Jurgen Vinju, researcher at the Software Analysis and Transformation research group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica and a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology, said in his interview for Dutch national TV: "In the 80s and 90s, the Tax and Customs Administration was way ahead of its time, a real textbook example in the field of automation."
Precisely because of this, the Tax and Customs Administration had few reasons to do anything about it. "You normally have to replace software after about twenty years, because it all gets older," Vinju said.
More information can be found in the whole NOS news article on the Belastingsdienst software (in Dutch). The interview on the 8 o'clock TV news can be seen via the NPO Start app (item starts around 14:30 min.).
The TV interview was made by Bart Kamphuis, camera: Jan Wich. Text of the NOS article: Anna Pruis (NOS).
