to use once I left Apple products in the dust.

On the other hand, we just tossed a pile of 5.25" floppies my Dad had saved from when he had his Commodore. While I might have been able to locate the hardware and software to covert the data, no one has needed it for over 20 years and no one will miss it now.

[Niceguy1]

21. I bet they

are doing it because its policy and the policy hasnt been changed..

[eqfan592]

26. You should see how antiquated some of the equipment we still use in the FAA is. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

28. Do you still use punch cards?

In 1967, Walter Cronkite thought punch cards would still be in use in the 21st century. Maybe he was right?

[eqfan592]

30. LOL! Thankfully, no. :)

But we do use a lot of tech from the 70's and 80's still.

[Art_from_Ark]

32. I wonder if some of the "high-tech" computer stuff in this video looks familiar?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018526553

[Major Nikon]

54. The VORs that establish airways in the National Aerospace System are actually WWII technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHF_omnidirectional_range

[Blue_Tires]

59. I thought the main reason for that was because

you have to account for the "lowest common denominator" of technology of airplanes flying??

[Major Nikon]

62. GPS technology is not required for IFR flight

Cheap handheld GPS devices are not approved for IFR as a primary means of navigation. So if you want to upgrade to GPS, you must go with a certified system which cost around $10,000+. Needless to say there's still a lot of planes out there that are still flying the airways with VOR receivers. I have a certified GPS system in my plane, which means I can fly point to point so long as air traffic control allows it. Sometimes they put you on the airways anyway depending on traffic.

[eqfan592]

61. Yep. They are basically letting a lot of them just fail with no intention of replacing or repairing.

NDB's are still in use in many areas as well.

[Major Nikon]

63. Not for the most part

Some VORs are maintained by municipalities and are really only used to define non-precision approaches. Some of those go down and don't get fixed because the municipality doesn't have the money or desire to repair them. The ones that the FAA maintains are kept in good working order because they define the airways and there's still a lot of planes out there who use them as their primary navigation source. GPS is not 100% reliable either with the network often becoming unreliable and unusable in certain areas. VORs are the only backup. NDBs are going away because mostly municipalities maintain them and they are used to define instrument approaches into certain airports, but with the FAA commissioning so many GPS approaches the cities are decommissioning them. I took the ADF receiver out of my airplane over a decade ago when I got a certified GPS. I never did like NDB approaches anyway.

[eqfan592]

65. There's at least one VOR in our airspace that i know for a fact defines an airway..

...that has been let fail with no intention of repair or replacement. Yes, the municipalities own and operate many of these VOR's, however if the municipality doesn't wish to maintain it or is unable to, the FAA has the option of stepping in. In this case, they declined to do so.

http://www.flyingmag.com/news/faa-plans-major-reduction-vor-coverage?cmpid=010312

[Major Nikon]

68. What area and what VOR?

The FAA does have plans to turn off VORs, which is not surprising as they have been saying this for decades but have yet to decommission a single VOR that I know of. The AOPA, NBAA, and A4A are resisting this effort and even if it does happen the FAA's target date is 2020, which will almost certainly be extended.

http://www.rtca.org/Files/Miscellaneous%20Files/VOR_MON_Prioritization_final.pdf

[eqfan592]

70. I'll PM you the info.

Posting here would give more info about me and where I work than I feel comfortable giving out on this forum.

[Major Nikon]

55. You should see how old some of the stuff in the airplanes are

I know a lot of people who are flying around with 40+ yr old comm and nav radios.

[FMalone]

27. I still use 5 1/4" floppies, as well as 3 1/2" - and ZIP disks too. Archival storage sucks.

[Art_from_Ark]

29. All of my old 3.5" disks have gone bad

All of them. I need to find an environmentally-sound way to dispose of them.

[MineralMan]

64. So did mine. All of the source code for the software

published by my shareware company was on them. They're unreadable now. I even bought a 3.5" drive so I could retrieve the data, but no luck. The disks aren't recognized as valid. Too bad. But, I shut that business down back in 2002 anyhow, so it was more of a nostalgia thing for me, really. Still, there were some programs that I can't find any longer to download, and I miss them.

[Gormy Cuss]

33. A big part of the problem is trying to run government on the cheap.

I worked as a government contractor for years. We always had newer equipment and software than our government clients. In fact, we had to maintain older systems so that we could transfer our work downward to a form compatible with the agency's standards.

