"Why haven't you replaced that system yet?" A question rarely asked out loud in the public sector, but one most CIOs have caught themselves thinking. Outdated software keeps running, sometimes for twenty years. Until it stops running. And then you're stuck with a citizen process that has fallen over, or an audit you can't close.
Migration in the public sector isn't a technical project. It's a continuity operation in which privacy and compliance weigh as heavily as the code itself. A few things we keep in mind at Springboard.
1. Hosting entirely within Europe
GDPR isn't negotiable. We deliver solutions that can be hosted entirely within the EU, often on infrastructure you already have. What stays in the Netherlands, stays in the Netherlands. That removes a whole pile of discussions and risk assessments before they even begin.
2. No vendor lock-in
Open-source Java and Spring Boot mean: no platform licences, no vendor adjusting the price list, no supplier "taking it over." The code is yours, readable, and can be maintained by any Java team. For procurement and inter-agency handovers, that's gold.
3. ISO 27001 as a starting point, not the goal
We're ISO 27001 certified, but that's a starting line, not a finish line. In practice it means: we work in your environment, with your security requirements, and we honour how your organisation handles data. Audit trails, access management, segregated environments, the way it should be.
4. Working software, not reports
Nothing is less safe than a migration that's "almost" done and has already taken a year. We deliver in running modules. Every few weeks something that can go to production, or a clear reason why not yet. No slides about what might someday be possible.
5. Phased, with a way back
Big-bang doesn't fit public services. So we migrate module by module, with old and new running side by side until the behaviour is provably identical. Something unexpected breaks? Rolling back doesn't take weeks. It's more of a slide than a leap.
And the people behind it
One thing we hear often: the people who wrote the old system have long since left. What you lose with them isn't code, it's context. Why was this done this way? Which rule belongs with which exception? AI agents help us recover that context from the code itself and from real-world behaviour. But in the end, a human places every decision next to your domain knowledge. AI accelerates; people decide.
What we do differently
Outdated software is a kind of invisible debt. The longer you leave it, the more expensive it gets. We start small: one concrete part of your system, a few weeks of work, and you'll know what a real migration actually involves, in time, in cost, in risk. No quote based on an assumption; a free legacy scan based on facts.
Working at a municipality or other public-sector organisation and still running something that really needs replacing? Drop us a line, info@jam-it.nl or +31 6 33 13 94 23.