In July 2026, Rajiv Shah joined Day 1 of the Tech in Gov expo in Canberra for a panel discussion on bridging the gap between legacy systems and modern digital strategy, alongside David Creagh, Stevie-Ann Dovico and Mike Dudarenok, facilitated by Dr Dimitrios Salampasis.
The discussion moved past the obvious “motherhood” statements about removing legacy tech, and instead tackled the real challenges of modernisation, and the right and wrong ways of going about it. A few opinions raised may be less commonly heard – and even unpopular in some quarters:
– Sometimes not migrating is the right answer. Things are legacy for a reason, and if that’s a good reason, you might be better off finding ways to protect the system rather than replace it
– If you do migrate, be laser-focussed on what benefit you expect to gain by doing so – whether that’s cost, reliability, or the ability to add new features – and use this to guide your planning and decision making
– “Modernise” is not synonymous with “move to cloud”. Sometimes cloud is a good idea, sometimes it’s a bad choice
– We should be asking more of vendors to continue supporting technology for longer, so it doesn’t become legacy too quickly. Fair enough if a system is 20 years old and needs replacing, but a lot of modern hardware should be able to last longer than the typical 3-5 year software support periods many vendors offer