Last year, the Federal Government spent over $90 billion on information technology, 80% of which went to operating and maintaining legacy systems. In addition to being costly, these systems are difficult to upgrade, provide a thoroughly un-modern user experience, and are uniquely vulnerable to hackers. Building a custom digital solution from the ground-up would address many of these challenges and allow agencies to translate mission requirements into business outcomes. Developing custom government software, however, is not for the faint of heart—particularly when using a traditional code-based approach.
Each new custom solution has to play nice with legacy systems and processes, balance the (occasionally competing) interests of interests, and be continually maintained over its lifespan. To complicate matters further, agencies are forced to compete with the private sector for a limited pool of experienced engineers with the coding expertise to build robust enterprise-scale applications.
At least, that’s the way it used to be.
No-code application development platforms such as Unqork dramatically improve how agencies build, deploy, and manage custom software. By simplifying and streamlining development, no-code shortens the time to market, improves quality, opens the process up, and lowers the costs of both initial builds and ongoing maintenance.
Many solutions on the market make similar claims, of course. Indeed, the application platform market (also called Application Platform as a Service, or “aPaaS”) can admittedly be pretty confusing. The sheer number of vendors, claims, and lingo can be overwhelming. But there are very important differences between enterprise-scale no-code and those other solutions.
We hope this guide will be a helpful resource for any enterprise looking to inject new efficiencies into their development function.