Government Agency: Network Modernisation & Decommissioning
Challenge: Fragility and Stalled Decommissioning
The agency's long-standing network faced dual pressures: persistent instability leading to monthly Priority 1 incidents, and a backlog of essential legacy system decommissioning that was stalled. Attempts to retire older systems were blocked by complex, undocumented interdependencies. This created significant operational risk, technical debt, and high maintenance costs. Furthermore, leadership lacked clear visibility into the true operational friction and the financial implications of delaying the inevitable shutdown of outdated technology.
Strategic Approach: Dual-Track Execution
The Government agency launched a comprehensive transformation initiative, structured around parallel modernisation and decommissioning workstreams.
Key actions included:
Discovery and Documentation: Cross-functional teams—comprising Operations, Engineering, and Security—collaborated to conduct deep-dive investigations. They successfully uncovered undocumented knowledge and mapped out the true dependencies that were blocking safe decommissioning and contributing to recurring incidents.
Risk-Based Prioritization: The teams conducted extensive internal workshops and interviews to capture operational pain points and link them directly to service impact. This data was used to develop a prioritized improvement and decommissioning roadmap that focused on retiring the highest-risk, highest-friction components first.
Building the Business Case: A compelling business case was developed that clearly articulated the financial and operational risk of the unstable network alongside the compounding cost of delayed decommissioning. This provided senior leadership and oversight bodies with a transparent view of the full financial lifecycle and secured the necessary funding and approval for the comprehensive modernization and shutdown process.
Stakeholder Alignment: Periodic, risk-focused updates were provided to leadership, emphasising the value proposition of a modern, simplified operating environment and the inherent risk reduction achieved through successful decommissioning.
Outcomes: Resilience and Simplified Operations
The strategic, dual-track approach resulted in the following critical successes:
Accelerated Decommissioning: The organization safely and systematically accelerated the decommissioning of high-risk legacy infrastructure, significantly reducing technical debt and simplifying the overall network architecture.
Reduced Operational Friction: The simultaneous modernization and retirement of old systems led to a significant reduction in Priority 1 incidents and public service disruptions.
Improved Financial Control: Securing dedicated funding for both modernization and the necessary decommissioning resources established better control over lifecycle costs and reduced reliance on costly, reactive maintenance.
Enhanced Risk Visibility: The initiative established a new standard for organizational awareness, ensuring leadership possessed a clear, data-driven understanding of operational risks and the true cost of technical debt and under-investment.