Cross-agency integration debt
Each digital agency built systems separately. Ten years on the integration debt is heavier than the systems themselves.
Discuss Your ChallengeHow it shows up
Citizen submits a document for a government service. The system routes to 3-4 agencies. Each integration — a point-to-point connector, sometimes API, sometimes manual file exchange, sometimes no integration at all (a paper certificate required).
Integration maintenance consumes a significant share of each agency’s IT budget.
Changing one system breaks downstream consumers silently.
A new use case requires months to coordinate integrations.
Why it accumulated
Each digital project solved its own task. Integration was an afterthought.
Standards (data, protocols) existed but were not enforced.
Nobody owns the integrations. Each side blames the other when problems arise.
Vendors encouraged lock-in — proprietary protocols.
Funding model did not support shared infrastructure.
What does not work
“Rewrite everything from scratch”. Politically impossible, technically risky.
Mandate everyone to switch to a single platform. Vendors resist, agencies resist.
Hire more integration engineers. Just adds to the debt.
What works
Government event bus. Single shared infrastructure for events. Each agency publishes, others subscribe.
API gateway federation. Each agency exposes APIs through a unified gateway.
Stewardship and contracts. Every event / API has an owner, contract, version policy.
Strangler pattern for legacy integrations. Gradual migration from point-to-point to event bus.
Funding model. Shared infrastructure via central budget, not agency budgets.
What to discuss
Who owns the government event bus? Cross-agency leadership.
What are the first 5-10 high-impact events? Citizen registration, tax payment, document issued.
How to enforce contracts on schema changes?
Realistic migration timeline. 5-7 years minimum.
Related
- /en/insights/government-data-quality-crisis/ — data crisis
- /en/architecture/government-event-bus-architecture/ — event bus
- /en/architecture/government-api-platform/ — API platform
- /en/insights/government-after-egov/ — after e-gov
What else is worth exploring
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