The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Wednesday that it has replaced a legacy Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL)-based payroll system with a secure, cloud-based platform.
HHS said the upgrade will reduce administrative burden and allow the department to speed the delivery of reliable services. According to the department, tasks that once took up to six hours can now be completed in minutes through automation.
“This milestone demonstrates that HHS is not only transforming its legacy systems but leading the way for innovation across the federal government,” said HHS Chief Information Officer (CIO) Clark Minor. “By replacing outdated technology and driving collaboration across agencies, we are increasing efficiency, strengthening security, and delivering more reliable, higher-quality services to the American people.”
COBOL is one of the oldest computer programming languages, and systems that rely on it are increasingly costly to maintain due to a shrinking pool of COBOL programmers.
HHS said it coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) over eight months to execute the effort.
In collaboration with the FAA and DFAS, HHS mapped system dependencies and conducted end-to-end testing. HHS led the design, development, and rollout of the new system, incorporating testing results to validate performance and reliability.
HHS said the initiative positions the department to align with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Federal HR 2.0 initiative. Under that initiative, OPM is planning a single, modern Core Human Capital Management (Core HCM) platform.
The announcement follows HHS’s March 31 decision to return department-wide technology leadership roles – including the chief technology officer, chief artificial intelligence officer, and chief data officer – to the Office of the CIO.