No. 03 · The observatory
Government benefits and social security
Benefit cores run on 1980s COBOL. Auditors quantify the manual-work cost.
- Status
- Open
- Rank
- 9 of 35 in the atlas
- Scored
- 2026-10-05
- Report
- Back to the study
- Rank
- 9 of 35, published score 62.5
- Scoring date
- 2026-10-05, reported 2026-10-09
- Buyable
- $0.0B buyable midpoint, $7.5B to $21.0B recorded legacy spend
- Factors
- size 4, pain 3.8, AI fit 4, lock-in 5, crowding 1.3
- Coverage
- none recorded; AI-native challenger recorded
Government benefits and social security
Ranked 9 of 35 at 62.5 out of 100.
Eligibility, casework and payment administration for benefits agencies.
What the evidence says
The checked evidence corroborates the 3.8 pain score in kind. The NAO links manual work across legacy systems to 134,000 pensioner underpayments. Estimated arrears reached £1,053 million. A 2012 inspector-general audit warned on COBOL programmer continuity at the SSA. Vendor material documents batch and release constraints on DWP’s 1980s estate.
Providers
The card checked three providers: Merative’s Cúram, Rocket Software and Accenture. Cúram reports 193 million constituents and 8.5 million Medicaid recipients. Its figures count people, not agencies, and two of them are unreconciled. Rocket reports over 12,500 portfolio customers. Its DWP case documents converting a 25-million-line COBOL estate. Accenture’s CPFB case reports 76 applications and 16 million COBOL lines converted. The figures mix people, customers and project scale. No ranking is supported.
Careforce is the recorded challenger. A funder-published feature reports Kern Family Health Care deployed its outreach agent. The same story reports a 96% first-year renewal rate, against 38% before. The figure is reported by the plan’s CIO. No controlled experiment is evidenced.
Sources:
- How AI-Powered Outreach Is Helping Californians Keep Their Medi-Cal Coverage
- Y Combinator
- Curam | Merative
- Rocket Software
- Social Security Services Transformation | Case Study | Accenture
The pain
National agencies carry COBOL estates with maintainability and skills risk. The SSA audit found no strategic plan for its legacy applications in 2012.
DWP’s State Pension administration shows limited automation. Caseworkers pull information from several systems and copy it by hand.
DWP’s 1980s batch estate capped service hours and allowed two releases a year.
Sources:
- The Social Security Administration's Software Modernization and Use of Common Business Oriented Language (A-14-11-11132)
- Investigation into underpayments of State Pension
- Rocket Software
- How AI-Powered Outreach Is Helping Californians Keep Their Medi-Cal Coverage
- Social Security Services Transformation | Case Study | Accenture
Events
The NAO published its underpayment investigation in September 2021. DWP estimated 134,000 pensioners were underpaid about £1,053 million.
Singapore’s CPFB started modernising its mainframe applications in 2018. The programme converted COBOL applications to Java alongside platform changes.
Sources:
- Investigation into underpayments of State Pension
- Social Security Services Transformation | Case Study | Accenture
Limits
The Cúram redirect does not establish an ownership change. Rocket’s DWP program is a documented success, not a failure case. Accenture is included as the documented integrator, not a product vendor. Careforce’s renewal figure is a reported outcome, not a controlled study.
Sources:
- Curam | Merative
- Rocket Software
- Social Security Services Transformation | Case Study | Accenture
- How AI-Powered Outreach Is Helping Californians Keep Their Medi-Cal Coverage
- Y Combinator
- The Social Security Administration's Software Modernization and Use of Common Business Oriented Language (A-14-11-11132)
- Investigation into underpayments of State Pension
In their words
loss of COBOL programmers
Source: SSA Office of Inspector General audit narrator, 2012-05
limited automation
Source: National Audit Office investigation narrator, 2021-09-22
manually copy across information
Source: National Audit Office investigation narrator, 2021-09-22
Relevant workflows
6 recorded openings. A missing mapped round is a coverage gap, not an empty field.
| Workflow | Index | Labour | AI use | Core | Mapped |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call center, case status inquiries and referrals gov-benefits:wf_contact_referral | 429 | $86.8B | 36% | non-core | 1 |
| Renewals, redeterminations and change reporting gov-benefits:wf_renewals | 253 | $21.0B | 28% | non-core | 3 |
| Application intake, data entry and document verification gov-benefits:wf_intake | 136 | $5.5B | 13% | non-core | 2 |
| Fraud, overpayment recovery, quality control and appeals gov-benefits:wf_integrity | -210 | $25.9B | 23% | touches core | 0 |
| Policy rule changes and legacy code maintenance gov-benefits:wf_rules_maint | -219 | $5.8B | 69% | touches core | 0 |
| Eligibility determination, benefit calculation and authorization gov-benefits:wf_eligibility | -381 | $14.3B | 0% | touches core | 0 |
Recorded providers
Provider claims carry their recorded kind and citations. Undisclosed figures stay undisclosed.
| Provider | Products | Parent | Claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merative (Curam) | Curam | unknown | cl-gov-curam-rel (inference) source cl-gov-m-curam-constituents (observation) source cl-gov-m-curam-medicaid (observation) source cl-gov-m-curam-people-annual (observation) source |
| Rocket Software | Visual COBOL, COBOL Server | unknown | cl-gov-rocket-own (reported) source cl-gov-m-rocket-customers (observation) source cl-gov-m-rocket-dwp-loc (observation) source |
| Accenture | CPFB mainframe modernization engagement (services) | unknown | cl-gov-accenture-rel (inference) source cl-gov-accenture-inc (inference) source cl-gov-m-accenture-apps (observation) source cl-gov-m-accenture-loc (observation) source |
Recorded inputs
Raw scored inputs exactly as frozen. Values and units keep their recorded definitions.
| Factor | Input | Value | Count | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pain | keep_alive_share | unavailable | 3 | unavailable |
| pain | backend_failure_share | 0.18 | 100 | 3 |
| pain | app_rating_inverted | 3.3731975 | 20 | 4 |
| pain | failed_rate | 0.7272727272727273 | 11 | 5 |
| pain | s3_grade | weak | 1 | 3 |
| pain | mean | 3.75 | unavailable | 3.8 |
| lockin | award_duration_months | unavailable | 1 | unavailable |
| lockin | noncompetitive_share | unavailable | 4 | unavailable |
| lockin | replacement_duration_months | 84 | 9 | 5 |
| lockin | regulator_approval | true | 1 | 5 |
| lockin | mean | 5 | unavailable | 5 |
| crowding | ai_native_traction | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| crowding | funding_per_billion | 8008031.682540438 | 6 | 1 |
| crowding | yc_2024_plus | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| crowding | mean | 1.3333333333333333 | unavailable | 1.3 |
| size | users_midpoint | 68 | unavailable | unavailable |
| size | buyers_mid | 3470.5 | unavailable | unavailable |
| size | midpoint | 12549900398.011133 | unavailable | unavailable |
| ai_fit | mean | 3.7139130434782603 | 12 | 4 |
| ai_fit | unanswered | unavailable | 0 | unavailable |
Recorded sources
51 recorded citations. Each link lands on the sources catalogue.
Back to the 35-category table or the explorer.