Inheriting Your Own System: What ICT Legacy Management Can Teach Us About Reforming Dutch Government Execution

Every long-standing organization builds up legacy. In the world of ICT, this is familiar territory: outdated systems, poorly documented interfaces, and a proliferation of temporary fixes that became permanent. Less visible, but just as paralyzing, is the administrative legacy that accumulates within the Dutch national government. Policy execution expands in layers, responsibilities become fragmented, role definitions vague, and handovers endless.

What if we used ICT legacy management as a blueprint for modernizing public execution?

The National Government as a System with Original SinThe operational reality of the Dutch government increasingly resembles a network of dependencies with no central governance. From tax benefits to climate policies, and from permit issuance to youth care: time and again, responsibilities are divided across multiple entities with no clear role allocation or output-based agreements.

In ICT, we would call this a ‘monolithic application’, entangled processes with low adaptability and high internal noise. And as with legacy systems, the damage is rarely in visible failures, but rather in persistent friction, delay, and confusion.

What Is Legacy in ICT – and Why Is It So Persistent?

Legacy systems are technical solutions that were once effective but no longer meet current demands. They are kept alive out of fear: fear of system failure, financial cost, or knowledge loss. Every small change requires customization. Every error ripples through poorly documented chains.

Key characteristics include:

• Lack of documentation: No one fully understands how it works.

• Inter-system dependencies: Everything is interconnected.

• Patches and workarounds: Cumulative fixes instead of structural solutions.

• High replacement costs: Modernization is postponed.

• Staff disengagement: IT professionals don’t want to work with 1998 code.

Sound familiar? Replace system with organization and the parallels become painfully clear.

Handover Is the Weakest Link – in Both ICT and Policy

In software development, ‘handover points’ are notorious: each moment when responsibility or information transfers from one team to another creates the risk of delay, error, or loss of context.

In public policy execution, these moments are everywhere: between ministries and agencies, national services and municipalities, implementers and citizens. And this is exactly where the system breaks down:

• Information gets lost.

• Decisions are inconsistently interpreted.

• Responsibilities dissolve.

As in ICT, one of the most powerful improvement strategies is reducing and structuring handovers.

O&F as a Blueprint: Function-Based, Not Merely Role-Based

A critical recommendation for modernization: the Organisatie en Formatierapport (O&F, or Organizational and Staffing Report) must go beyond being a mere collection of roles.

• Functions must be described by output: What do you deliver?

• Relationships between functions must be clarified: How do you relate to your colleague?

• Overlaps must be eliminated: Today, we see duplications, triplications, and a vague cloud of shared responsibilities that no one owns.

The impact of a vague O&F is significant:

• Decision-making delays

• Staff disengagement

• No clear escalation path in incidents

• Low sense of responsibility (“it’s somewhere over there”)

In short: an organization without a clear functional structure is just as risky as an IT landscape without architecture.

What Can We Learn from ICT Legacy Management?

Modern ICT legacy approaches offer concrete lessons for public administration:

ICT Principle	Application to Government Execution
Refactoring	Redesign process chains without tearing everything down
Modularization	Divide tasks into reusable, clearly defined functional units
Data-first mindset	Understand information flows before redesigning processes
Exposing technical debt	Make bureaucratic ‘legacy costs’ visible and measurable
Eliminating shadow IT	Identify and regulate informal practices

These principles translate well to a governmental context — provided the organization is willing to see itself as a system, with all its flaws, inherited errors, and decaying interfaces.

An Iterative Approach to Execution Reform

Like software modernization, execution reform should be iterative, not revolutionary. Start with:

• A functional map per policy domain

• An analysis of handover points and their failure risks

• A revised O&F based on output and functional relationships

• A pilot in which tasks are reorganized in modular, measurable structures

Let’s not make perfect the enemy of better. And let’s realize: every generation that delays reform, passes on the problem, worse.

Conclusion: Acknowledge the System Before You Can Change It

Modernizing the machinery of government is not a cosmetic operation, it’s a fundamental rethink of how we organize structure, responsibility, and execution. As long as we continue thinking in terms of people and roles instead of functions and output, we’ll be applying plasters to a broken structure.

Only by recognizing that we are the heirs to a system that has ground to a halt can we begin to unravel it. The ICT world has already developed the tools. What remains is the courage to apply them; to ourselves.