Legacy Systems Modernisation for Citizen-Centric Digital Government: A Conceptual Model

Abstract

Information technology and communication (ICT) plays an important role as a catalyst for organisational development and innovation. However, old information systems that are known as legacy systems often expose organisations to the risk of business failure. These systems are not only impeding the advancement in technology strategy but also hindering the organisations’ business competitiveness. Nevertheless, legacy systems are essential in supporting critical functions in organisations including the public sector and could not be scrapped easily. These systems need to be given a new strength through modernisation to continue providing the best service in line with global trends. Modernisation is a complex task that involves several related aspects. In the context of the public sector, legacy systems involve a complicated information relationship, environment, and culture, while ensuring the citizens are of high priority. The implementation of a digital government represents the transformation of the public service delivery to the citizens that emphasises a citizen-centric design. This study, therefore, aims to address this concern by reviewing the factors involved and suggesting a guideline in the form of a conceptual model to assist in the modernisation of legacy systems for a citizen-centric digital government. Data from the theoretical study were analysed using content analysis. The results show that the legacy systems’ modernisation comprised four main aspects, namely human, process, product, and organisation aspects, with related factors and elements. This model contributes as a reference for the public sector and provides overall guidance in performing legacy systems modernisation.

What makes innovation ambidexterity manageable: a systematic review, multi-level model and future challenges

“…In addition to maintaining organisational expertise and contributing positively to the organisation’s income and growth, legacy systems give a considerable competitive advantage (Sneed 1995 ; Erlikh 2000 ). Despite their importance in sustaining daily operations, legacy systems can impede innovation efforts (Bakar et al 2021 ) and the failure of such systems, might have disastrous consequences for the organisation (Khadka et al 2014 ). Hence, to ensure that these systems continue to deliver the best service possible in accordance with global trends, there must be support, integration, or modernisation of such systems.…”

A Qualitative Study of Legacy Systems Modernisation for Citizen-Centric Digital Government

“…Every legacy systems modernisation project requires detailed project planning [6]. This includes the scope and the cost of the project, time frame, human resources involved, and selection of appropriate modernisation techniques [5,27,39].…”

“…To get complete and up-to-date requirements for the modernisation of legacy systems, old and new requirements must be collected. The old requirements were obtained by implementing activities based on the reverse engineering approach [39,40]. The key factors involved in the reverse engineering approach are system understanding and requirements extraction.…”

“…The key factors involved in the reverse engineering approach are system understanding and requirements extraction. The understanding of the systems mainly is on the architecture of the systems, including the system functions, data, and constraints [27,39,41]. Requirements are then extracted consisting of business rules, logic, and data before being documented as a legacy system requirements specification [8,39,42].…”

“…The modernised system needs to be tested according to the prescribed test type [8,27,39]. It should adhere to the test scripts, and legacy systems use cases [8].…”