The Home Office has signed a three-year cloudy deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) valued at £450,281,369.
The contract falls under the G-Cloud 13 framework and is to provide public cloud hosting services to the Home Office. T
This latest agreement follows a series of collaborations between the Home Office and AWS, which are becoming increasingly controversial.
Last year, a report from the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research (CICTAR) and think tank TaxWatch revealed that AWS has secured UK public sector contracts exceeding £600 million since 2017.
The report also highlighted concerns about tax payments, with AWS allegedly avoiding £84 million in taxes during the same period.
The Home Office has emerged as AWS’s largest UK public sector customer, having paid the cloud giant £225 million between 2017 and 2022.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is examining the cloud landscape to determine the fairness of the playing field, especially considering the dominance of AWS and Microsoft in recent public sector contracts.
As the cloud market in the UK undergoes scrutiny, the two companies are estimated to control up to 80 per cent of the £7.5 billion local cloud infrastructure market.
The CMA’s investigation raises questions about the sustainability of this dominance and how it may impact competition in the rapidly evolving cloud services sector.
Earlier this year, AWS further solidified its presence in the UK public sector by securing a £20.8 million contract with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The deal encompassed cloud hosting, “bring-your-own-licence” software management services, comprehensive support, managed and professional services, and training for Defra employees.
