Modernizing Government Benefits Portals: A Case for Rapid UI Extraction

Government agencies are currently sitting on a $3.6 trillion time bomb of technical debt, and nowhere is this more visible than in public benefits portals. When a citizen attempts to apply for unemployment insurance or SNAP benefits, they are often navigating UI layers built in the early 2000s, sitting atop COBOL or Mainframe backends that no living employee fully understands. The traditional response—the "Big Bang" rewrite—has a 70% failure rate in the public sector, often exceeding budgets by hundreds of millions of dollars before being quietly cancelled.

TL;DR: Modernizing government benefits portals through Visual Reverse Engineering allows agencies to bypass years of manual "code archaeology," reducing migration timelines from 24 months to mere weeks by using video as the source of truth for UI extraction.

The Archaeology Problem: Why Modernizing Government Benefits Fails#

The primary blocker in modernizing government benefits isn't a lack of modern frameworks; it's a lack of understanding of the current state. Statistics show that 67% of legacy systems lack any meaningful documentation. In the public sector, this number is often closer to 100%.

When an agency decides to modernize, they typically spend the first 6–12 months in "Discovery." This involves hiring expensive consultants to manually click through every screen, interview retiring civil servants, and attempt to map out business logic buried in 20-year-old JSP or ASPX files.

The Cost of Manual Modernization#

⚠️ Warning: Attempting a "Big Bang" rewrite of a benefits portal without a documented baseline is the leading cause of multi-year project overruns in government IT.

Moving from Black Box to Documented Codebase#

The future of modernizing government benefits isn't rewriting from scratch—it's understanding what you already have. This is where Replay changes the trajectory. Instead of reading dead code, Replay uses Visual Reverse Engineering. By recording a real user workflow—such as a citizen completing a benefits application—Replay captures the DOM state, network calls, and business logic triggers in real-time.

This transforms the "black box" of the legacy system into a documented, modern React codebase.

The Replay Workflow: From Video to Production#

1. •Record: An analyst records a session of the legacy portal.
2. •Extract: Replay’s AI Automation Suite identifies UI patterns, form fields, and validation logic.
3. •Generate: The system outputs clean, accessible React components and API contracts.
4. •Refine: Developers use the Blueprints Editor to map legacy data structures to modern schemas.

Example: Extracted React Component from Legacy JSP#

Below is an example of what Replay generates after analyzing a legacy government form. Note how it preserves business logic while utilizing modern state management.

typescript
// Generated by Replay Visual Reverse Engineering
// Source: /benefits/apply/eligibility_step_1.jsp
import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { TextField, Button, Alert } from '@gov-design-system/ui';

export const EligibilityFormMigrated = ({ legacyData, onNext }) => {
  const [formData, setFormData] = useState({
    householdSize: legacyData?.hh_size || 0,
    annualIncome: legacyData?.ann_inc || 0,
    isResident: legacyData?.res_status === 'Y'
  });

  // Business logic preserved from legacy network trace:
  // Rule: Eligibility requires income < 250% of Federal Poverty Level
  const isEligible = formData.annualIncome < (formData.householdSize * 12880 * 2.5);

  return (
    <div className="p-6 space-y-4">
      <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold">Benefits Eligibility Check</h2>
      <TextField 
        label="Household Size"
        type="number"
        value={formData.householdSize}
        onChange={(val) => setFormData({...formData, householdSize: val})}
      />
      <TextField 
        label="Total Annual Income"
        prefix="$"
        value={formData.annualIncome}
        onChange={(val) => setFormData({...formData, annualIncome: val})}
      />
      
      {!isEligible && (
        <Alert severity="warning">
          Based on the data provided, you may exceed the income threshold for this program.
        </Alert>
      )}

      <Button onClick={() => onNext(formData)} disabled={!isEligible}>
        Continue Application
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
};

Bridging the Documentation Gap#

In a typical 18-month enterprise rewrite, the first 400 days are spent trying to figure out why the system does what it does. Replay reduces this "archaeology phase" by 70%.

When modernizing government benefits, the "Flows" feature in Replay creates an architectural map of the entire system based on actual user behavior. If a user navigates from "Login" to "Document Upload" to "Confirmation," Replay documents the state transitions and API requirements automatically.

💰 ROI Insight: By automating the extraction of 50 screens, an agency saves approximately 1,800 man-hours. At a blended contractor rate of $150/hr, that is a direct savings of $270,000 per module before a single line of new code is even written.

