What is COBOL and why should it matter to Louisiana residents?
Starting May 2025, your driver’s license won’t be enough for air travel
This week, after years of delays, the Transportation Security Administration announced that federal agencies will begin enforcement of REAL ID requirements on May 7, 2025.
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- The Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles is experiencing intermittent outages due to issues with its COBOL mainframe.
- Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry declared a State of Emergency due to the outages, which are causing service disruptions and security vulnerabilities.
- COBOL, a 50-year-old programming language, is used by many government agencies, including the OMV, for processing data.
Following the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles’ outage on March 20, Gov. Jeff Landry declared a State of Emergency Friday morning.
In the executive order, Landry extended the expiration date and delinquent fees of Class E driver’s licenses for up to 30 days after the license’s expiration date.
OMV announced on its website on March 20 that the Louisiana Office of Technology Services was investigating a frequent intermittent outage affecting the COBOL mainframe.
According to the governor’s order, the COBOL mainframe has resulted in prolonged wait times for the public, service outages and security vulnerabilities, impacting operations across the state.
“We are close to finalizing a solution that will enhance efficiency and service quality,” OMV Commissioner Dan Casey said in a news release. “We appreciate your patience and will continue to provide updates as we move forward.”
What is COBOL?
According to IBM, COBOL stands for common business-oriented language and is a high-level compiled programming language developed for business data processing needs.
COBOL is an over 50-year-old mainframe and, according to Landry, is an outdated software.
COBOL was developed by a group of government and business organizations to design an optimal versatile mind to enable programmers to use a readable programming language.
It was the first programming language standardized by the American National Standards Institute and the International Organization for Standardization.
According to IBM, many government and private organizations use COBOL to run financial, administrative, and business applications. As of April 2024, COBOL was the foundation forfor more than 40 percent of all online banking systems, 80 percent of of in-person credit card transactions, and 95 percent of ATM transactions, and power systems that generated up to $3 billion in commerce per day.
The Louisiana OMV’s computer system is also COBOL based.
Why does it matter that Louisiana uses COBOL for its Office of Motor Vehicles?
Landry said its imperative for the OMV to “procure and implement a modernized system to effectively carry out its responsibilities.”
The OMV is responsible for testing for and issuing driver’s licenses, suspending or revoking licenses, issuing IDs, issuing vehicle titles and registrations, license plates, recording liens against vehicles, and collecting sales/use taxes and fees.
Also, Louisiana residents will soon be required to update their standard identification cards to a REAL ID to board domestic flights and access secure federal facilities.
This requirement will go into effect May 7.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, REAL IDs have a small star in the upper-right corner in order to indicate the federal regulation that establishes security standards.
OMV offices in Baton Rouge, Bossier, Monroe, New Orleans, Reserve, Shreveport, Westbank, and Winnsboro will be open Saturday, March 22, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. for REAL ID needs.
Aaron Gonsoulin contributed to this story.
Makenzie Boucher is a reporter with the Shreveport Times. Contact her at [email protected].
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