Compares the legacy platform's projected 5-year cost against the modernized platform, inclusive of the Task Order investment and post-launch sustainment.
The "legacy" column is illustrative only — FOPBA's underlying rationale for this Task Order is that the legacy vendor's support is approaching end-of-life, so continuing it isn't a real long-term option, same framing used in the Agile suite's TCO for its own legacy vendor sunset.
| Cost Category | Legacy Platform (5-Yr, Illustrative) | Modernized Platform (5-Yr) |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Modernization Investment | $0 | $3,550,000 |
| Annual Vendor License/Maintenance (5 yrs) | $1,550,000 | $0 |
| Hosting/Infrastructure (5 yrs) | $400,000 | $625,000 |
| Help Desk / Support Burden (5 yrs) | $620,000 | $220,000 |
| Accessibility Remediation Risk (5 yrs, unaddressed) | $450,000 | $0 |
| 5-Year Total Cost of Ownership | $3,020,000 | $4,395,000 |
10-Year Comparison & Crossover Point
| Cost Category | Legacy Platform (10-Yr) | Modernized Platform (10-Yr) |
|---|---|---|
| Initial Modernization Investment | $0 | $3,550,000 |
| Annual Vendor License/Maintenance (10 yrs) | $3,100,000 | $0 |
| Hosting/Infrastructure (10 yrs) | $800,000 | $1,250,000 |
| Help Desk / Support Burden (10 yrs) | $1,240,000 | $440,000 |
| Accessibility Remediation Risk (10 yrs, unaddressed) | $900,000 | $0 |
| 10-Year Total Cost of Ownership | $6,040,000 | $5,240,000 |
The two platforms' cumulative cost curves cross at approximately Year 8.2 — legacy's all-recurring cost structure (~$604,000/year) eventually overtakes modernized's mix of a large upfront investment plus a much lighter ~$169,000/year recurring cost. Under 5 years, modernized costs more; past roughly 8 years, it costs less; and a citizen-facing federal system realistically stays in service well past either horizon, since replacing it again inside 8 years would mean re-incurring the same upfront cost twice.
Methodology & Basis for Estimates
Legacy figures are estimated from the incumbent vendor's current contract run-rate (license/maintenance), FOPBA's help desk ticket volume attributable to the legacy portal, and an estimated accessibility-remediation exposure if the legacy platform were kept in service without addressing its Section 508 gaps. Modernized figures tie directly to the Task Order Budget (initial investment) and vendor/cloud pricing for the hosting and help-desk lines, both scaled proportionally from the already-reconciled 5-year figures above.
Why Modernized Costs More Over 5 Years — and Why FOPBA Proceeds Anyway
Once the Resource Plan was corrected to include the full 13-person delivery team a real build requires (not the original 7-person leadership-only estimate), the modernized platform's 5-year TCO rose above the legacy platform's. That's a real, and realistic, outcome — TCO alone doesn't justify this Task Order's timing. The actual driver is that the legacy vendor's support is approaching end-of-life: "continue the legacy platform" isn't a real 5-year option at any price, since the vendor won't be there to support it. TCO comparisons like this one are useful for sizing the investment honestly, but the decision itself is compliance- and risk-driven, not a discretionary cost optimization — a distinction worth stating plainly rather than papering over with an artificially thin delivery team that would never have shipped the system.
Cross-Reference
See the Cost-Benefit Analysis for the annual-benefit case behind this Task Order (a distinct question from TCO — CBA asks whether the investment pays for itself; TCO asks which option costs less overall) and the Task Order Budget for the reconciled baseline this TCO's modernized-platform figures are built from.