Modernizing Citizen Services: The Composable Approach

Alia is a multi-utility company based in Tuscany, Italy, serving over 1.5 million residents across 65 municipalities. The organization provides essential community services, such as waste management and recycling, operating at the intersection of public infrastructure and sustainability.

As a forward-thinking organization, Alia is actively investing in digital transformation, including shared physical service points and multi-channel customer engagement.

Mashfrog Group, a multinational digital transformation company with over 10 years of experience operating across 8 countries, partnered with Brimit to deliver Alia's composable migration. With comprehensive expertise spanning system integration, digital experience platforms, and enterprise solutions, Mashfrog guided the strategic vision and overall transformation roadmap. Both companies are Sitecore partners with complementary strengths: Mashfrog led the strategic direction, while Brimit provided specialized expertise in composable architecture and Sitecore AI implementation.

Across the public sector, digital reinvention is a strategic imperative for many organizations. Recent research shows that government organizations are prioritizing modernization to improve security, reduce technical debt, and create flexible, future-proof platforms. In fact, 29% of government cloud decision-makers expect to modernize core systems, including content management and citizen-facing portals, in 2025.

At the same time, citizens—increasingly seen not just as users, but as digital customers—expect the same level of speed, simplicity, and reliability from public services as they do from their favorite consumer brands.

However, most government websites still fall short. A recent Deloitte survey confirms that websites remain the primary channel for interacting with public services, yet users frequently cite them as difficult to navigate and lacking security.

Alia, a multi-utility public service provider in Italy serving over 1.5 million citizens, was no exception. The company’s existing website, built on a monolithic architecture, had become a progress blocker. Every update, whether to content or functionality, required vendor involvement, manual deployment, and complex processes.

As a digital-first organization, Alia was ready to evolve.

The goal was not just to refresh a website but to lay a foundation for proactive, data-informed, and multichannel citizen engagement. This meant enabling:

• Faster, more autonomous content updates
• Enhanced security and scalability
• Independence from long-term vendor reliance
• A composable architecture for future channels (e.g., mobile apps, public service terminals)

Alia turned to Sitecore AI, a modern headless CMS built for composability and speed, partnering with Brimit to make the transition

From the beginning of Alia’s partnership with Brimit, the company’s mission was clear: to modernize without disrupting. Citizens relied on the platform daily to access services, pay bills, and find critical information. While the architecture needed a dramatic overhaul, the customer experience had to remain the same.
Brimit’s approach combined technical precision with strategic care, following the principle of building for tomorrow while preserving what works today

1. Headless at the core

Alia’s migration to Sitecore AI marked a strategic shift from a monolithic system to a composable digital architecture with a headless, API-first CMS at its core. This gave content teams a centralized place to manage information, along with the flexibility to deliver it across different channels.

2. A rebuilt front end to provide visual consistency

Using Vercel, Brimit recreated the site’s entire front end, ensuring 99% visual fidelity. While citizens experienced no disruptions, and internal teams continued working without retraining, the codebase underneath was completely new, clean, modular, and built for speed.

3. Decoupled architecture for speed and flexibility

By separating the front end from the back end, Alia unlocked faster iteration cycles, simplified maintenance, and the ability to evolve each layer independently. This is a major benefit of a decoupled architecture, since different teams (design, development, and content) can work in parallel, without blocking or depending on each other.

4. Smarter search

Brimit also integrated Sitecore Search to help improve navigation, discoverability, and the overall user experience.

5. DevOps-driven delivery

With a new CI/CD pipeline in Azure DevOps, Alia gained the ability to deploy updates faster and more reliably, reducing time to market for new features and simplifying long-term operations.

As a result, the solution resolved existing inefficiencies and opened the door for Alia to move toward more interactive, service-driven digital experiences.

With the new, fully composable setup in place, Alia built a solid foundation for future growth. Whether it’s adding interactive maps, launching partner portals, or building mobile tools, new services can now be plugged in without overhauling the entire system.

And the results have been clear:

• 2x faster website load times. Improving user experience from day one
• Content updates are quicker and easier. No IT backlog or vendor delays
• No more vendor lock-in. Giving Alia full control over its platform
• Ready for multichannel. Web, mobile, or in-person service points

Shortly after the launch, Alia onboarded Estra, a gas and electricity provider, as a partner to open shared service points for the citizens it serves. Inspired by Alia’s success, Estra is now exploring composable architecture for its own future-facing digital strategy.