The Largest Line in Your Technology Budget Is the One Nobody Can Explain. Here Is What the Public Record Shows.
We went through the public record on what governments spend keeping old systems running. Where the total is known, it is most of the budget; its parts rarely are. Here is what we found, four ways to open the line, and the benchmark we would set.
The budget estimates are being discussed. On the technology page one line is far larger than the rest: maintenance of existing systems.
The finance officer asks what is in it. The head of IT produces a list. It is a list of contracts, arranged by supplier. It does not say which system each rupee keeps running.
Someone asks which system costs the most to keep. Nobody knows. The line is passed, as it is every year, a little higher than the last.
The paradox: The largest line in the budget is the one that gets the least examination, because nobody can see inside it.
What We Found
For this article we went through the public record on what governments spend keeping their existing systems running: the US national auditor’s July 2025 report on the most critical federal legacy systems, the UK government’s own review of the state of its digital services, published in January 2025.
First, what we did not find: no upkeep figure for any Indian public body, at any level, and nothing from the Middle East. Every body named below is a national government or authority, far larger than the bodies we write for.
Where the total is known, most of it goes on running what exists. The US national auditor reported that about 80% of the more than 100 billion US dollars the federal government spends on IT each year goes on running existing systems.
Some public bodies spend most of it on upkeep. The UK government’s own review found that some bodies spend as much as 70% to 85% of their technology budgets on upkeep.
A government can put a figure on named systems when it looks. The same US auditor looked at the 11 most critical federal legacy systems. Together they cost about 754 million US dollars a year to run. That is a figure for a named set of systems, not a share of a budget, and the agencies that run them gave it for the auditor’s review.
Money for upkeep and money for change are not the same money. The UK review found that “28% of red-rated legacy systems lack remediation funding”. Red-rated means high risk. A system can be paid for every year and still have nothing set aside to fix it.
Upkeep is often bought from outside, at a price. The same review says the UK tax authority “relies heavily on costly third-party services to maintain outdated systems”.
Our reading: the total is known because accounts are kept by contract, supplier and budget head, the ways money is paid. The question a department needs answered is asked by application: what each system costs to keep, and what leaving it would cost. The public record holds the totals and almost none of the parts.
What our review does not show: We found no upkeep figure for any public body of our readers’ size, and nothing from India or the Middle East on this issue. The 80% and the 70% to 85% are shares of spending in the US federal government and UK public bodies; the record holds no breakdown of what upkeep consists of, no figure for staff time spent on it, and no figure for what any body saved by replacing a system. That the missing piece is a cost per application is our reasoning, not a finding of any source. We make no comment on any government’s choices; we report what its own auditors and reviews published.
What Waits on a Line Nobody Has Itemised
A department that cannot break down its upkeep line is not careless: costs are filed the way they are paid. Our reading is that several things cannot start until the line is opened.
Renewals cannot be questioned. Each contract, licence and cover comes back marked essential, with no alternative beside it to weigh it against.
Staff time is in no line at all. The nights the department’s own people spend on releases and faults are paid in salaries, under no system’s name, so the applications that take most of that time look cheap.
The question “what if we left?” is never asked. With no cost per application, nothing can be set against a replacement, so the line is provided for first, as committed, and grows.
The gap we see: most public bodies we write for know their total upkeep. Few could name each application, what it costs to keep under every head, the staff time it takes, the platform under it, and what leaving it would cost. A body that holds that list can choose, application by application, what to keep and what to leave. A body that does not passes the same line every year.
This is our reading of the evidence. It is not a measured market figure.
Four Ways to Open the Line, Weighed
There are four real options. Each one is right for somebody.
| Option | When it fits | What it risks |
|---|---|---|
| Ask the IT section for a breakdown by contract and supplier | A quick first view is needed, and the contracts are few | It shows who is paid, not which application each payment keeps running; shared contracts stay shared |
| Cut the line by a set share across the board | Money must be found this year, whatever happens | It cuts the cheap and the costly alike, and the cut often returns as an emergency purchase |
| An outside review of IT spending by the body’s auditors or accountants | The body needs assurance on how money was spent | It looks back at what was paid, not at what leaving an application would cost. This is accountants’ and auditors’ work, not ours |
| An assessment that reads each application, records what keeps it going, and sets the cost of keeping it beside the cost of leaving it | The line must lead to choices: what to keep, what to leave, and in what order | It costs money before anything changes, it saves nothing by itself, and assigning shared costs to single applications is an estimate, not an audited figure |
Our recommendation: open the line by application, not by contract. Start with the applications that cost most to keep, read what each one does and stands on, and set the cost of keeping it beside the cost of replacing it, using your own finance section’s figures. Where keeping is cheaper, keeping is the right decision. We do not maintain, monitor or run old systems, so we cannot make one cheaper by taking its upkeep over, and we promise no saving.
