Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Organizing principles for identity systems:
history of identity management: automated payroll processing in the late 1950s (2007/4/7)
From the 1962 McGraw-Hill Computer Handbook description of payroll data processing:
"Trivial as payroll processing may seem in principle, one must not underestimate the length of the computer program which will be required. The first few actual applications of a large computing system, the Univac, to weekly payrolls in plants employing 5,000 to 20,000 hourly paid persons required computer programs of from 15,000 to 150,000 program steps. This results from the multitudinous details and exceptions represented in the accumulation of different rates, incentives, and deductions built up through the years by industrial engineers, industrial- relations men, unions, charities, insurance companies, and the Federal, state, and local governments."
"This situation is typical of many data-processing problems. The principles are simple enough; but requirements set by law, convention, whim, or tradition, and not readily susceptible to standardization, make exception the rule and personalities a hurdle of considerable magnitude in establishing a workable system."