In 2020, I sat in a design review meeting for a proposed new module in SPACES — North Dakota’s public benefits management system.

If you’ve worked in government IT with benefits management, you probably know SPACES — or at least a variation of it. The name itself is a North Dakota-specific acronym coined during the benefits modernization effort. Under the hood, it’s a heavily customized case management system originally developed by a major consulting firm nearly 20 years ago and later adapted and implemented under different names in other states. It’s often jokingly referred to as:

“The 20-year-old system that replaces 40-year-old systems.”

With that kind of legacy comes layers of process, paperwork, and tightly coupled architecture. Which is why the proposed change request on the table was so familiar — and so expensive.

The Original Plan: Full Module Buildout

The ask seemed simple: a handful of users at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) needed to securely view and export a specific subset of data.

The solution presented?

  • A new module with multiple screens
  • Custom security groups and role-based access control
  • Built-in reporting and export functionality
  • Full design, development, testing, and documentation cycles

On paper, it made sense. But the real cost was already snowballing. Between development, multiple rounds of SIT/UAT testing, and security provisioning across environments, this was shaping up to be a 400+ hour effort — easily $50,000 to $70,000 in initial vendor and internal costs.

The Turning Point: Just Listen

I was brought in to review the proposed design and provide the technical approach and estimates. While the team walked through their documents, a casual comment from the stakeholders stopped me in my tracks:

“We currently just run queries in our viewer tool and export the data to Excel.”

So I asked a simple question:
“Why don’t we just continue doing that — but with a secured, predefined view in the SPACES database?”

You could hear the pause.

Not because it was a wild idea — but because no one had considered it.

The Lazy Solution That Worked

I’m not being modest when I say: I’m lazy.
The good kind of lazy — the kind that looks for outcomes, not process for process’ sake.

Instead of writing a single line of Java, I:

  • Created a predefined SQL view scoped to the exact data they needed
  • Configured read-only access for authorized users
  • Documented how to connect to the database securely using their existing tools

That’s it.
No new modules. No new screens. No added maintenance.

The users got exactly what they needed. It took only a couple of hours of actual work — plus the usual herding of cats to get access and approvals.

The Real Savings: Time, Cost, Complexity

By choosing a lean solution that fit the real use case, we avoided:

  • Hundreds of hours in design, development, and testing
  • Time-consuming security role design and approvals
  • Dozens of pages of documentation and test script authoring
  • Ongoing maintenance debt

The result?
A working, secure solution delivered in 1/400th of the estimated time.
At standard government contracting rates, that’s $50,000+ in cost avoidance — for a feature that was already being done manually.

Lessons for Public Sector Tech

This story isn’t about being clever. It’s about asking the right question at the right time — and having enough technical context to offer a better path.

Legacy modernization doesn’t always mean “rewrite it.”
Sometimes it means don’t write it at all.

When we stop treating every request as a dev project, and instead look at the system as a whole, we uncover opportunities for massive savings — in time, money, and stress.

I’ll always advocate for code when it’s needed.
But I’ll also keep speaking up when it’s not.

Wrapping Up

This isn’t the only time I’ve helped state agencies and enterprise teams save tens of thousands — even hundreds of thousands — by questioning the default build-it instinct or status quo. But it’s one of my favorite examples because the fix was so simple — and the ripple effects so big.

One question. One database view. $50K+ saved.
Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Want more behind-the-scenes insights on government IT, pragmatic legacy modernization, and automation that actually works?
👉 Visit JesseSchauer.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.

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