Arlington National Cemetery Fails to Computerize

The nation's most sacred final resting place has failed in its efforts to modernize its pen-and-paper record system. According to a story in today's Washington Post, the nation's most hallowed military cemetery uses a flawed and antiquated paper system for tracking the whereabouts of thousands of buried service members and their relatives. Although the cemetery has spent $5.5 million over seven years to upgrade its records, problems abound, according to an Army inspector general investigation and other Army documents.

Dozens of burial plots appear on maps as occupied but have no headstone, and some graves that have a headstone are recorded as vacant. Cemetery workers have begun to dig graves in what they thought was an unoccupied plot but then found that someone was buried there. In some cases, grounds crews have found that graves are marked with headstones for other decedents.

"We are one fire, or one flood, or one spilled Starbucks coffee away from some of those records being lost or spoiled," said Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.), who also called the failed efforts an "astonishing" waste of taxpayer money on a project that "should be able to be solved relatively easily."

You can read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/24/AR2010062406528.html