Social Security Administration

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is in the process of redesigning its work processes and modernizing its computer systems to better serve a growing beneficiary population and to boost productivity. The agency plans to switch from centralized, mainframe-based computer processing to a client/server processing environment in which its Intelligent Workstation/Local Area Network will serve as the basic automation infrastructure. Software developed for the new client/server systems will be critical to ensuring that the modernized processes will work as intended and achieve the desired productivity outcomes. Software development, however, has been cited by many experts as one of the riskiest and most costly aspects of systems development. SSA recognizes weaknesses in its own software development abilities and has begun taking steps to improve its process for developing software. This report reviews the status of SSA's efforts to improve its software development process.

GAO noted that: (1) SSA has initiated a number of actions to improve its software development capability; (2) among other things, it has: (a) launched a formal software process improvement program and initiated pilot projects to test improved software development processes; (b) acquired the assistance of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) to help it assess the strengths and weaknesses in its current software development processes and to assist in implementing the improvement program; and (c) established a management steering committee and a software engineering process group within the Office of Systems to oversee software process improvement activities; (3) these are positive steps that should help position SSA to improve its software development capability; (4) although these initiatives are under way, SSA has not yet established key elements of its software process improvement program that are needed to measure the progress and success of its improvement efforts; (5) in particular, SSA has not yet defined specific, measurable goals for its software process improvement program or established the baseline data that it will use to assess its progress in achieving these goals; and (6) without this essential information, SSA cannot be assured of the extent to which its improvement efforts will result in the consistent and cost-effective production of high-quality products.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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