Government & public sector
The law is in the code. Get it out before you replace the system.
Benefit eligibility, weekly benefit amounts and employer tax rates live in COBOL, Java EE and PL/SQL written by people long gone. PYD ENTERPRISES extracts them into decision tables policy staff can verify, inside the agency's own data center.
pyd rules --domain eligibility,benefits,tax
UI CLAIMS- Monetary eligibility rulesbase period, high quarter, alternate base period
- 184
- Separation and disqualification
- 362
- Benefit amount calculations
- 97
- Employer contribution rate rulesreserve ratio schedules
- 211
- Code vs. policy manual discrepanciesrouted to legal counsel
- 2
sources: Java EE 6 · Struts 1.3 · Oracle PL/SQL
Why agencies modernize
Most of the IT budget keeps old systems running.
GAO reported in 2016 that about three quarters of the federal IT budget went to operating and maintaining existing systems, and state agencies face the same pressure with smaller teams. The systems still work. The difficulty is changing them when a legislature changes the rules.
- of the US federal FY2015 IT budget went to operating and maintaining existing systems
- ~75%
- of the US federal FY2015 IT budget went to operating and maintaining existing systems
- US GAO, GAO-16-468, Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems (May 2016)
- lines of COBOL estimated in daily production use worldwide
- 800B+
- lines of COBOL estimated in daily production use worldwide
- Vanson Bourne survey for Micro Focus, February 2022 (estimate range 775 to 850 billion)
- estimated total cost of poor software quality in the US in 2022
- $2.41T
- estimated total cost of poor software quality in the US in 2022
- CISQ, The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2022 Report
April 2020
When claims spiked, the bottleneck was knowledge, not hardware.
In April 2020, as pandemic layoffs sent unemployment claims to record levels, several US state unemployment insurance systems running COBOL struggled to keep up, and New Jersey publicly asked for volunteers with COBOL experience. Much of the coverage focused on the age of the language. The more durable lesson was about knowledge: agencies needed to change eligibility rules quickly as emergency programs were legislated, and few people could say with confidence where those rules lived in the code.
That is a discovery problem, and it does not wait for a modernization program to start. An agency that has its eligibility, benefit and tax rules extracted, reviewed and linked to source can answer "where does the base period calculation happen?" in minutes, whether the next step is an emergency change to the existing system or a procurement for its replacement.
PYD ENTERPRISES reads the code as it is. It does not judge the language, and it does not need the original developers. It needs read access to source and DDL, and a few days of review time from people who know the policy.
Benefits and tax engines
Eligibility logic, three layers deep.
Examples from an unemployment insurance estate: a PL/SQL eligibility test, a benefit amount calculation and an EJB that sets employer contribution rates.
1FUNCTION is_monetarily_eligible(p_claim_id NUMBER)2 RETURN VARCHAR2 IS3 v_bp_total NUMBER(11,2);4 v_hq_wages NUMBER(11,2);5BEGIN6 SELECT SUM(w.wages), MAX(w.wages)7 INTO v_bp_total, v_hq_wages8 FROM wage_quarter w9 WHERE w.claim_id = p_claim_id10 AND w.in_base_period = 'Y';11 IF v_hq_wages < 1500 THEN12 RETURN 'N';13 ELSIF v_bp_total < 1.5 * v_hq_wages THEN14 RETURN 'N';15 END IF;16 RETURN 'Y';17END is_monetarily_eligible;
| # | highQuarterWages | basePeriodWages | eligible |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | < 1500 | - | false |
| 2 | - | < 1.5 * highQuarterWages | false |
| 3 | null | null | true (see finding) |
| 4 | - | - | true |
source: PKG_MONETARY_ELIG.pkb:118-136
- defectNo wage rows: SUM and MAX return NULL, both comparisons are unknown, function returns 'Y'
- resolvedBase period membership comes from wage_quarter.in_base_period, set by trigger TRG_WQ_BP
- reviewAlternate base period path lives in PKG_ALT_BP and is called only from the Struts appeal action
What the agency gets
Outputs built for policy, procurement and delivery.
Rules policy staff can read
DMN decision tables with FEEL expressions, named in program language, each row linked to its source lines.
Requirements vendors can bid on
Attach the rule inventory and OpenAPI 3.1 contracts to the RFP so bidders price against counted rules.
Lineage for data conversion
Every field in the claim, wage and employer tables traced to the programs and triggers that write it.
Acceptance tests for the new system
Equivalence fixtures at every eligibility and rate boundary, ready for the replacement vendor's test plan.
“It paid for itself many times over in the first sprint by eliminating four months of consultant code archeology.”
FAQ
Questions from agency CIOs.
Can PYD ENTERPRISES run inside a state data center with no internet access?
Yes. It installs from signed images, licenses with offline keys and runs with egress denied. Updates are signed bundles you move across the air gap. It reads source code and DDL, not claimant or taxpayer records.
How do we buy it?
A Discovery Scan is a fixed $25,000 for one system up to 500,000 LOC, which fits many agencies' small purchase or task order processes. Larger programs use an annual Enterprise Portfolio license. Systems integrators on state contracts can also run PYD ENTERPRISES under their partner license.
What if the code and the statute disagree?
That is one of the most useful findings. PYD ENTERPRISES shows what the code does; your policy and legal staff decide whether that is correct. Discrepancies are recorded on the review list with the source location, so the replacement system implements the law rather than the defect.
Does the output help with the replacement procurement?
Yes. Agencies attach DMN tables, OpenAPI contracts and the rule inventory to RFPs so vendors bid against measured scope, and use the equivalence fixtures as acceptance criteria.
Which languages do agency systems typically need?
COBOL with CICS and JCL on z/OS, Java EE and Struts front ends, Oracle PL/SQL and T-SQL eligibility logic, and occasionally Informix 4GL or VB6 case management tools. All are in the supported stack.
Go deeper
Know your eligibility rules before the next legislative session.
A Discovery Scan covers one system up to 500,000 LOC for a fixed $25,000, inside your data center.