Legacy Army Payroll Systems Buckle Under Weight of War

摘要

The war in Iraq has helped push antiquated U.S. Army payroll systems past their breaking point, leading to widespread problems for reservists, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report issued this month. So severe are the problems caused by the aging, standalone Cobol-based mainframe systems that the GAO audit found that 95% of 348 mobilized reserve soldiers had at least one payroll problem. The glitches included both overpayments and underpayments, as well as delayed disbursements. Some troops had numerous payroll problems, and it took more than a year to correct some of them.