Classic ASP Government Portals: Preventing $5M Project Overruns

A $5 million budget hole in a municipal or state agency isn't a rounding error; it’s a career-ending oversight. Yet, this is the reality for dozens of agencies attempting to migrate legacy systems. When you look at the architecture of classic government portals preventing cost-effective modernization, you find a tangled web of VBScript, undocumented business logic, and security vulnerabilities that haven't been patched since the early 2000s.

The global technical debt burden has reached a staggering $3.6 trillion, and nowhere is this more visible than in the public sector. Government portals built on Classic ASP (Active Server Pages) are the "black boxes" of the enterprise. They lack documentation, their original developers have long since retired, and the cost of a manual rewrite is astronomical. According to Replay’s analysis, the average manual rewrite of an enterprise-scale portal takes 18 months and costs millions, with a 70% failure rate due to scope creep and lost requirements.

TL;DR: Manual rewrites of Classic ASP government portals are high-risk, $5M+ endeavors that usually fail due to a 67% lack of documentation. By using Replay, agencies can leverage Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of legacy workflows into documented React code, reducing migration timelines from years to weeks and saving up to 70% in costs.

The Hidden Cost of the "Documentation Gap"#

The primary reason for budget overruns in government tech is the "Documentation Gap." Industry experts recommend that before any code is written, a full functional specification must exist. However, 67% of legacy systems lack any form of current documentation. In a Classic ASP environment, the business logic is often tightly coupled with the UI, buried in spaghetti code that spans thousands of

files.

When a consultancy quotes $5M for a rewrite, they are pricing in the "discovery phase"—months of junior developers manually clicking through every screen, trying to guess what the original logic was. This manual process takes an average of 40 hours per screen. With hundreds of screens in a standard pension or tax portal, the math quickly leads to disaster.

Replay eliminates this discovery phase. By recording a user performing a task—like filing a permit or updating a record—the platform's AI identifies the components, state changes, and logic, generating a clean, documented React equivalent in a fraction of the time.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of using computer vision and AI to analyze the UI and behavior of an existing application to generate its underlying architectural patterns, design systems, and code.

Why Classic Government Portals Preventing Modernization Are So Expensive#

Modernizing classic government portals preventing efficient service delivery is not just a coding challenge; it’s a risk management challenge. Government systems are often subject to strict regulatory requirements like HIPAA or SOC2.

The following table illustrates why traditional manual rewrites fail compared to a Visual Reverse Engineering approach:

Comparison: Manual Migration vs. Replay Visual Reverse Engineering#

The Technical Debt Trap: From VBScript to React#

Classic ASP relies on VBScript, a language that lacks the type safety and component-based architecture of modern frameworks. When agencies attempt to modernize classic government portals preventing them from moving to the cloud, they often try to "lift and shift." This is a mistake. Lifting and shifting legacy logic into a cloud environment just moves the debt to a more expensive server.

The goal should be a "Refactor and Rebuild" strategy that extracts the intent of the UI and re-implements it in a modern stack like React and TypeScript.

Video-to-code is the process of converting a screen recording of a legacy application into functional, high-quality frontend code and design documentation.

According to Replay’s analysis, converting a single complex form from Classic ASP to React manually involves:

1. •Decoding the VBScript server-side includes.
2. •Mapping the CSS (often inline or global styles).
3. •Re-creating validation logic.
4. •Writing the TypeScript interfaces.

With Replay, this process is automated. Here is an example of what the output looks like when Replay processes a legacy government form.

Legacy Classic ASP Logic (The Problem)#

asp
<%
' Legacy Permit Submission Logic
Dim permitType, applicantName
permitType = Request.Form("type")
applicantName = Request.Form("name")

If permitType = "" Then
    Response.Write("<p style='color:red'>Error: Type is required</p>")
Else
    ' Deeply nested database logic here
    Set conn = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
    ' ... connection details ...
End If
%>
<form method="POST">
    <input type="text" name="name" value="<%=applicantName%>" />
    <select name="type">
        <option value="1">Residential</option>
        <option value="2">Commercial</option>
    </select>
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

Modern React Output Generated by Replay (The Solution)#

typescript
import React from 'react';
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
import { Button, TextField, Select, MenuItem, Typography } from '@mui/material';

interface PermitFormProps {
  onSubmit: (data: PermitFormData) => void;
}

interface PermitFormData {
  name: string;
  type: 'residential' | 'commercial';
}

export const PermitSubmissionForm: React.FC<PermitFormProps> = ({ onSubmit }) => {
  const { register, handleSubmit, formState: { errors } } = useForm<PermitFormData>();

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)} className="p-6 bg-white shadow-md rounded">
      <Typography variant="h5" className="mb-4">Permit Submission</Typography>
      
      <TextField
        {...register("name", { required: "Name is required" })}
        label="Applicant Name"
        error={!!errors.name}
        helperText={errors.name?.message}
        fullWidth
        margin="normal"
      />

      <Select
        {...register("type", { required: true })}
        defaultValue="residential"
        fullWidth
        className="mt-2"
      >
        <MenuItem value="residential">Residential</MenuItem>
        <MenuItem value="commercial">Commercial</MenuItem>
      </Select>

      <Button type="submit" variant="contained" color="primary" className="mt-4">
        Submit Permit
      </Button>
    </form>
  );
};

Strategies for Preventing $5M Overruns in Government Portals#

To avoid the common pitfalls of classic government portals preventing digital transformation, architects must adopt a "Visual-First" approach.

1. Catalog the "Shadow" Workflows#

In many government agencies, the official documentation says a process has five steps, but the legacy UI reveals ten. Users have developed "workarounds" that are hard-coded into the ASP pages. By using Replay's Flows feature, you can record actual civil servants performing their daily tasks. This captures the real business logic, not the theoretical logic from a 15-year-old PDF.

