One aspect of building solutions in GovTech or HealthTech that is constantly misunderstood—by stakeholders, investors, and even junior engineers—is the immense gap between functionality and compliance.
The "Just a CRUD App" Fallacy
On the surface, many applications in these sectors look simple. A portal for citizens to renew a license or an app for patients to view test results is, technically speaking, just a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) solution. Anyone can build a prototype that stores this data on a SQL server in a few days.
But in regulated industries, the functionality is only about 10% of the engineering effort. The other 90% is the Compliance Architecture.
The Invisible Mountain of Requirements
When that data involves PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or PHI (Protected Health Information), the requirements spike dramatically:
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Storage & Encryption: Data must be encrypted at rest and in transit using specific standards (FIPS 140-2).
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Access Control: You need granular, role-based access control (RBAC) with immutable audit logs for every single view or edit.
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Integrations: You aren't just calling a REST API; you are likely integrating with archaic, standardized systems using complex protocols like HL7 or FHIR.
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Infrastructure: Your hosting environment must meet strict adaptive scaling and redundancy requirements.
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Process Compliance: It's not just the code; your organization must meet NIST and SOC2 requirements. This means rigid change management, background checks, and information handling policies.
The Brick Wall vs. The Ramp
What may seem like simple products at the MVP stage quickly become enterprise-level investments when it's time to implement.
If you are not prepared for this, your scaling process will be a brick wall. You will hit a compliance audit or a procurement requirement that halts development for months while you re-architect the entire system.
Be Prepared for Change
The solution is to treat compliance as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought. Be prepared for this complexity by bringing in experienced perspectives—leaders who have navigated FedRAMP, HIPAA, or SOC2 before—early in the process.
They know what needs to be done next. They can ensure that you build the necessary scaffolding now so that when you hit scale, your process is a manageable ramp, not a career-ending wall.