Built for Regulated Environments#

Government modernization isn't just a technical challenge; it's a compliance challenge. Most SaaS tools are non-starters for agencies handling PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or PHI (Protected Health Information).

Replay was built with these constraints in mind:

• •SOC2 Type II & HIPAA Ready: Data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• •On-Premise Deployment: For agencies with strict data residency requirements, Replay can be deployed within your own VPC or air-gapped environment.
• •Technical Debt Audit: Replay provides a comprehensive report of legacy dependencies, identifying security vulnerabilities in the old system before they are migrated.

Step-by-Step: Rapid UI Extraction for Benefits Portals#

Step 1: Workflow Mapping#

Identify the critical paths in your benefits portal (e.g., "New Application," "Change of Circumstance," "Appeal Submission"). Use Replay to record these paths as the "Source of Truth."

Step 2: Component Library Generation#

Replay analyzes the recorded UI and identifies recurring patterns. These are exported into the Library, creating a standardized Design System that matches your agency's modern branding while maintaining legacy functional parity.

Step 3: API Contract Extraction#

As the user interacts with the legacy backend, Replay captures the JSON or XML payloads. It then generates modern API contracts (OpenAPI/Swagger) that your new frontend will use to communicate with the legacy middleware during the transition.

json
// Extracted API Contract: POST /api/v1/submit-claim
{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "claimant_id": { "type": "string", "pattern": "^[0-9]{9}$" },
    "benefit_type": { "enum": ["UI", "SNAP", "TANF"] },
    "submission_timestamp": { "type": "string", "format": "date-time" }
  },
  "required": ["claimant_id", "benefit_type"]
}

Step 4: E2E Test Generation#

Replay automatically generates Playwright or Cypress tests based on the recorded workflows. This ensures that the modernized version of the benefits portal behaves exactly like the legacy version, preventing regression errors that could delay benefit payments.

The Strangler Fig Pattern: A Safer Path#

We advocate for the Strangler Fig approach to modernizing government benefits. Instead of replacing the entire system at once, we use Replay to extract and replace the system piece by piece.

1. •Keep the legacy backend running.
2. •Use Replay to build a modern React frontend for a single module (e.g., the Login screen).
3. •Route traffic to the new screen while the rest of the app remains legacy.
4. •Repeat until the "fig" has completely strangled the legacy "tree."

💡 Pro Tip: Focus on the "Citizen Experience" first. Modernizing the frontend UI provides immediate political and social value, while the complex backend migration can happen in the background.

Addressing Common Concerns#

"Our system is too old for this."#

If a human can see it in a browser (or a terminal emulator), Replay can record it. We have successfully extracted logic from systems that were originally designed for IE6 and Netscape.

"What about accessibility (Section 508)?"#

Modernizing government benefits requires strict adherence to accessibility standards. Replay doesn't just copy the legacy UI; it maps legacy functional elements to modern, accessible components from your Design System. This allows you to fix accessibility debt during the extraction process.

"We don't have the source code for the legacy system."#

This is precisely why Visual Reverse Engineering is superior. Replay treats the system as a black box. We don't need your COBOL source code; we only need to see how the system behaves.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take?#

While a manual rewrite takes 18–24 months, a Replay-assisted extraction typically takes 2–8 weeks for the initial UI and logic mapping. The full migration timeline depends on backend complexity, but UI development time is reduced by 70% on average.

What about business logic preservation?#

Replay captures the side effects of business logic. If clicking "Submit" triggers a specific set of validation errors or network requests, Replay documents those rules. This ensures that the "hidden" logic—the rules that aren't in the manual—is preserved in the modern version.

Can Replay handle complex multi-page forms?#

Yes. Replay's Flows feature is designed specifically for complex, multi-state government forms. It tracks state across sessions, ensuring that data persistence logic is correctly mapped to the new architecture.

Is the generated code maintainable?#

Unlike "low-code" platforms that output spaghetti code, Replay generates standard React/TypeScript. Your developers own the code. It’s clean, linted, and follows your organization’s specific coding standards.

The Future of Public Sector IT#

The $3.6 trillion technical debt crisis won't be solved by throwing more manual labor at it. It requires a shift in how we perceive legacy systems. They are not obstacles to be ignored; they are the most accurate documentation of your business rules.

By using Replay to visually reverse engineer these systems, government agencies can finally deliver the modern, responsive, and reliable benefits portals that citizens deserve—without the risk of a catastrophic rewrite failure.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.