Government Software Development Company
FISTA Solutions builds public sector software: citizen service portals, case and permit management, data and reporting platforms, legacy modernization, and supervised AI agents. Work is delivered to Section 508 and NIST-aligned standards, directly or as a subcontractor to prime contractors.
- 150+
- projects delivered
- 50+
- companies served
- 99.9%
- verified uptime
- 47%
- efficiency gains
- 12+
- countries reached
What we build
What does a government software development company build?
FISTA builds citizen-facing service portals, case, permit, and licensing management, benefits and eligibility workflows, data and transparency platforms, legacy modernization increments, and supervised AI agents for intake, translation, and document handling.
- 01
Citizen service portals
Applications, renewals, payments, and status tracking designed for plain language, mobile use, and assistive technology from the start.
Citizen - 02
Case and permit management
Configurable workflow, assignment, SLA tracking, inspections, and correspondence, replacing paper routing and shadow spreadsheets.
Operations - 03
Eligibility and benefits workflows
Structured intake, verification integrations, determination support, and appeals tracking with every decision recorded.
Programs - 04
Data and transparency platforms
Reporting, dashboards, and open data publication pipelines that make the same numbers available internally and publicly.
Data - 05
Legacy modernization
Strangler-pattern increments over mainframe and legacy systems so services improve without a risky big-bang replacement.
Modernization - 06
Public sector AI agents
Intake triage, multilingual response drafting, and document processing with human approval on anything affecting a determination.
AI
Requirements
Which requirements shape government software development?
Government software must serve everyone, prove its security posture, and preserve the record. That means Section 508 accessibility as a legal duty, NIST-aligned controls and authorized hosting, plain language, multilingual access, and records retention that satisfies public records law.
| Requirement | What it means here | How FISTA builds to it |
|---|---|---|
| Accessibility | Public services must be usable with assistive technology under Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA. | Accessibility acceptance criteria per screen, automated and manual assistive-technology testing, and accessible documents and notices. |
| Security controls | Agencies require NIST-aligned controls and authorized hosting environments. | Control mapping to NIST CSF and SP 800-53, FedRAMP or StateRAMP-authorized cloud, and documented boundary and data flows. |
| Plain language and translation | Services must be understandable and available to limited-English-proficiency residents. | Plain-language content review, translation workflow with human verification, and language-aware notification templates. |
| Records and transparency | Records retention, FOIA, and public records obligations apply to system data. | Retention schedules as configuration, exportable records with metadata, and audit trails on access and disclosure. |
| Procurement and subcontracting | Work often flows through primes with contract flow-downs. | Teaming-ready delivery with flow-down compliance, documented workshare, and clean handoff artifacts per task order. |
Where AI fits
Where do AI agents fit in government?
AI agents fit government where intake volume and language barriers slow service: classifying and routing inbound requests, drafting multilingual responses from approved content, extracting data from submitted documents, and answering policy questions for staff. Determinations affecting rights stay with authorized humans.
- 01
Service request triage
Classifies and routes inbound requests across channels, extracting the structured fields staff would otherwise retype.
- 02
Multilingual response drafting
Drafts responses in the resident's language from approved templates and policy text, with human verification before sending.
- 03
Document intake agent
Extracts and validates data from submitted forms and evidence, flagging missing items before a case reaches a caseworker.
- 04
Staff policy assistant
Answers procedure and policy questions from approved manuals with citations, reducing time spent searching for the current rule.
- 05
Backlog triage agent
Prioritizes queues by statutory deadline and completeness so scarce caseworker time goes where it prevents a missed obligation.
Cost and timeline
How much does government software development cost, and how long does it take?
Cost is driven by accessibility and security evidence, integration with legacy systems, and program complexity; timeline by authority-to-operate processes and procurement. FISTA does not quote blind: the scoping call returns a specification, a control map, and a phased estimate.
Legacy integration usually sets the budget. Reading from a mainframe on a nightly file is inexpensive; writing back safely, with reconciliation and rollback, is a program of its own. FISTA sequences modernization so residents see improvements early while the risky interior work proceeds behind a stable interface.
Authorization timelines are the other reality. Security review, accessibility testing, and authority-to-operate steps are calendar items with their own queues. FISTA builds them into the plan and produces the artifacts those reviews require as the work proceeds, rather than pausing delivery to assemble them later.
Send the scope you have, even if it is a paragraph. You get a written brief, an architecture sketch, and a phased estimate before any commitment.
