Friday, February 25, 2011

Social Security IT Department can't be worse than your IT

After the previous post and some real life experience, I just want to say that I know believe IT is the failure of an organization. In this case it is the government.

I was going to file my W-3 forms online. For those non-tax people (My MBA is in International Tax) out there or non-US people, a W-3 form is the version of the W-2 filed with the IRS, Internal (some say infernal) Revenue Service. A W-2 is one's wage statement at the end of the year.

So as I was filing ours the password had expired, so naturally I click on reset password. A nice popup(wish I had screen shot of it) says I will receive my new temporary password, not via email, not on screen, but! Wait, it gets better. It says to let 2 weeks pass before contacting them.

Now the very nice and patient woman who answered my call to the 800 number pointed out that if I file electronically I have till March 31. Only if filing by paper is it due Feb 28.Okay, saved by the bell, but ...huh?!

The site asks me to validate I am me, Social security number, birth date etc. and still doesn't trust me? I have ALL of my company docs so what question could they ask that I can't answer? None. They do not provide an challenge answer system. Today.

The nice woman explained  that there will be a new solution coming to change this in the future. Wanted to ask if this was using Microsoft time or government time, not sure which is shorter. She also let me know that the password I used expires anyway after 90 days. WHAT?! Something I enter once a year has a password expiration and after 90 days? It doesn't even make it to next year? So EVERYONE on Earth who filed this has to wait 2 weeks to get their password in the mail? This is a MASSIVE failure of IT at it's worst.

The President wants to clean up excessive spending, I suggest they look at the Social Security Administration. So we have who knows how many letters, envelopes and postage wasted because someone in IT was overly security minded? Trade off here is what? And to who's benefit?

Talk about not being part of the organizations direction, goals or targets. This is not President Obama's fault, this has been going on for years but in the past, the password used to last 1 year(or so the paperwork I have claimed this a few years ago).

It is not IT that dooms your business always, the crazy paranoid security people also cause the problem to get worse. Did no one in the room at the time not ask, why 90 days if people log in once a year?

On the bright side, what genius thinks we need no IT? So this whole IRS filing online thing would just happen mysteriously and magically because some monkeys on typewriters wrote the code?


  1. Love the rant! I have 15 more examples of futility attempting to deal with government entities both Federal and State as a small business owner.

    Can you imagine what a "Flat Tax" would mean to the U.S.A.? Everyone simply pays 10% (or some percentage) of their total gross income. No deductions. No loop-holes to take advantage of as a responsible business person.
    Accounting firms slashed by 50%. The IRS cut by 66% (that would never happen). Save a lot of trees, get back at least 40 hours per small business person (probably much more) in time wasted dealing with taxes. And of course the money we each pay to accountants.

    We would all save time and money. The government workers would be cut and a lot of accountant would have to find a new job, or become advisers instead of paper-pushers.

  2. @Tom Yes a flat tax would be nice and easy. The downside is of course an entire profession out of work overnight practically. Not really but many.
    I have another post about the processing time to get approved to do government contracts.
    Funny thing is companies are no where near as bad as the government, well not the ones I know. But yet the same problems exist inside, but no one sees it that way.