Technical legacy: the burden the sector can’t afford to ignore
Why addressing long-standing technical legacy is now essential to the higher education sector’s resilience, efficiency and ability to innovate.
The UK’s higher education data, digital and technology infrastructure (DDTI) underpinning teaching, research, and learning is under strain. Outdated and complex systems – collectively termed 'technical legacy' – are driving up costs and posing a challenge to innovation and the sector's security and sustainability. This is more than a niche technical issue; addressing technical legacy is a strategic challenge to student experience, institutional and sector competitiveness, and national ambitions for research and innovation.
A growing sector wide strain
Through our daily engagement with institutions, stakeholder organisations, funders and policymakers we hear consistently about the pressures created by technical legacy. While each institution feels the strain differently, there is a distinct sector-wide pattern of a drain on resources that should be put to better use. By addressing technical legacy, the sector could unlock more of the benefit that higher education brings to the economy and people’s lives.
Technical legacy doesn't happen in isolation – it's driven by policy, regulatory and funding complexity. Every new workaround, bolt-on system, or short-term solution adds another layer of complexity, cost and fragility. Student success, research, innovation and knowledge exchange all depend on sustainable, efficient and future-proofed DDTI.
A challenge decades in the making
This is not a sudden problem; technical legacy has evolved over decades. Without sustained and decisive action, it will continue to undermine the sector's ability to innovate, deliver on UK industrial strategy ambitions and remain globally competitive.
As UCISA has emphasised, “we must treat our digital estate as well as [we treat] our physical estate,” yet awareness of the extent and impact of technical legacy varies significantly across university executive teams.
Understanding the scale of the cost
The process of costing technical legacy is complex, and at Jisc we have taken initial steps to define and understand these costs.
Based on relevant data available at the time of analysis, our early analysis suggests that technical legacy impacts universities by £2bn to £4.7bn each year – which could make technical legacy costs equivalent to potentially 4% or more of university expenditure. As there is no dedicated methodology for costing technical legacy, the project team used a range of sector evidence and expert insight to build an indicative view of the potential cost pressures on institutions.
Critically, technical legacy compounds over time as systems and workaround processes grow, making this a snapshot of accelerating costs. The sector needs a more effective costing model for technical legacy.
Impact on innovation and operations
Technical legacy makes innovation harder, more expensive and slower. The nature of fragmented systems, siloed data and workaround processes means that delivering change and transformation projects is more complex and time consuming.
Universities compensate well for technical legacy through extra staffing and workaround processes, but this is inefficient and unsustainable. At a time when universities are forced to make complex decisions on resource allocation, it is increasingly untenable to defend such an approach.
Why collaboration is essential
The commercial sector's transformation of digital infrastructure in universities has brought efficiency gains but the sector must rebalance institutional autonomy with collaboration. But operating independently on DDTI is no longer sustainable – universities need systems thinking and sector-wide standards and supplier engagement for resilience.
Policymakers, funders and regulators can help by removing policy or regulatory barriers to addressing technical legacy and drive the coordinated simplification of policies and standards with more sector-wide systems focused and industry specification models for key administrative and management activities the sector has in common.
Sector stakeholders and representative bodies can provide cohesive, coordinated sector support through technical legacy assessment models, legacy proofing plans and toolkits and sector-wide costing approaches to enable monitoring and advocacy with costs understood and recouped for reinvestment.
University leaders can make technical legacy a top table strategic concern to address.
Working together on next steps
We are looking forward to stakeholder engagement and sector-wide discussion to develop stretching but pragmatic recommendations that can be agreed, resourced and actioned. We will be convening roundtables with policymakers, funders, stakeholder organisations and institutions to co-develop solutions that can be agreed, resourced and actioned for long-term benefit.
You can explore the evidence and emerging recommendations in the full briefing.
About the author
I focus on the design and delivery and implementation of Jisc’s higher education and research strategic themes, supporting Jisc to deliver a sustainable support and services across higher education and research supported by diverse revenue streams and partnerships. My role involves senior engagement across Jisc, and with higher education, research and professional leaders in the UK and internationally. I’m also co-investigator and deputy director of the UK Data Service.