2. Standardize via a Component Library#

Most legacy portals are a hodgepodge of different styles. A $5M overrun often happens because developers spend too much time recreating the same button or header across 500 different pages. Replay's Library automatically extracts consistent UI patterns into a unified Design System. This ensures that the new React portal is cohesive and accessible (WCAG 2.1 compliant), which is a legal requirement for most government agencies.

3. Incremental Modernization (Strangler Pattern)#

Don't try to flip the switch on a $5M project all at once. Use the "Strangler Fig" pattern. Replace one workflow at a time. Record a specific flow—like "User Registration"—in the old ASP portal, use Replay to generate the React components, and deploy that single module behind a reverse proxy.

Learn more about legacy modernization strategies to see how this incremental approach reduces risk.

The Role of AI in Regulated Environments#

For Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government, security is the primary concern. Many AI tools are "black boxes" that send data to public LLMs. This is unacceptable for sensitive citizen data.

Industry experts recommend using tools that are SOC2 compliant and offer on-premise deployment options. Replay is built for these regulated environments. It doesn't just "guess" what the code should be; it maps the visual reality of the application to a structured Blueprint. This provides an audit trail that shows exactly how the legacy UI was translated into modern React.

According to Replay's analysis, agencies using automated discovery tools reduce their compliance audit time by 50% because the documentation is generated as a byproduct of the migration, rather than an after-the-fact manual effort.

Case Study: The Cost of Waiting#

A large state agency recently delayed the modernization of their classic government portals preventing them from processing unemployment claims during a surge. The manual estimate for the rewrite was $12 million over 24 months. By the time they reached the 18-month mark, they had spent $9 million and only had 30% of the functionality completed.

If they had used a Visual Reverse Engineering platform:

• •Month 1: All 200+ screens recorded and mapped into Blueprints.
• •Month 2: Design system extracted into a React Library.
• •Month 3: First 10 core flows (80% of user traffic) converted to React.
• •Total Estimated Cost: $3.5 million.
• •Savings: $8.5 million and 12 months of time.

Read more about technical debt in government to understand the long-term implications of delaying these upgrades.

Technical Deep Dive: Mapping State Management#

One of the hardest parts of migrating classic government portals preventing modern scalability is state management. Classic ASP uses

and objects that are server-bound. Modern React uses client-side state (like Context API or Redux) and stateless APIs.

Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies how data flows through the legacy UI. It notices that when a user selects a "County" in a dropdown, the "District" dropdown updates. It then generates the corresponding

or custom hook in React to handle that logic, ensuring that the new application behaves exactly like the old one, but with modern performance.

typescript
// Example of Replay-generated logic for dependent dropdowns
const useDistrictData = (selectedCounty: string) => {
  const [districts, setDistricts] = React.useState<District[]>([]);

  React.useEffect(() => {
    if (selectedCounty) {
      // Replay identified this API call from the legacy network logs
      fetchDistrictsByCounty(selectedCounty).then(setDistricts);
    }
  }, [selectedCounty]);

  return districts;
};

Avoiding the "Feature Creep" Trap#

The fastest way to turn a $2M project into a $5M project is to say, "While we're rewriting it, let's also add these 50 new features."

To prevent this, industry experts recommend a "Parity First" approach. Use Replay to achieve 1:1 functional parity with the legacy system. Once the system is running on a modern React/Node.js stack, adding new features becomes 10x faster and cheaper. Modernizing classic government portals preventing innovation is about getting to a baseline where innovation is actually possible.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does Replay handle sensitive citizen data during the recording process?#

Replay is built for regulated environments including Healthcare and Government. Our platform is SOC2 compliant and HIPAA-ready. We offer PII (Personally Identifiable Information) masking during the recording phase, and for highly sensitive environments, we provide on-premise deployment options so your data never leaves your network.

Can Replay handle complex, multi-step forms in Classic ASP?#

Yes. Replay’s "Flows" feature is specifically designed for multi-step workflows. By recording a user navigating through the entire process, the AI maps the state transitions between screens, ensuring that the generated React code maintains the complex logic and validation rules of the original portal.

What happens if the legacy code is "spaghetti code" with no clear structure?#

That is exactly where Replay excels. Because Replay uses Visual Reverse Engineering, it doesn't care how messy the underlying VBScript is. It looks at the output—what the user sees and interacts with. By analyzing the behavior of the UI, it reconstructs a clean, modular React architecture that bypasses the mess of the legacy backend.

Does Replay replace my development team?#

No. Replay is a force multiplier for your existing team. It automates the tedious, manual parts of modernization—discovery, documentation, and boilerplate UI coding. This allows your senior architects to focus on high-level system design and integration, reducing the average time per screen from 40 hours to 4 hours.

How do we handle the backend migration?#

While Replay focuses on the frontend (React, Design Systems, and Component Libraries), the Blueprints it generates provide a clear roadmap for your backend developers. By seeing exactly what data the UI requires and how it is structured, your team can build modern APIs (REST or GraphQL) that perfectly match the needs of the new frontend.

Final Thoughts: The Path to $0 Overruns#

The era of the "Mega-Project" rewrite is over. The risk is too high, and the success rate is too low. For those managing classic government portals preventing digital progress, the solution lies in automation and visual intelligence.

By moving from manual discovery to Visual Reverse Engineering, agencies can finally break the cycle of technical debt. You can deliver a modern, accessible, and secure citizen experience in weeks, not years, and keep that $5 million budget exactly where it belongs: serving the public.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay