Modernising legacy technology in New Mexico
CSES is a large-scale legacy application built and maintained using Gen. With nearly 800 procedure steps, 2,400 action diagrams, and over 300 external action blocks, the system plays a vital role in delivering child support services across the state. To ensure long-term support and stability, SoNM-HSD needed to upgrade to a fully supported version of Gen—mitigating the risk of unsupported code and securing the future of its core platform.
The Client
The State of New Mexico Human Services Department (SoNM-HSD) delivers vital services to over 800,000 state residents. For more than 15 years, Gen technology has been central to its operations—particularly within the Child Support Enforcement System (CSES), a business-critical application hosted on a mainframe.
The Challenge
- The CSES application was running on an outdated version of Gen, increasing risk and limiting support.
- The scale of the system made the upgrade complex and high-stakes.
- Concerns over model corruption and inconsistent environments needed to be addressed.
- The upgrade had to be completed without disrupting ongoing production work.
- Knowledge transfer and skills development were essential to support future maintenance.
The Solution
TXP was engaged to support the upgrade, applying its proven six-stage risk-mitigation process. The project included a full assessment of the existing environment, model clean-up, standardisation of supporting infrastructure, and technical verification.
TXP worked in a separate environment to avoid any impact on live operations and collaborated closely with SoNM-HSD throughout the process. Skills transfer and coaching were embedded into the engagement to build internal capability.
The Benefits
The upgrade project was completed to budget and within the agreed duration
- SoNM-HSD now has fully supported version of Gen
- The upgrade from Gen version 6.5 to 8.0, which passes through version 7.6 – which is generally accepted to be a major step.
- They can confidently continue to develop and maintain functionality to provide vital child support services to hundreds of thousands of State residents.
- Leveraging TXP’s broader skills in mainframe, SoNM-HSD were able to resolve “out-of-space” mainframe environment issues relating to DB2 and CICS technologies.
- SoNM-HSD also benefited from skills and knowledge transfer.