An Unexpected Consequence of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Black Swan events, such as the COVID-19, have numerous unexpected consequences. One such observation, a shortage of COBOL programmers. There have been a series of recent newspaper articles concerning this shortage, now implying that this shortage is a crises. Actually, this shortage has been widely known for many years; but because we were not suffering from a black swan event at the time, the issue was largely ignored.

What captured my attention, was the Verge COVID-19 related article: "Unemployment checks are being held up by a coding language almost nobody knows". In that article, the vacuous statement is made: "States have been starved of modernization funding for years". 

Regretfully, "starving" programs with little public visibility is what governments do, as there is minimal interest in helping them until there is a crisis. This is similar to what happened to the US Army Corps of Engineers with its levee maintenance programs. Funds (over the years) were reallocated to other (manufactured) "crises" that would provide government leaders with media coverage and high visibility. That was until, Hurricane Katrina occurred. Then the hysterical hyperbolic finger-pointing began, demanding to know why the allocated funds "disappeared".

The Verge article goes on to whimsically state: "Without additional funding from the federal government, it’s difficult for states to modernize their COBOL code and invest in hardware that can withstand the mounting number of unemployment requests they’re receiving this year.". Missing from the Verge's article is an acknowledgement that it is the obligation of state governors to provide adequate funding for state programs, such as maintaining COBOL dependent systems. Consequently, the Verge should be pointing the finger-of-blame at the state governors for not providing adequate resources.