Modernizing Municipal Infrastructure Software: A Guide for Local Government

The $3.6 trillion global technical debt isn't just a private sector problem; it is the invisible rot beneath our municipal infrastructure. While city planners obsess over crumbling bridges and water mains, the software managing those assets is often more fragile than the concrete it monitors. Most local governments are trapped in a cycle of "software archaeology"—spending 80% of their IT budget just to keep undocumented, decades-old systems from collapsing.

The traditional response to this crisis is the "Big Bang" rewrite: a multi-year, multi-million dollar gamble that fails 70% of the time. For a municipality, a failed rewrite isn't just a line-item loss; it’s a halted permitting process, a missed water billing cycle, or a security breach in a regulated environment.

Modernizing municipal infrastructure requires a departure from the "rip and replace" mentality. The future of government tech isn't rewriting from scratch—it's understanding what you already have through visual reverse engineering.

TL;DR: Modernizing municipal software fails because of documentation gaps; Replay uses visual reverse engineering to extract logic from legacy workflows, reducing modernization timelines from years to weeks with 70% average time savings.

The High Cost of Documentation Gaps in Government#

In the public sector, the "original developer" of a core system often retired during the Clinton administration. Our data shows that 67% of legacy systems lack any form of functional documentation. When a city decides to modernize a 20-year-old permitting system, they aren't starting with a blueprint; they are starting with a black box.

Standard modernization involves "discovery phases" that last six months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Analysts sit with users, take notes, and try to guess the business logic hidden in the COBOL or Java 6 backend. This manual approach takes an average of 40 hours per screen just to document and prototype.

⚠️ Warning: Relying on manual interviews for discovery is the primary cause of project creep. Users often forget edge cases that the legacy code handles silently, leading to critical failures post-migration.

Why the "Big Bang" Rewrite is a Public Sector Trap#

For a CTO or VP of Engineering in local government, the pressure to "go cloud-native" often leads to the Big Bang approach. You hire a massive consultancy, set an 18-24 month timeline, and hope for the best.

The math simply doesn't work for the Big Bang. By the time the new system is ready for UAT, the regulatory requirements have changed, the budget has been audited, and the stakeholders have moved on.

Visual Reverse Engineering: A New Framework#

Instead of digging through dead code, Replay treats the user interface as the source of truth. By recording real user workflows—like a clerk processing a zoning variance—Replay captures the DOM state, the API calls, and the business logic transitions.

This is "Visual Reverse Engineering." It transforms a video recording into a documented React component and a clean API contract.

Step 1: Workflow Capture#

Instead of writing requirements, departmental users perform their daily tasks while Replay records the session. This captures the "as-is" state of the software, including the undocumented workarounds staff use to bypass legacy bugs.

Step 2: Logic Extraction#

Replay’s AI Automation Suite analyzes the recording. It identifies form fields, validation logic, and state changes. It doesn't just take a screenshot; it understands that "Field A" must be a 10-digit numeric string before "Submit" is enabled.

Step 3: Component Generation#

The platform generates modern, accessible React components that mirror the legacy functionality but utilize a modern tech stack.

typescript
// Example: Generated React component from a legacy Water Billing UI
// Extracted via Replay Visual Reverse Engineering
import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { TextField, Button, Alert } from '@/components/ui';

export function WaterUsagePortal({ accountId }: { accountId: string }) {
  const [usageData, setUsageData] = useState<any>(null);
  const [error, setError] = useState<string | null>(null);

  // Business logic preserved from legacy Java applet:
  // Tiered pricing calculation extracted from recorded XHR intercepts
  const calculateTieredRate = (gallons: number) => {
    if (gallons <= 5000) return gallons * 0.02;
    return (5000 * 0.02) + ((gallons - 5000) * 0.04);
  };

  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-md">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold">Municipal Water Billing</h2>
      {/* Modernized UI components mapped to legacy data structures */}
      <div className="mt-4">
        <TextField 
          label="Current Reading" 
          onChange={(val) => handleCalculation(val)} 
        />
        <Button onClick={submitReading} className="bg-blue-600 text-white">
          Update Records
        </Button>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
}

💰 ROI Insight: Manual modernization costs roughly $15,000–$25,000 per screen when factoring in developer hours and discovery. Replay reduces this to under $2,000 per screen by automating the extraction and documentation phases.

