It could be argued that government IT systems that aren’t burdened with technical debt are ones that haven’t been utilized enough. Systems that have been running for decades are ones that have delivered a great deal of value – think transactions in the millions.
But eventually, every system becomes obsolete – and a problem.
Sometimes it’s not a surprise when a software solution reaches its end of life. A vendor announces their solution is being sunset, or select functionality is deprecated. An organization brings in a new solution that can’t be integrated with the older tech stack. Or an existing system can no longer handle growing volumes, and processing or backups slow to the point of being unmanageable.
In those cases, there’s a clear reason to upgrade technologies.
There are other reasons for upgrading. For example, it’s estimated that the number of government IT workers who are over 60 has doubled since 2007. If your team consists primarily of folks who spend time looking at their pensions or 401Ks, that may be a red flag to start assessing coverage of your systems. And replacing them may be difficult; young IT professionals don’t know, or want to learn, legacy technologies. They can find positions with more attractive salaries in the private sector.
There are other risks from legacy applications:
- Systems that are still hosted on-prem are at risk from weather events, power outages or other disasters
- Manual processes like spreadsheets are error-prone
- A lack of support from software vendors who don’t update security in a consistent or timely manner
- Compliance and regulatory risks
- A lack of data governance, making it difficult to identify what data is held in older systems
Is Technical Wellness the Answer?
A Deloitte article recently suggested a new way of looking at the enormous undertaking of replacing technical debt aka digital transformation. It suggested organizations consider instead “holistic technical wellness.” IT departments should think of their aging infrastructure as a senior citizen (one who has excellent healthcare), and treat “disparate technology systems (cyber, data, infrastructure) like parts of a body, subject to thorough annual checkups, similar to those conducted by integrated medical care providers…[using] preventative health assessments to identify and prioritize the areas of the tech stack that need treatment.”
At the risk of sounding cynical, it almost seems like Deloitte is suggesting organizations give up on the real problems posed by legacy systems by changing the definition of digital transformation. According to their 2024 Tech Trends report, “…the focus is placed on preventive care — in this case, using enhanced tracking, measurement, and predictions to address suboptimal legacy technologies before they become larger issues for the business….”
The solution would (of course) be AI-driven software that would “encourage businesses to iteratively pinpoint their technical ailments and predict when investments would be most effective, based on cost, operational risk, and innovation readiness.”
We’ve seen amazing capabilities from AI in the past few years but using a prediction layer to identify legacy system risks seems less than optimal. Can you really predict when a software vendor sunsets a product, or goes out of business, or a critical team member decides to retire?
And IT departments generally have a pretty good idea of what legacy tech is causing problems, if only from the amount of time their staff spend on fixes or workarounds, so enhanced tracking or measurement is perhaps not really necessary. These are issues that are already keeping the CIO awake at night.
All technology eventually can end up as technical debt, and that’s not a bad thing (it’s better than switching systems continually.) The issue is identifying which systems are most at risk, and that can be for a variety of reasons that a “wellness” audit or prediction may not spot. For example, if a technology is no longer supported by a vendor, that is a risk and should be prioritized. If members of the workforce are retiring, that becomes a priority. But for most government entities, it’s not easy to measure these things with another software solution.
Is this simply a way to pass the buck? If issues with a legacy system doesn’t get prioritized in the wellness scan, and it later fails, is the CIO able to disregard it? A sign displayed in one IT VP’s office read “If I break it, I fix it. If you break it, I still fix it.” Unfortunately, for government IT leadership, this will always be the case.
