Government head in the clouds

Labour government promises of transforming the civil service may be going the same way as many earlier attempts. But this time in addition they seem to have fallen for the charms of big tech companies.

In what it calls a “new partnership” with Google Cloud, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology also claims that “These arrangements will operate in full compliance with all applicable public procurement laws, and may be subject to future commercial agreements.”

Public procurement is normally by competitive tender but it seems this is not required for a partnership which is not yet a commercial agreement.

No detail

Further claims for this partnership are also short on detail. There is the claim that it will “aim” to upskill 100,000 civil servants in the “latest tech” by 2030.

Then there is the mention that the partnership “aims to make sure people can get information and support from government services – from healthcare, to bin collections and tax returns” without saying how these will be accessed more easily and without undue stress nor how this will happen. It is after all just an aim.

Among other criticisms, The Register, a leading global technology news source, mentions the “£45 billion jackpot”, a term used in a government press release, of potential savings and points out “(The government) did not say whether these returns would be a lottery.”

Failure

For decades, British governments failed to build a domestic tech industry capable of competing with the likes of Google. Now, instead of reckoning with that failure, they’ve chosen the easier path: capitulation and we’re told it’s a triumph.

‘This is not reform but managed decline with branding.’

Britain had a chance to invest in its own capabilities, to build a resilient digital backbone but outsourced to an American company instead. We’re told this will break the shackles of legacy contracts. But Google is a legacy contract – just one that hasn’t started failing yet. This is not reform. It’s a managed decline with branding.

One of the first fruits for Google is the award of a £400 million contract to overhaul MOD systems. Of course the promise is that all this will be under UK control, but it’s another step relying on a massive corporation that resides outside its jurisdiction.

Reality

Last year the incoming Labour government announced a big tie up with Amazon Web Services. Google Cloud’s main competitor. In similar gushing language, it promised to make “every part of Britain better off”. The reality is that such deals don’t create economic growth of themselves – but they certainly boost US technology company profits.

The extent of depending on mega-scale cloud services was bought home on 20 October when a massive failure by AWS badly affected HMRC and many British commercial companies.

And according to The Register, the cause was the lack of experienced engineers, who are leaving Amazon. So forget the AI magic, Britain’s government increasingly depends on the employment polices of a couple of US corporations notoriously hostile to their employees and trade unions.