Visual Reverse Engineering for Public Sector: Modernizing Citizen Portals on a Tight Budget

Most government modernization projects are dead before the first line of code is written. In the public sector, the "Big Bang" rewrite is a $3.6 trillion graveyard of ambitious timelines and blown budgets. When 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timeline, the traditional approach—hiring a massive consultancy to spend six months "discovering" requirements—is no longer just inefficient; it’s fiscal negligence.

For agencies managing citizen portals, the problem is compounded by a total lack of documentation. 67% of legacy systems lack any reliable technical documentation, leaving architects to perform "software archaeology" on monolithic systems built 20 years ago.

Visual Reverse Engineering offers a way out of this trap. Instead of manual discovery, we use execution as the source of truth.

TL;DR: Visual Reverse Engineering bypasses manual documentation archaeology by using video recordings of user workflows to automatically generate modern React components and API contracts, reducing modernization timelines by 70%.

The Public Sector Modernization Crisis#

Public sector IT leaders face a unique paradox: they must modernize to meet security standards and citizen expectations, but they are often tethered to rigid procurement cycles and fixed budgets. A typical enterprise rewrite takes 18 to 24 months. In a government context, that often stretches to three or four years, by which time the "new" stack is already nearing technical obsolescence.

The bottleneck isn't the coding; it's the understanding. Manual reverse engineering of a single legacy screen—mapping every validation rule, hidden field, and API call—takes an average of 40 hours. With Replay, that same screen is extracted and documented in 4 hours.

The Cost of Discovery#

What is Visual Reverse Engineering?#

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of recording real user interactions within a legacy application and using those execution traces to reconstruct the application's logic, UI structure, and data requirements.

Unlike static analysis tools that look at "dead code," Visual Reverse Engineering looks at how the system actually behaves. This is critical for citizen portals where years of "temporary" hotfixes and undocumented business rules are buried in the frontend logic. Replay captures these workflows and transforms them into a clean, modern codebase.

From Black Box to Documented Codebase#

When you record a workflow in Replay, the platform analyzes the DOM mutations, network requests, and state changes. It doesn't just "copy" the UI; it understands the intent.

• •UI Extraction: Generates accessible, themed React components.
• •Logic Mapping: Identifies hidden business rules (e.g., "If User Age > 65 and State = 'NY', show Section B").
• •API Synthesis: Automatically generates OpenAPI/Swagger contracts based on actual network traffic.

💰 ROI Insight: By moving from 40 hours per screen to 4 hours, an agency modernizing a 50-screen portal saves 1,800 man-hours in the discovery phase alone.

Technical Implementation: From Legacy JSP to Modern React#

Let's look at a practical example. Imagine a legacy Department of Labor portal built in 2005 using JSP and jQuery. It has complex validation logic for unemployment claims that no one currently employed at the agency understands.

Using Replay, an architect records the "File a Claim" workflow. The platform extracts the following React component, preserving the business logic while stripping away the legacy technical debt.

typescript
// Example: Generated component from Replay Visual Reverse Engineering
// Source: Legacy Unemployment Insurance Portal (Workflow: Claim Submission)

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
import { TextField, Button, Alert } from '@/components/ui';
import { validateSSN, calculateWeeklyBenefit } from './logic/benefit-engine';

export function CitizenClaimForm({ citizenId, onComplete }) {
  const [isEligible, setIsEligible] = useState<boolean | null>(null);
  const { register, handleSubmit, watch, formState: { errors } } = useForm();

  // Replay extracted this logic from the legacy network trace and DOM state
  const income = watch('annualIncome');
  
  useEffect(() => {
    if (income > 0) {
      const benefit = calculateWeeklyBenefit(income);
      // Logic preserved from legacy "calc_engine.js"
      setIsEligible(benefit > 150);
    }
  }, [income]);

  const onSubmit = async (data: any) => {
    // Replay generated this API contract based on recorded legacy POST requests
    const response = await fetch('/api/v2/claims/submit', {
      method: 'POST',
      body: JSON.stringify({ ...data, source: 'modernized_portal' }),
    });
    if (response.ok) onComplete();
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)} className="space-y-4">
      <TextField 
        label="Social Security Number"
        {...register('ssn', { validate: validateSSN })}
        error={errors.ssn?.message}
      />
      
      {isEligible === false && (
        <Alert variant="warning">
          Based on the income provided, you may not meet the minimum benefit threshold.
        </Alert>
      )}

      <Button type="submit" disabled={!isEligible}>
        Submit Claim
      </Button>
    </form>
  );
}

💡 Pro Tip: When modernizing public sector portals, use Replay’s Library feature to automatically map extracted components to your agency's official Design System (e.g., USWDS).