Get a scoped quoteDelivery
How does FISTA deliver an industry software project?
FISTA delivers in four gated phases: a discovery sprint that produces the specification and integration map, an architecture and compliance design that names every control, iterative builds demoed weekly on your environment, and a verified release with runbooks, monitoring, and a handover or a managed operations option.
- 1
Discover and specify
Stakeholder interviews, system inventory, data classification, and a written specification with acceptance criteria and a phased plan.
OutputSpecification, integration map, estimate
- 2
Design for compliance
Architecture, data model, security controls, and the evidence plan for any audit, agreed before the first sprint.
OutputArchitecture decision record, control matrix
- 3
Build and demonstrate
Two-week sprints with automated tests, contract tests on integrations, and a demo on your environment every week.
OutputWorking increments in your repository
- 4
Verify and operate
Load, security, and acceptance testing against the spec; release with runbooks, dashboards, and alerting; optional managed operations.
OutputVerified release, runbooks, SLOs
Why FISTA
Why choose FISTA Solutions for government software development?
FISTA delivers public sector work to accessibility and NIST-aligned standards, documents everything a security review will ask for, and teams cleanly with primes. Engagements are contracted through a US entity, and no certification or authorization is claimed that has not been granted.
Government specifics
- Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 AA treated as acceptance criteria, tested with assistive technology, not just automated scanners.
- Control mapping and boundary documentation produced during delivery, so security reviews do not stall the schedule.
- Subcontract-ready: flow-down compliance, defined workshare, and handoff artifacts for prime contractors.
- Legacy modernization delivered in increments behind a stable interface, so services improve before the rewrite finishes.
How FISTA engineers
- Spec-Driven Development: every deliverable starts as a written specification with acceptance criteria, so scope is testable before it is built.
- AI-native delivery: engineers direct coding agents under review gates and evaluation harnesses, compressing build time without loosening verification.
- Official Anthropic partner, with production experience across Claude, OpenAI, Google, and open-weight models, chosen per workload rather than by default.
- One accountable delivery lead, weekly demos on your environment, and code in your repositories from week one.
What you get as a client
- 150+ projects delivered for 50+ companies across 12+ countries since 2017, with 99.9% verified uptime on systems we operate.
- A US entity (FISTA Solutions Inc., Wilmington, Delaware) for contracting, invoicing, and IP assignment, with an engineering center in Faisalabad, Pakistan for cost-efficient senior capacity.
- US business-hours overlap for standups and reviews; written decision logs so nothing depends on a meeting you missed.
- Flexible engagement: fixed-scope build, embedded forward deployed engineers, or a dedicated team that you can scale month to month.
Clear answers
What buyers in this industry ask first.
Straightforward guidance for evaluating scope, fit, and the next step.
01Does FISTA work as a subcontractor to prime contractors?
Yes — it is the primary model for public sector work. FISTA supports teaming agreements, defined workshare, flow-down compliance, and proposal support. The government contracting section documents the approach by market, including the US, UK and Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, and MENA.
02Is your work Section 508 accessible?
Accessibility is an acceptance criterion on every public-facing screen: semantic markup, keyboard operation, screen-reader testing, contrast, and accessible documents. Conformance is verified with assistive technology during delivery, and remediation is part of the definition of done rather than a later project.
03Which security standards do you build to?
NIST Cybersecurity Framework and SP 800-53 control alignment, with SP 800-171 handling where controlled unclassified information is involved, hosted in FedRAMP or StateRAMP-authorized environments as the contract requires. FISTA documents the controls implemented and defers authorization status to the contracting agency and prime.
04Can you modernize a legacy mainframe system?
Yes, incrementally. FISTA puts a stable API in front of the legacy system, moves capabilities out one at a time with reconciliation against the system of record, and retires the old path only when the new one has proven itself in production.
05How is AI governed in public sector deployments?
Agents are scoped to intake, drafting, extraction, and retrieval, never to determinations affecting eligibility or rights. Outputs carry citations, decisions keep human authorship, traces are retained for public accountability, and the intended use and limits are documented.
06Can residents use these services in other languages?
Yes. Translation is built into the workflow with human verification for notices and determinations, and the site framework FISTA uses supports multilingual delivery with correct language metadata for assistive technology and search.
Continue exploring
Related capabilities
Scoped in writing before you commit
Deliver public services that work for every resident.
Bring the program, the legacy constraint, or the pursuit you are teaming on. The scoping call returns a specification, a control map, and a phased estimate.