SHARE: GAO’s Mainframe Risk Claims Debunked

The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) 2018 report, “Information Technology: IRS Needs to Take Additional Actions to Address Significant Risks to Tax Processing,” calls into question the viability of the mainframe as the system of record for governmental systems. It also cites a shortage of human resources with critical skills. (View the brief of the GAO report here.) This article highlights a few issues with the report and its assumptions about the mainframe’s viability, and offers some insights into how the government agency’s problems are tied to poor management and could be remedied without transitioning away from their proven reliable and the lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) mainframe architecture when compared to any other platform.

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