http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/03/22/sinkhole-of-bureaucracy/Yep, no joke, the US government federal retirement system is paper based. And because they needed a metric boatload of space, they put it in a mine. Hence, paperwork mine! The problem is also that there is a hundred years of poorly written laws that are used to make the calculations. So you can have very complex arrays of factors that make modernization difficult. The solution is to scrap the whole thing and start with a complete rewrite. Even better, gradually transition everyone to a new system as the old timers retire and the new kids get the new system. Personally, I'd recommend a 401k or similar.
And shockingly, the two IT projects to modernize it failed spectacularly wasting about $150 million bucks. The article says 95% of large federal government IT projects fail or dramatically underdeliver. I can completely buy it. DISA was a lot better, but mostly because we didn't have to play by the same rules because we fell under some kind of national security exemption.