Where You Are Now, and Where You Should Be
Before any work begins we set a benchmark: a few measures taken from your own systems, each with a target. For this issue it would look like this.
| Measure | Typical starting point | Where it should be | How it is checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| The upkeep line | One figure, listed by contract and supplier | Gathered by application, from the body’s own finance figures | The cost comparison |
| Cost of keeping beside cost of leaving | Not compared | Set side by side for each application | The cost comparison |
| Staff time behind each application | In no line | Estimated by the IT section and set beside the invoices | The cost comparison |
| What each application stands on | Not recorded with its cost | The platform under each one recorded, with whether its maker still supports it | The map of the system as it stands and the risk register |
| Order of attention | Whichever renewal comes up next | Ranked by what each application costs to keep for what it does | The risk register and the staged plan |
The starting points above are what we expect to find; in an engagement they are replaced by your own figures, taken in the first review. The targets are what we would work towards with you. They are not results we have already achieved for a public body.
How We Work With You
- We listen: a free Reliability Review. A first conversation about the applications the body relies on and what it knows about what each one costs. You leave with a short written note of what we found. You can start with a conversation about the system; we ask for read-only code access only when the assessment begins.
- We research. We research your sector, the regulator’s position and what the public record says about firms in your situation. This article is an example of that work.
- We read the system and propose: the Legacy System Specification Assessment. Here the system is an application the body built or had built, such as a billing or property tax application, a licence register or a citizen portal. It produces a map of the system as it stands, a written specification of what it does, a risk register, a cost comparison between keeping and replacing the system, and a staged plan with a fixed quote. AI does a first pass, our senior engineers review it and trace it to the code, and your own experts confirm it. Code access is read-only and logged, never used for training, and deleted within 30 days of the evaluation ending unless we engage. You get the options and our recommendation.
- If you approve, we build. We replace a system one module at a time while the old one keeps running. We never do a single cutover. Each module has a traceability matrix. The work is billed by milestone, each milestone tied to a module you accept, and you can pause after any accepted module.
- We review against the benchmark. Before work starts we set the benchmark. After each module we show you where each measure stands, and the filled-in benchmark is yours at the end.
The Review is free. Every paid step is fixed price, agreed at scoping. Stop after any step. The findings are yours. The assessment fee is credited in full against the first build stage if it starts within 90 days of the report.
What we do not do: we do not maintain, monitor, patch or run old systems, and we do not take over their upkeep. We promise no saving and give none as a figure; for a time the body pays for old and new together. We are not accountants or auditors: the figures for what a body spends today come from its own finance section, and the comparison is an estimate built on them. Upkeep of an old platform stops only when the body’s own team switches it off. We do not supply staff or work in COBOL, assembly language or mainframes. We do not say we are empanelled with any government, and we give no advice on budget or procurement rules: how an assessment and the stages after it are bought is the body’s own decision. We have no published case of this work for a public body.
What changes for the business:
| Role | What they gain |
|---|---|
| Head of department | The department can say where its technology money goes, application by application, and choose what to keep and what to leave. |
| Head of procurement | Each renewal is weighed against a known alternative, and is no longer passed because nobody can say what else is possible. |
| Head of IT | A ranked list of which applications cost most to keep, and why. |
| Head of finance | Upkeep stops being one unexplained line. Each item sits beside the cost of leaving it. |
| Head of service delivery | Service delivery knows which services sit on the systems that cost most to keep. |
The cases in this article, and what IOanyT does about that kind of problem:
| The case | What IOanyT does |
|---|---|
| The US national auditor (July 2025): about 80% of the more than 100 billion US dollars of federal IT spending each year goes on running existing systems; the 11 most critical legacy systems cost about 754 million US dollars a year to run. | We make no comment on any government’s choices, and our part is far smaller. We do not run or maintain old systems. For one body’s applications, we set the cost of keeping each beside the cost of replacing it. |
| The UK government’s own review (January 2025): some bodies spend as much as 70% to 85% of their technology budgets on upkeep; “28% of red-rated legacy systems lack remediation funding”. | We promise no saving. We give a body a cost comparison and a staged plan with a fixed quote, so it can decide, application by application, what to keep and what to leave. |
| The UK tax authority, in the government’s own review of January 2025: it “relies heavily on costly third-party services to maintain outdated systems”. | We make no comment on the authority, and we do not take over upkeep. For applications on technology we read, we write down what each one does. |
IOanyT is a consultancy with its own engineering team: we study the problem, recommend, and prove it by building only what you approve. We start by opening your upkeep line the way the question is asked: by application, with the cost of leaving beside the cost of keeping.
Sources
In this issue
Upkeep absorbs the budget
Research note 2
Every New Service Waits Because the Budget Is Already Spent on the Old Ones. Four Ways to Make Room, Weighed.
Upkeep is provided for first, so new public services wait. We weigh four ways to make room and explain why we start with a keep-versus-replace cost comparison.
Research note 3
Your Team Spends Its Year Keeping the Old System Alive. Here Is the Benchmark We Would Set.
Invoices are only part of what an old system costs; the rest is staff time nobody counts. Four ways to lighten the year, and the benchmark we would agree.
Issue study
Eighty Per Cent on Standing Still
How upkeep of old systems takes most of a public technology budget, from the public record: the options, what we would advise against, and our benchmark.
More from Government and public sector
Replacement fails or overruns
A Deferred Replacement Is Still a Decision. Four Ways to Replace an Old System, Weighed.
Thin or missing documentation
A New Officer Takes Charge of Your System With Nothing to Read. Three Ways to Change That, Weighed.
Wrong outputs trusted as correct