The 4-Step Modernization Workflow#

Modernizing a citizen portal doesn't require a multi-year roadmap. With a visual approach, the process is compressed into four distinct phases.

Step 1: Workflow Recording#

Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) or end-users perform standard tasks in the legacy system while Replay records the session. This captures every edge case, including those "weird" bugs that users have learned to work around but are never documented.

Step 2: Automated Extraction#

The Replay engine analyzes the recording. It identifies:

• •Flows: The architectural sequence of the application.
• •Blueprints: The structural layout of every screen.
• •Data Contracts: The exact JSON payloads required by the backend.

Step 3: Technical Debt Audit#

Before generating code, Replay performs a technical debt audit. It flags redundant logic, dead API endpoints, and security vulnerabilities in the legacy flow. This ensures you don't just "move the mess" to a new framework.

Step 4: Component Generation & E2E Testing#

The platform generates the React components and—crucially—automated E2E tests (Playwright/Cypress) that mimic the original recording. This guarantees that the modernized version behaves exactly like the legacy version.

typescript
// Generated E2E Test to ensure parity with legacy behavior
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('Modernized Claim Form matches Legacy Behavior', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/claims/new');
  
  // Fill SSN - Logic extracted from Replay recording
  await page.fill('input[name="ssn"]', '000-00-0000');
  await page.fill('input[name="annualIncome"]', '50000');
  
  // Verify the "Benefit Estimate" appears, matching the legacy UI behavior
  const estimate = page.locator('.benefit-estimate');
  await expect(estimate).toBeVisible();
  await expect(estimate).toContainText('$450.00');
  
  await page.click('button[type="submit"]');
  await expect(page).toHaveURL(/confirmation/);
});

Security and Compliance in Regulated Environments#

For government, healthcare, and financial services, "cloud-only" is often a dealbreaker. Modernization tools must respect the data gravity and security requirements of the public sector.

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Replay is built with the highest data protection standards.
• •On-Premise Availability: For agencies with strict data residency requirements, Replay can be deployed entirely within your VPC or on-premise data center.
• •PII Masking: During the recording process, sensitive citizen data (SSNs, health records) is automatically masked before it ever hits the extraction engine.

⚠️ Warning: Never use generic AI code generators for public sector modernization without a visual "source of truth." LLMs often hallucinate business logic when they lack the context of the actual running application.

Breaking the Cycle of Failed Rewrites#

The primary reason legacy rewrites fail is Scope Creep caused by Information Asymmetry. The developers building the new system don't know what they don't know about the old system.

Visual Reverse Engineering eliminates this asymmetry. When the "source of truth" is a video of the system actually working, there is no room for interpretation. The business logic is what the system does, not what a 10-year-old PDF says it should do.

Key Benefits for Public Sector Leaders:#

• •Reduced Procurement Risk: Shorter timelines mean you don't need to commit to 3-year contracts with uncertain outcomes.
• •Accessibility by Default: Replay can be configured to output components that meet Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 standards automatically.
• •Preserved Institutional Knowledge: Even if the original developers have retired, their logic is captured through the system's usage.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take?#

Most enterprise screens can be fully recorded, analyzed, and converted into documented React components in under 4 hours. A complete citizen portal with 20-30 complex workflows can typically be mapped in 2 to 3 weeks.

What about business logic preservation?#

Unlike simple "screen scrapers," Replay monitors the state changes and network calls. If a legacy system has a specific calculation logic hidden in a 5,000-line JavaScript file, Replay identifies the inputs and outputs of that logic during the recording and encapsulates it in a modern, testable function.

Can Replay handle mainframe backends?#

Yes. Replay is frontend-agnostic. Whether your backend is a modern microservice or a 40-year-old COBOL mainframe, Replay captures the data exchange at the browser level, allowing you to generate clean API contracts (OpenAPI) that bridge the gap between the old and the new.

Is the code "locked in" to Replay?#

No. Replay generates standard, human-readable React code, TypeScript, and CSS. Once the code is extracted, it is yours to own, modify, and deploy. Replay is a modernization accelerator, not a proprietary runtime.

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