Just before Gov. Phil Murphy took office in 2018, a panel of experts sent him an urgent message: Parts of state government were operating on "severely outdated" technology, and within six months his team should identify and begin to fix the "biggest choke points."

The January 2018 report cites Murphy's campaign pledge to raise the state's profile in the innovation economy, and recommends "strengthening and upgrading the state’s technological nervous system" as "a top priority" to getting there.

Now, more than two years later, that same outdated technology is being crushed by the weight of record-setting unemployment claims caused by the coronavirus crisis. Hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans without jobs and in dire need of a financial lifeline are depending on a decades-old system that cannot keep up.

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The state's ongoing public health emergency has Murphy himself publicly lamenting COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that powers multiple state programs, and issuing a call for tech help from volunteers.

A spokesman for the governor deferred questions for this story to the state's information technology office, which said some improvements have been made but provided few details, citing security concerns. A recent audit suggests some upgrades are underway in the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development, but may not be completed until the end of 2021.

The 2018 report was not the first time state officials were alerted to the dated technology, or the first time the state had reached outside its government offices for help.

Four years ago, during the tenure of Gov. Chris Christie, lawmakers investigating citizen complaints about long lines and inefficiencies at motor vehicle offices were told a computer system run by COBOL was partially to blame.

"They don’t even teach this in schools anymore," the former director of the Motor Vehicle Commission told lawmakers in 2016. He said information technology staff "has to bring in people, in many cases it’s individuals who are retired and worked in mainframe environments, to make those changes."

Former Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who led the hearing, said in an interview that he had heard of complaints about outdated technology limiting state programs as early as the 1990s.

“We are a state that likes to pride itself on the innovation economy. We are state in which the transistor and the laser and the Big Bang were all discovered," Wisniewski said. "But we have a computer system that is one notch above stone tablets.”

A known — and growing — risk

The coronavirus's economic impact replaced New Jersey's record-low unemployment rate last year with a record-setting number of claims that keeps besting itself week after week. There is a chorus of complaints from residents about technical difficulties and delays in filing claims and receiving benefits.

"We're working as hard as possible to make it easier given the age of our systems and the unprecedented stress they are under," Murphy said during a briefing on Thursday, encouraging residents to apply online during off-hours to reduce the burden on the system.

At least some benefit programs available through the labor department have relied on COBOL since 1988, according to audits and department records.

In the final days of 2018, the labor department issued a request for ideas to modernize its COBOL-based Disability Automated Benefits System, saying it was outdated. The automated system determines eligibility and pays out claims for temporary disability insurance and family leave insurance. It does not deal with unemployment claims, according to a labor department spokeswoman.

"Although it has been periodically modified since that time, the DABS system and others that interface with it no longer provide the functionality required to deliver services in the most cost efficient manner possible," the request reads. The system "requires frequent re-entry of data to navigate and requires a programming skill set that is on the decline," the request says.

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Fixes have been made and are apparently underway, including within the labor department, but they won't be done in time for New Jerseyans struggling with the economic fallout of the virus.

"The state has invested in a number of projects to bolster and upgrade a number of areas of our technology infrastructure," said Julie Garland Veffer, a spokeswoman for the state Office of Information Technology. Citing security reasons, Veffer said she could not comment in further detail on improvements made across state departments.

One day after New Jersey reported its first case of the coronavirus, the labor commissioner responded to an audit of the state's $422 million temporary disability insurance program, which helps workers who become ill or injured and cannot work.

The audit found that the state did not have an adequate way to track duplicate claims made by people who also sought workers' compensation — state law says you cannot collect both — possibly resulting in more than $2 million in duplicate payments. It also found that the time to process claims fell far short of what is set out in law. For example, state law sets a benchmark that 75% of benefit determinations should be made in less than two weeks. In 2018, just 45% of claims were handled in two weeks, according to the audit.

Those problems were in part due to the aging, COBOL-based Disability Automated Benefits System, Labor Commissioner Robert Asaro-Angelo wrote in a response to the audit findings.

The system is expected to be modernized by the end of 2021, reducing processing times and allowing citizens to see more frequent updates, much as they can track packages for delivery, according to the labor chief's response.

Story continues below the video.

From New Jersey roots to powering state systems

COBOL, which stands for Common Business-Oriented Language, is one of the inventions for which New Jersey can take some credit. When it was created in 1959, most computer manufacturers used their own programming languages to tell their machines what to do, according to the Smithsonian Institution. But COBOL could run on different brands of computers.

One team that tested the language in 1960 was at the RCA 501 Systems Center in Cherry Hill, according to the Smithsonian Institution. They used what were then room-sized computers to translate COBOL into code a computer could read.

By the 1970s, COBOL was the preferred language for commercial use, according to the Smithsonian.

But that faded by the 1990s, and by the Y2K scare at the turn of the millennium other programming languages were more common and more often taught in schools, according to Joseph Steinberg, a technology and cybersecurity consultant who lives in Teaneck.

“There’s 40 years of new products that have come out, which in the technology world might as well be the shift from the dinosaurs to humans," he said. Speaking generally, Steinberg said, systems based on antiquated languages like COBOL can be costly and complicated to replace, as they are often built onto over time.

Murphy has promised to review how the state came to rely on the outdated language. At least one lawmaker said the crashing unemployment system shows New Jersey may soon need to switch from making repairs to making a big investment in replacing information technology infrastructure.

“It’s like a car," said Assemblyman Andrew Zwicker, D-Mercer, who leads the Assembly's Science, Innovation and Technology committee. "At what point do you just go to the repair shop? And what’s the transition point when your mechanic says to you you’re better off getting a different car?”

“If we don’t do something, we will get to that point,” he said.

COBOL is still widely used to process data behind the scenes, especially in the financial sector. More than 95% of ATM transactions and 43% of banking systems rely on COBOL code, according to a 2017 Reuters report. It's unclear how widely used it is in New Jersey.

Veffer, with the state Office of Information Technology, said there are "a number of computer systems across different state agencies" that are entirely or partially written in COBOL. Labor department spokeswoman Angela Delli Santi said the volume of unemployment claims is "manageable," but those that "require human intervention" cause a backlog in processing.

A problem New Jersey is grappling with is not just that COBOL is outdated and overwhelmed, it's that the state doesn't have enough people who know how to use it.

"If you know someone who is proficient in COBOL they likely have more than a few gray hairs on their heads," said Peg Grant, a 61-year-old Nebraska resident who codes in COBOL for an insurance company. "We're seeing them retire, and then the ones that are left have an increased workload.”

Grant heard through a network of programmers on Facebook that New Jersey was in need of help. Though much of her work can be done from home, she noted that many people who know COBOL are at increased risk of developing COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

"COVID-19 seems to be something that causes the over-60 crowd to be at risk, and it’s the over-60 crowd that are proficient in languages such as COBOL, what we’re looking for to help the folks in New Jersey out," she said.

Stacey Barchenger is a reporter in the New Jersey Statehouse. For unlimited access to her work covering New Jersey’s lawmakers and political power structure, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: sbarchenger@gannettnj.com Twitter: @sbarchenger