Oregon is recruiting retired computer system developers familiar with both the antiquated coding language COBOL and the state’s unemployment insurance system to help fix ongoing problems with the Reagan era technology.

Two recent retirees have already returned to the Employment Department, bringing the agency’s total number of COBOL proficient developers to eight, and two more will return to service soon, state spokesman Matt Shelby wrote in an email Wednesday. Shelby responded to questions The Oregonian/OregonLive originally directed to state Chief Information Officer Terrence Woods.

Problems with the aged computer system have undermined Oregon’s ability to blunt the economic effects of the coronavirus response. For example, it erroneously told laid-off workers that they had to restart their benefits claims. And state leaders initially said Oregon would not waive the one-week benefits waiting period as approved by Congress because doing so would require “thousands of hours reprogramming.”

The Oregonian/OregonLive calculated that given the temporary additional $600 per week unemployment payments Congress authorized, Oregon’s decision not to waive the waiting week could cost laid-off workers more than $100 million. Following that news report and a letter from the state’s Congressional delegation, Gov. Kate Brown said the state would ultimately waive the one-week waiting period, although it remains unclear when that will happen for all laid-off Oregonians.

State officials have known for years they needed to replace the unemployment insurance computer systems, and Oregon received $86 million to do so as part of Congress’ 2009 recovery package for the Great Recession. But for reasons including leadership turnover and the idea that it would be easier to proceed after the recession, the replacement project did not start until early 2016. The state now estimates it will complete the project in 2025.

In late 2015, a state audit highlighted the project delays and pointed to problems with the 1990s computer systems, including that years of programming had been poorly documented and staff had to manually identify and fix many errors. Such workarounds “may be difficult to execute in the event of an economic downturn, since Employment may not have the additional staffing required to handle the increased volume and complexity of errors,” auditors wrote.

Oregon is not the only state bringing back retirees to work on COBOL-based mainframe unemployment systems as they buckle under the influx of claims and federal program changes. News reports have described older developers across the nation stepping up to help and a Texas group called COBOL Cowboys has gained attention for helping to connect experienced programmers with agencies in need.

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In Oregon, Shelby said the best option is for the state to rehire people with direct experience working on the Employment Department system because proficiency in the coding language is not enough: They need to know the ins-and-outs of the state’s legacy system, plus the agency’s business and operational needs.

“Bringing folks in with COBOL knowledge but no agency knowledge would actually take resources away from implementation — schooling up newcomers on the specifics of the (unemployment insurance) program,” Shelby wrote.

For now, the Employment Department “is attempting to maintain the team to meet expected demand, but there’s no need to grow it significantly,” Shelby wrote. “Once the COVID situation stabilizes and things return to normal, the COBOL team will naturally contract through retirements over time … They do have mainframe applications that are not in scope for the modernization program, so they will not eliminate all COBOL code, but it will be a much smaller footprint post-modernization.”

-- Hillary Borrud; hborrud@oregonian.com; @hborrud

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