Help wanted with 7 million lines of COBOL

The Railroad Retirement Board is looking to update its legacy IT systems.

Shutterstock image: circuit board.

WHAT: The Railroad Retirement Board wants to upgrade legacy systems

WHY: The nation's network of railroads is probably our ultimate legacy system. Now the Railroad Retirement Board, which manages pensions and retirement benefits for retired railroad workers, is looking to upgrade its legacy IT systems, many of which aren't that far removed from the golden age of rail. According to its fiscal 2016 budget request, the RRB maintains 200 major applications systems in a COBOL-based mainframe environment, consisting of 4,200 custom software programs and about 7 million lines of code. The agency is seeking just over $12 million through fiscal 2017 for major systems reengineering to modernize its applications and retire legacy systems. Eventually, the RRB hopes to have a cloud environment for its workers.

The RRB is hosting an industry day May 21 in its Chicago headquarters to meet with contractors interested in submitting proposals to migrate the agency's legacy mainframe into a Windows-based environment. The project is planned to have two phases -- migrating the mainframe apps to Windows, and redesigning and consolidating those applications where necessary. A full statement of work is due to be published by May 15.

Click here for the agency announcement.