Building flexibility into legacy government systems

The gap between technology leaders and laggards in government is widening rapidly.

Agencies delaying modernisation now face a triple threat: unsustainable workloads, deteriorating service delivery, and spiralling maintenance costs for legacy systems.

This reality is driving significant change – a 2024 Gartner survey reveals 43 per cent of CIOs worldwide are reducing legacy infrastructure investments, making it the largest area of planned divestment.

Many government departments still rely heavily on legacy systems that are difficult to upgrade and not feasible to fully replace. These systems, such as large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) software or custom-built applications with complex code and data structures, perform essential functions and store critical information.

Yet, they are often cumbersome, inflexible, and ill-equipped to meet modern demands.

Legacy systems carry significant challenges which threaten efforts to modernise the organisation. These include high maintenance costs, security risks, siloed data, and challenges in adapting to changing regulations. Conversely, the traditional cost of upgrading often proves financially prohibitive, leaving government agencies with limited options for modernisation.

However, a promising alternative exists to traditional, cost-prohibitive upgrades. By implementing an “agility layer”, government agencies can modernise legacy systems without complete replacement.

This approach enables digital transformation with shorter implementation timelines, improving both internal workflows and citizen services while providing a more sustainable path to modernisation.

Building flexibility without risk

Government technology leaders face a common challenge: how to modernise systems while keeping disruption to a minimum.

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The ideal modernisation programme delivers flexibility without introducing unnecessary risks, allowing agencies to adapt to their processes while maintaining confidence in their systems.

This is where Appian's approach makes a difference for public sector organisations. Rather than forcing a complete system overhaul, Appian creates what it calls an "agility layer" that connects existing systems with new capabilities.

Appian’s data fabric functions as a modern interface over legacy foundations, preserving valuable data while enabling new ways to utilise it.

By separating workflows from the underlying data, Appian allows teams to connect systems at any point in the process. This means staff members spend less time jumping between applications and more time focusing on what matters most: serving citizens effectively.

The platform brings together people, existing systems, automation tools, and artificial intelligence within an environment that requires minimal coding expertise. Perhaps most importantly, it integrates data from multiple sources without creating duplicates, ensuring everyone works with accurate, up-to-date information throughout any process.

For agencies concerned about reliability and security, Appian's cloud service maintains 99.95 per cent availability with round-the-clock monitoring.

It meets stringent government compliance requirements across 10 major frameworks, including FedRAMP, UK G-Cloud, and HIPAA, providing peace of mind for leaders responsible for protecting sensitive information.

Case study: Modernising grants management

Two government agencies from Southeast Asia sought to automate their respective grants management systems using a platform that could function in both on-premises environments and the government cloud.

Appian’s advanced UI/UX capabilities enabled the design of simple, streamlined digital forms to replace outdated paper-based processes prone to data entry errors.

For one agency, Appian powered the backend of a business grants disbursement portal, automating key processes in grant application management. Likewise, another agency built a portal on the Appian Platform as a one-stop solution.

Both portals empower citizens and organisations to apply for and manage grants with ease. Manual data entry has been significantly reduced thanks to integration with the government-managed digital identity platform, allowing user information to be auto-populated and stored in profiles for future use.

The new systems’ flexibility also enables integration with modern technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotic process automation (RPA), enhancing the agencies’ operational efficiency.

Process automation: The way forward

Appian modernises legacy government systems by letting customers rapidly build and deploy applications that integrate seamlessly with existing IT infrastructure, using process automation and AI, as government requirements continuously evolve.

Rather than requiring a full system replacement, Appian allows agencies to extend the life and functionality of legacy systems by creating modern user interfaces, automating workflows, and connecting siloed data sources.

Its data fabric capability unifies data across systems without moving it, giving users a comprehensive and real-time view of operations while minimising disruption to core legacy functions.

Appian’s process automation capabilities - including RPA, AI, and business rules - help organisations automate repetitive tasks and modernise business processes. 

By serving as an orchestration layer, Appian empowers agencies to bridge old and new technologies for more agile operations and smoother transitions to future IT environments.

A modern solution for legacy challenges

The Appian platform empowers public sector agencies with modern capabilities: robust security, process efficiency, data governance, and integration flexibility.

Most importantly, it wraps outdated legacy systems in a modern user experience, enabling seamless integration of multiple systems and presenting unified data through rich reports and dashboards.

In an era of digital transformation, Appian helps governments build agile, future-ready operations without compromising on performance, privacy, or control.

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The author is Vice President for Appian, Asia Pacific and Japan.