Online Government

November 2019

Our government is very keen on moving everything it can online; perhaps you did not know, but since 2013 it has had a firmly stated ‘Cloud First’ policy.  When procuring services all government departments must ‘fully evaluate potential cloud solutions first before considering any other option.’  If they don’t go the cloud route, they must show that what they propose is better value for money.

This, of course, is a policy very much to the liking of those who provide cloud-based infrastructure.  We learned recently that Amazon Web Services (AWS) - the division of Amazon that provides cloud computing services, and by far the most profitable part of what used to be a bookshop - received over £45m in fees from the UK Government last year.  Within that figure is the intriguing snippet that HMRC spent £11m renting computer space from AWS last year, which was more than six times the amount Amazon paid in corporation tax over the same period.

It’s not the fact that HMRC paid Amazon more than Amazon paid HMRC that interests me, although of course, that is what the GMB Union, who commissioned the research, were jumping up and down about.  What does interest me is how quickly cloud-based services, especially in the public sector, are growing.  AWS doubled its turnover in Britain last year, and other suppliers are growing just as fast.  This shift to the cloud has profound, and positive, implications for the cost and efficiency of government services.

‘Cloud-based’ simply means that the really clever work is being done not in your laptop but on a huge, fast computer in the cloud; in reality in one of the hundreds of anonymous, windowless warehouses (datacentres) all over the country that contain nothing but computers.

The HMRC website is a good example of a cloud-based service.  If you submit your tax return online, all your laptop does is connect you to whichever third-party data centre HMRC rents space from (probably AWS).  You are now controlling (to some extent) HMRC’s computer and can enter your tax return into its memory.  Your computer is doing very little; all the technical effort is being expended at HMRC’s end and, crucially, not by expensive, inconsistent humans, but by reliable, tireless and accurate machines that work all day and night. It is not an overstatement to say that Government departments migrating to these services are seeing cost savings of up to 60 per cent.

Clearly, humans are vital for designing the site, as well as for helping taxpayers without computers or with especially complex affairs.  Such staff members need to be of the highest quality, but with 60 per cent savings there is surely the budget to hire the best.

Perhaps you think the government should own its own computers?  This would be much more expensive, not least because most of the time much of them would be lying idle, waiting for peaks in demand.  By using the likes of AWS, extra capacity is always available, if needed.  It comes at a price, of course, but generally one only pays for what one uses.

I’m very much in favour of the Cloud First policy; done right, cloud-based services reduce costs and are more efficient. I can use them at a time that suits me, rather than just office hours, and at my own pace.  Records are better kept and audit trails are clearer.

Of course, the Cloud First policy has proved an irresistible and profitable opportunity for AWS and similar companies.  Perhaps it should come as no surprise, therefore, that the civil servant who drafted it now works for AWS, as something called ‘director of international government transformation’.

Better paid than being a middle-ranking Civil servant, I’ll be bound.  Good luck to him.

A few links...

Explanation of the Government Cloud First policy
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/government-cloud-first-policy

An example of a Government contract to migrate the Police National Computer to AWS (worth £260,000)
https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/digital-outcomes-and-specialists/opportunities/7556

Amazon UK Services Ltd accounts – showing it paid £1.7m in tax (page 9)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cyb2ieitafeujb2/Amazon%20accounts%202017.pdf?dl=0

LinkedIn page of Liam Maxwell, who is the civil servant who drafted the Cloud First policy and now works for AWS
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/liammaxwell

380