Modernising On-Prem Government Systems to Cloud-Native Architectures: A U.S. Public Sector Case

Abstract

U.S. public‑sector agencies continue to rely on legacy on‑premises systems designed for fixed workloads, limited concurrency, and infrequent reporting. As service expectations shift toward mobile access, real‑time data availability, and uninterrupted operations, these environments increasingly drive high maintenance costs, limited scalability, and challenges in meeting evolving security and audit requirements. This case study examines the cloud‑native modernisation of a state‑level workforce services platform operated by a U.S. labour agency. The modernisation replaced a monolithic on-premises labour-exchange system with a Microsoft Azure–based architecture utilising serverless computing, managed data services, and infrastructure-as-code. The transformation achieved 78% less manual reconciliation, 82% higher anomaly‑detection accuracy, an 11.7% improvement in data quality, and an 81% reduction in business costs. The findings demonstrate that phased, policy‑aligned cloud‑native adoption can deliver substantial operational, scalability, and accountability benefits for public‑sector institutions.