Thread by @hamandcheese

This story is nuts.

A group of eight IRS employees led by Jian Wang developed a method for extracting logic from assembly code to convert it into a modern language.

They managed to convert 90% of the IRS's Individual Master File code to Java.

Until...
federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-comm…

..until Wang's position expired in 2017.

Wang held one of 40 slots under which the IRS could pay temporary, full-time employees higher than GS rates—an authority Congress chose not to renew in 2013.

Before Treasury approved his GS-15, Wang had a new job.
federalnewsnetwork.com/tom-temin-comm…

The Java-converted master file was to have run in parallel with the assembler code for the 2018 tax filing season, and to have replaced the assembler for 2019.

Without Wang, that didn't happen.

For his work, Wang's was awarded this patent in Oct 2018: patentswarm.com/patents/US1044…

Two related patents were abandoned because the IRS failed to authorize payment for the Patent office's meagre $250 issue fee — despite Wang's direct requests to the IRS commissioner and CIO.

No one really knows why.

In short, an IRS employee developed in-house technology to migrate assembly code to a modern programming language — by far the biggest barrier to modernization.

It would've been implemented in 2019 if the key personnel were retained.

Now 2/3 of the patents lay abandoned.