AGENCY OWNS Source repository Container images, built from that source Data, in the agency's Postgres Runbooks and the evidence pack ALLSTON Builds, tests, hands over Removable at any contract boundary

Transition at contract close-out

This page lists what an agency holds when its contract with Allston Systems ends, and the step that verifies each item on equipment Allston has never had access to. The same list is delivered with the first release of every system and is re-tested at each release after it.

Summary

At close-out the agency holds a complete, conventional software project together with the tools that produced it. The result is equivalent to what an experienced in-house team would have written by hand, because the generators emit ordinary application code and nothing else.

Transferred items

1. A standard codebase with no proprietary runtime. The delivered system is written in .NET and Angular and runs on PostgreSQL. All three are mainstream, permissively licensed, and supported by a labor market an agency can hire from. There is no interpreter, licensed engine, or design-time artifact that the code depends on. The agency can remove every reference to Allston, including the repository’s remote address, and the system continues to build, test, and deploy. This differs from low-code platforms, where the runtime is the application and leaving the vendor requires a rewrite.

Verification: clone the repository on a clean machine, run the build, and run the test suite.

2. The generators, in addition to their output. Every scaffolding tool ships inside the delivered repository: full-stack feature slices, event-sourced case workflows, accessible multi-step forms produced from a reviewable specification file, data tables, background jobs, administrative views, integrations, and demonstration scenarios. A successor team, or the agency’s own staff, can continue to generate Section 508 conformant features at the same pace.

Verification: run one generator, build the system, and open the feature it produced.

3. A compliance record maintained by the build. A control map ties NIST SP 800-53 controls to the tests that demonstrate them. The continuous integration pipeline regenerates the evidence package on each successful run, in human-readable, machine-readable, and OSCAL formats, and stamps it with the URL of that run. Accessibility is enforced during the build: every route is scanned, forms inherit one audited error-handling pattern, and plain-language and translation-completeness checks run on every commit. An assessor’s package can be regenerated from the repository at any commit, including after Allston’s involvement has ended.

Verification: run the pipeline and open the evidence package it produces.

4. The verification pipeline. The pipeline that gated Allston’s work also gates the agency’s. It runs the build, the unit, functional, and architecture tests, the accessibility crawl, the dependency and software bill of materials checks, and the evidence regeneration. None of it contacts an external service, and all of it runs on ordinary hosted or self-hosted runners.

Verification: introduce a change that violates a control and confirm that the build rejects it.

5. The demonstration tooling. Named seed scenarios and one-command capture demonstrations transfer with the system, so the agency can demonstrate its own application to its own stakeholders without Allston present.

Verification: load a seeded scenario and process a case through its states.

What does not transfer

Allston’s maintenance stream does not continue after close-out. While under contract, Allston ports security advisories and fixes from Forge into the delivered system. After close-out, the agency’s own team or a successor contractor performs that work, using the same tooling, which is included in the transferred repository.

Basis for the claims

  • Allston maintains its own reference system through the same synchronization and advisory process an agency would use after transition.
  • Each item above can be verified in an afternoon by an evaluation team with a copy of a delivered system and this page. No meeting with Allston is required.
  • Platform vendors hold FedRAMP authorizations for hosted software and offer configuration by business users without developer involvement. Allston does not offer either. Its position rests on agency ownership, auditability, and the speed at which accessible features can be added.