AWS has government specific regions (called GovCloud). Many services or features make it to GovCloud later than other regions because of the certification requirements.
AWS has US based GovCloud regions: AWS GovCloud (US-East) and AWS GovCloud (US-West). It does not have a UK specific GovCloud region that I am aware of.
Why can't the UK government build there own cloud?
It's just completely insane to me that they would make the gov internet infrastructure completely (geopolitically) dependent on another country AND just literally give all their (citizens') data away AND pay for that "privilege"?!
I mean if the government can't host the government's websites using tech from the government's country, maybe it would be better to just forget about the whole cyberweb thing altogether? Just turn it off?
I don't think you have any idea just how much it costs to run infrastructure at the reliability levels provided by AWS, and just how much investment it would require to get the ball rolling on this.
A lot of people have a very unrealistic picture of what government budgets are like.
My point is that NOT hosting it yourself (as a government) costs WAY more in the long run. See my points above.
The same goes for companies in Europe who literally host their trade-secrets (designs, sales, the entire company) on US-servers (OneDrive, Google Drive, etc). The US is the home of their competitors. Who cares about infrastructure costs if you're PAYING to give your trade secrets away to your competitor(s)?!
They'd still be outsourcing to a firm to do this. They wouldn't hire a load of people to do it in-house. See also Fujitsu in the recently-popular Horizon scandal, or the NHS for IT debacle[0].
Why can't the UK government build their own cars? Their own boots? Their own pens, paper? How wasteful and pathetic that they wouldn't make all those things themselves. If it's possible to do it yourself, by golly, you should do it yourself, and there's absolutely no reason in the entire world to purchase those things from someone else instead.
I've always wondered how beholden the world is to Microsoft. I was once surprised to learn the US military (and probably virtually all others) don't have their own OS to avoid being tied to a particular company.
you want every government to build their own cloud? what in the world? the whole world is interlinked, should they also manufacture their own government laptops in the UK?
