Old COBOL hands

Regarding your June 17 front-page article “A bill that keeps rising”: North Carolina’s effort to modernize processing Medicaid claims has a projected cost of $851 million. If the cost doesn’t appall you, the technology, and where the programmers are hired from, will.

With unemployment in the U.S. hovering at 8.2 percent in May, why was this contract awarded to Computer Science Corp., which is utilizing half of its staff pool from India? Their answer is because the programs are written in COBOL. COBOL is short for common business oriented language. The next part of the answer is that COBOL is not taught in the Raleigh area.

I’m certain there are many Baby Boomers who are unemployed across the U.S. that still know COBOL. Why then does the state allot its biggest contract to CSC, using non-U.S. employees?

Nora Kennedy

Raleigh

3009 W. Folkestone PlRaleigh, NC919-747-9583