Migrating VA Data from Mainframe to Modern Cloud
Modern IT improves service to veterans
When Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) built its mainframe-based Beneficiary Identification and Records Locator System (BIRLS) it was state of the art.
Nearly five decades later, there were only a handful of employees left at VA who had sufficient mastery of COBOL—a mainframe coding language created in 1959—to perform some of BIRLS’s most routine tasks, and many of them were at or near retirement-eligible age. If, for any reason, these employees were to become unavailable for even a day, mission-critical activities could be severely disrupted or delayed.
To mitigate this and other risks—and to equip VA programs with the mission-enabling speed and agility that cloud and other modern technologies accord—BIRLS needed to be replaced.
After more than a decade’s worth of unsuccessful efforts to complete this transformative mainframe-to-modern-cloud journey, VA partnered with Booz Allen to get the job done.
Highlighted Impacts
Risk reduction: An antiquated system dependent on an increasingly rare skillset to keep it running was replaced with well-known modern technologies.
Zero disruptions: Transition activities—which included more than 30 software deployments—were completed without disrupting business operations.
Speed to outcomes: Changes that once would have taken months or even years using COBOL batch jobs can now be completed in days using modern code and processes.
Real-time data: Business processes now have API-based, real-time access to veteran data.
The Challenge: Replacing a Complex, Mission-Critical System Without Disruption
When it was unveiled in the early 1970s, BIRLS could securely exchange data and support numerous simultaneous users—impressive feats in that era. More than 100 VA IT systems were integrated with BIRLS, and by the late 1970s, daily transactions into the BIRLS datastore averaged 10,000 per day. By the mid-2000s, the daily average had increased to over 2.5 million, and the BIRLS mainframe provided secure storage for the records of more than 51 million veterans.
Later, close to 50 years into its tenure, BIRLS remained critical to VA’s mission of supporting military veterans and their families. Still, its aging technological foundations were causing challenges that could no longer be solved with band-aids and workarounds.
Mainframe computing was outdated and expensive to maintain. Development changes that could be accomplished in days using modern technologies and processes could take months or even years with BIRLS. Integrating the existing system with the modern IT architectures being built all around it required significant capital investments and the specialized knowledge of a rapidly dwindling number of mainframe experts.
Given BIRLS’s complexity, the sensitivity of the veterans’ data, and its critical centrality to VA’s many mission programs, replacing it with a system based on modern technology without interrupting essential operations would be a daunting challenge. Even after VA determined BIRLS needed replacing, it took more than 15 years and 13 failed attempts before success was achieved with a new technology partner—Booz Allen.
The Solution: A Proven Roadmap for Mainframe-to-Modern Migration
Booz Allen came to the effort equipped with extensive experience conducting mission-critical mainframe migrations and modernizations.
Applying our tried-and-true modernization principles and processes, we determined that BIRLS’s vast stores of veterans’ data couldn’t be migrated to their new home in the cloud all at once. Such a “big bang” approach was simply too unwieldy—and too risky—to work. Instead, we devised a phased solution that leveraged intelligently segmented migrations supported by data partitioning, targeted transactions, and synchronization of the new databases with the old ones.
While previous BIRLS replacement efforts took a project-based approach to planning and implementation, Booz Allen leveraged a product-minded approach as part of a project-to-product-based procedural and cultural shift already being rolled out across VA. The question changed from “How can we get this project done?” to “How do we develop intelligent, modern product-line solutions with broader application and reusability?” Using our tested roadmap, Booz Allen engaged with BIRLS’ many stakeholders—a list that included VA programs and outside organizations with a role in supporting veterans—to better manage and prioritize the complexities of moving from mainframe to modern cloud.
Establishing continuous delivery—a cornerstone of modern software development that is practically impossible to achieve in a mainframe-based system—required, among other things, the DevOps modernization of BIRLS’ many legacy functions. Through technical analysis, we determined that 70% of BIRLS’ more than 700 COBOL-based legacy functions were no longer being used at all. Setting those aside, we iteratively modernized the remaining functions from COBOL to a modern coding language and migrated them to VA’s enterprise cloud.
The Impact: Improved Efficiency, Reduced Risk, Better Service to Veterans
The results of our strategic modernization effort include:
- Legacy decommissioning: BIRLS’s database transactions fell to zero from 2.5 million per day, making it possible to eliminate the increasingly intensive costs of maintaining the system.
- Risk reduction: A system that depended on increasingly rare COBOL experts to keep it running was replaced with modern technologies supported by a vast and growing knowledge base and workforce.
- Zero disruptions: Transition activities—which included more than 30 software deployments—were completed without disrupting business operations.
- Improved efficiency: There is now a single, integrated service ticket path for change requests on the new platform.
- Speed to outcomes: Changes that once would have taken months or even years using COBOL batch jobs can now be completed in days using modern code and processes.
- On-demand scaling: New databases and reporting servers offer virtualized, scalable capacity to accommodate growth on demand.
- Real-time data: Business processes now have API-based, real-time access to veteran data.
- Strengthened compliance: Support for modern compliance auditing and reporting tools tightens compliance with VA and government-wide data security and governance policies.
- Data-enablement: Cloud-based, real-time data architectures give VA data analytics teams direct access to veteran data and provide better tools to inform VA leadership and federal oversight agencies.
BIRLS’s replacement and decommissioning is a significant achievement for VA and a victory for veterans made possible by Booz Allen’s expert perspective and strategic technology implementation. Equipped with contemporary technologies and the capabilities they afford, VA is on course to meet its modernization goals and deliver 21st-century service to veterans and their families.
Note: The contents of this case study, prepared by Booz Allen, are not intended to imply an endorsement by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
