AWS to host UK government's Crown Marketplace
Amazon Web Services has been chosen as the cloud provider of a portal for the UK government which will enable government departments and local councils to procure goods and services online.
The new government portal is being built by a small public sector-focused development team called The Dextrous Web, which - in consultation with the Cabinet Office’s procurement body, the Crown Commercial Service - decided that AWS would be best for the project.
Hosting the primary components of the Crown Marketplace will likely give the company an advantage when it comes to later stages of the project, which may prove lucrative over the long term.
All Web Services
The contract with The Dextrous Web, first reported by The Telegraph, is thought to have been agreed last September, but has only now been made public.
Facing criticism that the government was more likely to choose larger suppliers, Oliver Dowden, the minister for implementation, said last April: "This government is listening to the business community and is committed to leveling the playing field for smaller suppliers to win work in the public sector.”
When it comes to data center and cloud services, however, the trend has skewed heavily towards the dominant players in the market - mainly AWS and Microsoft's Azure.
“Ignore me if you’re going to get offended - Amazon is probably better at hosting than you,” the chief digital and information officer (CDIO) of the UK’s Ministry of Justice, Tom Read, said last year.
He added: “We get a lot of [people] challenging us about procurement - why can you just buy Azure or AWS, don’t you need to be fair and let everybody in the market come to the table? - And it’s really hard, because the answer is ‘no, they’re better.’”
This approach has cost some small companies dearly. In 2017, Salford-based cloud provider DataCentred shut down after its largest customer, the tax collection agency Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, moved to AWS.
“This is a clear case of government saying one thing yet doing another. They say they want to support small businesses but they give the contacts to the big boys and let small businesses go bust," Member of Parliament Margaret Hodge, the former chair of parliament’s public accounts committee, told Sky News at the time.
“They say they want to be tough on tax avoidance but they use our money to give contracts to some of the world’s biggest and most immoral tax avoiders. Surely this is blatant hypocrisy.”
The Everything Store
The US government is pushing forward with a system similar to the Crown Marketplace, with plans for an e-commerce portal that works like Amazon.com, but is intended for government agencies, to be launched in late 2019.
Last year, The Guardian revealed that senior Amazon executive Anne Rung privately advised a top official at the General Services Administration (GSA) about the project, suggested candidates to fill a government position, and inquired whether the official, Mary Davie, knew anyone who could run Amazon Business’s federal government division.
Rung was previously the chief US acquisition officer under the Obama administration.
Section 801 of the National Defense Authorization Act (which has been informally dubbed the “Amazon amendment") was passed last year to mandate the creation of the e-commerce system, with government acquisitions of commercial products thought to represent a $53 billion market
source datacenterdynamics
Industry: Data Centre & Cloud News
Latest Jobs
-
- Information Security Risk Consultant, London. ISO 27005
- London
- 60000
-
REFCH7901 Information Security Risk Consultant, London. ISO 27005 Information Security Risk consultant needed for a London based client. The ability to achieve SC security clearance will be required. ISO 27005 Risk Assessment experience is essential. The role will cover, Risk identification, Assessment and Advisory consulting. This is a client facing role, single client- not multiple. Experience working with multiple teams and internal stakeholders is essential. The information Security Risk Consultant should ideally have a breath of information Security and IT technology based security experience. Prior experience within the public sector is desirable, but not essential. Broad knowledge across Security IT transformation, Cloud is also key. Broad experience across GRC, iso27001, NIST is key. Ongoing support and training provided. Apply today for more information, all details kept in confidence.
-
- Google Cloud platform Security Engineer, Contract, inside IR35
- United Kingdom
- -
-
REF CH7897 Google Cloud platform Security Engineer, Contract, Inside IR35 Looking for a Google Cloud platform Security Engineer will define, document, design, implement, harden and generally improve the security capability of a Google Cloud Platform. The ability to configure, and deploy the following Google Cloud Platform security solutioons is essential; Command Security Centre, Cluster Security, APIGEE, GCP Cloud Armor Hands on technical expertise security experience with Terraform, Kubernetes Security, Container (Docker) security, Secret Manager is essential as is experience securing Google Kubernetes Engine Workloads. It is essential that you have a proven track record of securing a GCP environment and expertise in automating that with Terraform. Scripting experience with the above where appropriate is a key ability. You will be highly technical and have the ability to engage with stakeholders to ultimately deliver a secure and hardened Google Cloud Platform.
-
- Security Analyst, London. Financial Services. End user.
- London
- 55000
-
CH7885. Security Analyst, London. Financial Services. End user. Immediate role. £55,000 Security Analyst needed to monitor and manage a security suite of tools within Financial Servicecs end user . The Security Analyst will be responsible monitoring, configuring, fine tuning, incident management and generally improving the security tool capability. Specific experience with CyberArk, Tripwire Log Center and Tripwire Enterprise is highly desirable). Current experience with Vulnerability management and penetration testing is highly desirable. Specifically the ability to effectively manage 3rd party pen tests. You will be working within a specialist security team reporting to the CISO. Experience working within a regulated end user environment within financial services is highly desirable. This role will run a hyrbid working schedule, partly remote, partly office based in London (once permitted) This is an exclusive role to DCL Search & Selection. https://calendly.com/chris-holt/call-with-chris-holt-dcl-search
-
- IAM Consultant- Identity Governance
- United Kingdom
- Upto £80,000 plus benefits
-
Identity and Access Management Consutlant is required for this established business who put their employees first. the role entails • Develop and maintain IAM services. • Further develop IAM tool integration with Service Now to provide automated JML processes and application access requests and fulfilment. • Provide guidance over Role Based Access in terms of Location based Roles, Application Roles and Business Roles and act as SME over any future RBAC project. • Work closely with our other Technology teams on integrating IAM services with Technology and business systems to increase efficiency through automation around areas such as JML processes, application access request fulfilment and attestation. • Work with the Governance Risk & Compliance (GRC) team to provide application access attestations and toxic combination alerting and reporting. • Involvement with Identity Management initiatives such as Single Sign On (SSO) and Privileged Access Management (PAM), to ensure security and business processes are in line with industry best practice. • Assist in ensuring that all IAM capabilities are mapped to internal processes, policies, and standards. Develop metrics to measure and improve the alignment. • Complete monthly review and report on sensitive group access, i.e., service accounts, admin accounts, etc. validating I&O processes are effective. • Provide information to both internal and external Auditors in response to findings. • Collate audit evidence for AAF audit and control reviews, taking responsibility for identifying service and process improvements to ensure compliance with our controls and standards. We are looking for someone with Hands on technical experience with the IAM tools, you need to have been involved in the integration of the IAM solution into 3rd party software like Servicenow, You will have worked with an IAM tools that are focused into Identity Goveranance, like RSA, CA Identity Suite, Fischer Identity, Hid Global, IBM IGL, Net IQ Identity Goverance, Omada, Ping or Oracle Post covid, this role will invovle a mix of home and office work, the business have a number of office spread across the UK so locaton is flexible for this position