Temus worked with a public sector client to transform seven mission-critical government digital services through simultaneous cloud migration and CMS modernisation. Together, we achieved infrastructure cost savings, and established secure, scalable foundations for future digital innovation across whole-of-government communications platforms.
Temus orchestrated a comprehensive digital transformation initiative with a central Government agency in Singapore—migrating 7 citizen-facing web applications to AWS whilst modernising the underlying content management platforms. This is how we employed AWS’s proven migration methodology and cloud-native architectures to modernise multiple high-profile digital platforms serving millions of citizens, from whole-of-government corporate websites to press services and public engagement portals.
These 7 applications ran on legacy on-premises infrastructure using an ageing content management system. The agency needed to modernise both infrastructure and platform simultaneously whilst maintaining zero-downtime for essential citizen services across multiple cloud environments, so that they could unlock opportunities for scalability and respond more quickly to changing citizen content needs, with more advanced content management capabilities.
With the diversity of applications, we had to navigate the complexity of modernising mission-critical services simultaneously: from high-traffic public portals to specialised regulatory platforms, each serving distinct stakeholder groups (like citizens, journalists, civil servants, regulatory audiences) with unique performance, security, and user experience expectations. These platforms collectively manage thousands of pages, multimedia assets, and dynamic content with sophisticated personalisation requirements, whilst sharing common workflows, content libraries, and authentication mechanisms that created intricate operational interdependencies. Managing this breadth required not just technical excellence, but also deep stakeholder engagement, rigorous dependency mapping, and careful wave planning to maintain service continuity across multiple citizen touchpoints throughout the transformation.
GCC provides standardised, whole-of-government cloud services built on AWS, enabling agencies to leverage shared security controls, governance frameworks, and operational practices developed by GovTech—reducing individual agency burden whilst maintaining consistent security posture across government. Built on AWS infrastructure, GCC offers agencies access to enterprise-grade cloud capabilities with purpose-built government security services, alongside pre-configured landing zones and compliance frameworks that accelerate cloud adoption. This approach delivers cost efficiency through economies of scale, enhanced security through defence-in-depth specifically designed for government threat models, and the agility to adopt emerging technologies as they become relevant to citizen services—all whilst maintaining the guardrails essential for public sector operations.
More than a CMS upgrade, the platform revamps were taken on with a goal to give the agencies’ content managers more autonomy, including a more intuitive interface empowering content teams to create, manage, and publish rich digital experiences without technical dependencies, accelerating time-to-publish for critical government communications. Whilst initial migration prioritised stability through rehosting, headless CMS capabilities position the agency for future API-first implementations, enabling omnichannel content delivery across web, mobile, and emerging platforms. Moving from an ageing, customisation-heavy platform instance to a modern, supported platform eliminates accumulated technical debt whilst providing a sustainable foundation for ongoing innovation and efficiency in delivering digital content to their citizen stakeholders.
We conducted comprehensive workshops with cross-functional stakeholders, evaluating based on AWS’ Cloud Adoption Framework assessment, combined AWS tools with structured stakeholder interviews to capture both technical capabilities and organisational factors influencing migration success. We built a compelling business case demonstrating clear value. Our Total Cost of Ownership analysis compared on-premises versus AWS infrastructure over a 3–5 year horizon, quantifying benefits across staff productivity, operational resilience, business agility, and sustainability. The analysis revealed significant infrastructure cost savings whilst improving operational capabilities. We then conducted automated infrastructure inventory, dependency mapping, and performance profiling.
We were able to plan for and execute pilot content migrations with representative samples (structured pages, media, personalisation) before full-scale migration. This validates automated tooling effectiveness and identifies manual intervention requirements early.
Before touching production systems, we developed comprehensive migration playbooks covering all phases. This included detailed cutover plans with associated change management activities, rigorous testing protocols based on documented Service Level Indicators and Objectives, and validated rollback procedures. Wave planning grouped applications by dependencies, complexity, and business priority, allowing us to build confidence through iterative delivery whilst managing interdependencies across the portfolio.
Our multi-disciplinary team employed sprint-based execution with detailed work breakdown structures tracking progress through iterative cycles. Each sprint delivered tangible outcomes—whether it was for infrastructure provisioning, application migration, or testing validation—maintaining momentum and visibility throughout the project.
The technical approach centred on rehosting (lift-and-shift) for most applications, prioritising speed and risk reduction over immediate refactoring, whilst one system required a strategic pivot to re-platforming after POC revealed integration challenges. We established cloud foundations first—implementing automated deployment pipelines, standardised operational procedures, and cloud-native monitoring—before executing phased migrations that ensured zero citizen-facing service interruptions.
Comprehensive runbooks address all critical functions: deployment, configuration management, change and release processes. These procedures adapted existing on-premises practices and enhanced them with AWS-native services like CloudWatch, AWS Backup, and Systems Manager. This was supplemented with real-time observability through CloudWatch Dashboards provides visibility into system performance, availability, and security posture.
Comprehensive transition planning ensured the agency teams were fully prepared to manage their new content platforms. Training sessions, detailed operational manuals, and governance frameworks equipped the team to manage their cloud environment confidently whilst maintaining compliance with government standards.
The migration delivered transitions for seven mission-critical applications with minimal downtime. Optimisation on AWS infrastructure showed demonstrated cost savings through comprehensive TCO analysis. We managed to automated deployment pipelines and cloud-native monitoring, whilst improved security posture was achieved via continuous monitoring and automated compliance validation. Critically, successful knowledge transfer now enables agency teams to autonomously manage cloud environments with confidence. Through this journey, we learnt that proof-of-concept exercises are essential for revealing complexities before production migration.
Content migration proved more complex than anticipated, requiring significant manual intervention beyond automated tools, which reinforced our approach of establishing cloud foundations first rather than pursuing complex refactoring during initial migration. Most importantly, we discovered that operational readiness matters as much as technical migration. Successful cloud adoption requires equal investment in runbooks, training, and knowledge transfer as it does in technical implementation, and positions the agency teams well for future modernisation including API-first architectures, microservices adoption, and emerging digital service delivery models.
Ready to accelerate your cloud migration journey? Whether you’re planning your first move to AWS or optimising existing cloud infrastructure, our team brings proven frameworks and hands-on experience to ensure minimal downtime in transitions and lasting operational excellence.
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