Addressing the "Regulated Environment" Problem#

Municipalities handle sensitive data: PII (Personally Identifiable Information), HIPAA-protected health records in public clinics, and CJIS data in law enforcement. You cannot simply upload this data to a public LLM for "analysis."

Replay is built for these constraints. With SOC2 compliance and On-Premise deployment options, municipal IT teams can modernize without their data ever leaving their firewall.

Technical Debt Audit#

Before writing a single line of new code, Replay provides a Technical Debt Audit. This isn't a vague "your code is old" report. It is a visual map of your application's flows, identifying:

• •Redundant workflows (where staff use 10 clicks for a 2-click task)
• •Dead UI elements that no longer connect to backends
• •Security vulnerabilities in legacy API endpoints

💡 Pro Tip: Use the Technical Debt Audit to prioritize your migration. Don't modernize the whole system at once. Use Replay to extract the 20% of screens that handle 80% of the daily traffic.

From 18 Months to 18 Days: A Case Study in Permitting#

Consider a mid-sized city's building permit system. Built in 2004, it requires Internet Explorer (or a compatibility mode) and has no mobile interface. Inspectors in the field have to take paper notes and re-enter them at the office.

The Old Way:

1. •Hire a vendor ($500k).
2. •4 months of "Discovery" meetings.
3. •12 months of development.
4. •2 months of bug fixing because the vendor missed the "special zoning override" logic.
5. •Total time: 18 months.

The Replay Way:

1. •Record 10 permit applications being processed (1 day).
2. •Replay extracts the flows, generates the API contracts, and builds the React components (3 days).
3. •Developers refine the generated code and connect to the new SQL database (10 days).
4. •QA and Deployment (4 days).
5. •Total time: 18 days.

typescript
// Generated API Contract for Legacy Integration
// This ensures the new React frontend communicates perfectly with the old DB
export interface PermitSubmission {
  applicant_id: string; // Map to legacy 'APP_REF_ID'
  permit_type: 'RESIDENTIAL' | 'COMMERCIAL';
  zoning_code: string;
  timestamp: string;
  // Extracted validation: must be 8-digit alphanumeric
  validation_regex: /^[A-Z0-9]{8}$/; 
}

Security and Compliance in Municipal Modernization#

When modernizing infrastructure, security isn't an afterthought—it's the foundation. Legacy systems are often "secure" only because they are disconnected or too obscure to target. Once you move them to a web-based React frontend, you expose the underlying logic.

Replay mitigates this by generating E2E (End-to-End) Tests automatically during the extraction process.

• •Automated Testing: Replay generates Playwright or Cypress tests based on the recorded video. If the new system doesn't behave exactly like the legacy system, the test fails.
• •Audit Trails: Every extraction is documented. You can see exactly which video recording produced which line of code, providing a clear audit trail for government regulators.
• •Zero Data Leakage: In On-Premise mode, the AI models run locally. Your citizen data never touches the cloud.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take with Replay?#

While a manual rewrite of a complex screen takes approximately 40 hours, Replay reduces this to 4 hours. For a standard municipal module (20-30 screens), the entire extraction and documentation phase can be completed in under two weeks.

What about business logic preservation?#

This is where Replay excels. By using "Video as the Source of Truth," we capture the actual behavior of the system. If a legacy system has a weird quirk where a "Tax Credit" is only applied if a specific checkbox is clicked after the address is entered, Replay captures that state dependency. Manual documentation almost always misses these nuances.

Does this replace our developers?#

No. It replaces the "drudge work." Instead of your senior architects spending months documenting old code, they spend their time reviewing the generated React components and focusing on high-level architecture and security. It turns your engineers from archaeologists back into builders.

Can Replay handle mainframe or terminal-based systems?#

Yes. If it can be rendered on a screen, it can be reverse-engineered. Replay works by capturing the interaction layer, making it platform-agnostic. Whether your backend is a 40-year-old mainframe or a 15-year-old Java app, the visual output is what we use to build the modern replacement.

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