[Blue_Tires]

60. It also would surprise me if the supplier of the 3.5 diskettes wasn't making a killing

Since I don't know if there is *any* demand aside from this contract...

[Cerridwen]

35. Bathtub sized government has been implemented since at least reagan

if not sooner.

I'm always amazed people are surprised that the government has been circling the drain for decades, due, in a large part, to the neo-con plan of "starving the beast."

This is what decades of "starving the beast" looks like.

Surprise!

[lpbk2713]

36. I have the Windows 95 Install on 3.5" floppies.

I think it takes up about 25 disks. No idea why I'm hanging on to it.

[jsr]

38. They should ask the NSA for technical support

[AuntFester]

42. Do AOL disks count?

[SheilaT]

44. I don't know about other parts of the federal government,

but back in about 1968, as the whole world was beginning to use computers, some genius in the FAA said, "Spend all that money to LEASE computers? Hah! We'll BUY our computers and then we'll own them. No leasing for us!" So not very many years later the FAA owned obsolete computers that were going to cost a whole lot more money to replace than if they'd leased in the first place.

About ten or so years ago the agency was in a huge crisis because of the 40 year old computers. I'm not certain what ultimately happened, but I guess they solved the problem in some fashion, since airplanes have not been falling out of the sky.

But the basic problem is still there. Making bad decisions about equipment, bad decisions that don't seem to happen in the private sector. I'm not entirely sure why this happens, since I've never been involved in lease or purchase decisions in either the public or private sector, but there's a reason behind what we call government waste.

[Recursion]

46. SABRE still runs on the same systems

This is what I keep telling the young "agile" programmers I manage from time to time: the fact that an idea is better than what exists doesn't mean what exists should be replaced...

[Major Nikon]

50. New complex systems always have problems when first implemented

If the system you have is doing its job and is highly reliable, you'd be foolish to upgrade every 5 years when the technology changes just so you can say you have the latest and greatest technology. There's a lot to be said for tried and true.

[Recursion]

51. Bingo. It's why I use Slackware (nt)

[Major Nikon]

48. The issue was a lot more complicated than that

Up until fairly recently the FAA was married to whatever the military was using because the military was integrated into the National Aerospace System and still is. The difference is now that the FAA drives the technology and the military follows rather than the other way around and systems have since been updated.

[Recursion]

45. Laugh away, but this actually makes sense to me.

A proven delivery mechanism, particularly for Ring 0 components of a system, should not be done away with barring a compelling reason, and "convenience" is not one of those.

[Le Taz Hot]

47. As a fed employee

we aren't quite floppy-disk backwards but you would laugh at the "computers" and programs we have to use in the field. These suckers are ANCIENT. The programs are in monochrome. But like every other gummit agency, we're being starved for money so we're stuck with these dinosaurs which won't be changed out anytime soon.

[badtoworse]

58. 3.5 inch diskettes? I don't think I've used them in 20 years

This explains a lot.

[Puzzledtraveller]

66. Our SNAP and Medicaid app system is DOS based.

It's awful.

[yewberry]

67. I'm a state employee. I do most of my work on paper.

It's kind of a niche position, but I'm responsible for some complex, dynamic systems. I have never had access to any computer-based programs that work for those systems, so I manage with a large series of clipboards.

It's very 1970 in my cubicle.

[Silent3]

69. People should keep this in mind when they think about the NSA

Not to excuse what the NSA has been doing, but they probably aren't nearly as good at finding out so much about you as many people seem to fear.

Of course, doing what they've been doing badly or incompetently comes with its own sets of concerns -- accidental leaks of personal info, going after innocent people as security threats, missing real security threats among the stuff they should have been concentrating on instead of overstepping their bounds, etc.

One thing seems very likely to me, however. The people of the NSA aren't (collectively, at least) mad genius überhackers brilliantly infiltrating any electronic device they want to, breaking every code, decrypting every cipher, intercepting every byte and bit, able to listen at will through every microphone and peer through every camera, even when power is unplugged, the batteries are pulled out, and all of the cables cut.

[treestar]

71. I remember going to a government office in the mid 80s

Some of the workers had manual typewriters! Electric typewriters had taken over completely. Except for the government.