Executive Summary
Legacy modernization has long been Ohio’s most time-intensive government challenge — not because of what needs to be built, but because of how long it takes to understand what already exists. Agencies managing systems spanning decades, with millions of lines of undocumented code, faced a fundamental operational efficiency problem: modernization could not accelerate until system understanding did.
The Ohio Department of Administrative Services (DAS) Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) solved this by embedding AI-assisted techniques directly into the earliest phases of its modernization lifecycle. By utilizing AI for system interpretation, functional summarization, dependency mapping, and specification generation, the program compresses what has traditionally been the most resource-intensive phase: the period before a single line of modern code is written. This establishes a clear definition of what each system must do, turning discovery, design, and execution into a single continuous flow. Crucially, this structure ensures AI accelerates
delivery without ever displacing the human judgment, oversight, and agency ownership at the center of every engagement.
Where most modernization programs apply a single AI approach across all scenarios, Ohio built two purpose-fit methodologies calibrated to fundamentally different legacy environments — and established the governance structures to deploy each appropriately. For deep legacy reconstruction — environments where systems span decades and lack documentation — the program applies a context engineering approach. For structured enterprise upgrades — environments where the challenge is consistency and scale rather
than interpretation — the program applies a deterministic, agent-based execution framework. These are not variations of the same approach — they are architecturally distinct methodologies designed for different risk profiles, applied within a unified governance model.
The results are significant and measurable. To date, the effort has resulted in a 50–60% reduction in documentation and estimation time, 40% faster system analysis, and 20–40% improvement in code generation across pilot engagements. One agency is independently continuing its own modernization after the program equipped it with the skills and frameworks to do so. Another has committed shared investment to expand the model further.
Ohio is not just modernizing faster — it is building the capability to sustain that pace independently. The program is positioned to scale, with an estimated four to five modernization-ready applications per engaged agency. With a proven model and a growing pipeline, the DAS CCoE is doing more than modernizing systems – it is driving operational excellence statewide.
Ultimately, the impact of this work extends beyond Ohio. The CCoE modernization effort tackles the same technical complexities currently prioritized by IT leaders across the country. Aligning closely with the NASCIO State CIO Top Ten Priorities — specifically AI (#1), modernization (#4), and cloud services (#10) — Ohio has successfully engineered an innovative path forward that serves as a highly adaptable model for state government IT.
