World's governments to keep spending to erase technical debt Parts of the commercial world might be saving their money in 2023 with one eye on progress across the economy but the public sector will keep on spending amid continued efforts to reduce technical debt. According to forecasts conjured by the mystics at Gartner, an estimated $588.9 billion will be spent on technology next year …
We can't read computer data from 30 years ago unless we keep spending to update hardware and software. I know people out there, including myself, still have old hardware sitting around. But this is government IT we're talking about. Data on Bernoulli drives for instance (remember them?), you had to migrate = buy something else to store the data on. Perhaps you bought CDs or DVDs, and they too are well into the legacy era. They will still be available and around for years, but they are well on their way out. Hard drives are cheaper today, they say. True. But they still have technical debt.
Meanwhile paper records from 100 years ago, even 500 years ago, are still readable. The cost? Storage, sometimes with specially controlled atmosphere. Dare I say it, perhaps it is about time that more records were kept on acid-free paper instead of computers in the first place. It's less convenient but also has practically zero technical debt.
-> Updating government technology will save taxpayer dollars
That old chestnut. Spend more to save more. But it is still spending.
It's less convenient
Well it is completely unsearchable in any meaningful way. You have to physically go to the document and flip through every single page.
That's one of the reasons we digitize stuff in the first place.
Edit: but also has practically zero technical debt.
Nope. You still need to maintain a catalog of the items, keep it safe from fire and water, and manage all the new documents. Plus paper takes 100x-1000x the cubic feet of digital. That's why microfilm was invented.
Updating government technology will save taxpayer dollars
We're moving from Oracle Forms and Reports. Getting a report correct in both data and layout used to take anywhere from a week to sometimes a month. Now if it takes a week on the new system, it's a surprise. So we've gone from 6 people to 1.
Currently I'm being told by Google that I need to update computers because Chrome etc is going to stop supporting Windows7 - an "upgrade" that will require throwing away all the computers and buying new ones ... so "upgrades" are actually an upgrade to the corporate profits.
Certainly I get a decent upgrade at work moving to Windows 11, when I start work in the morning I can turn the computer on and go and drink a few cups of coffee while it starts up and installs an update. That will require a few more cups of coffee (aka a reboot) I never used to get this much coffee everyday when I was using Windows XP ... once Windows 12 appears I should be able to go out and get breakfast every day while the upgraded computer starts up.
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