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Gov.uk Platform as a Service

cloud.service.gov.uk

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Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#111

Post by KineticLensman »

jsmith99 wrote: post #92
KineticLensman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Want to renew my driving license? Well, that's yet to move from the old DVLA site, but it's all getting there Some important UK government services are still lagging behind. DVLA, since you mention it, has a mix of okay and truly appalling services. I'm in the position of trying to renew my driving licence after it was revoked for medical reasons. It's now six months since my cardiac arrest and I now meet the medic…

Does the DVLA driving license service still only work during office hours? I couldn't believe they had an online system for renewing licences but it couldn't be accessed at night. Allegedly it's based on an ancient system that can't be trusted to be left running unattended.

Not actually tried this, as the online systems don't support the service that I need in the first place.

Part of the problem is that they have multiple back-office legacy systems. I remember reading recently about a modernization of the personalised number plate system. This was apparently completely separate from the licence management so could be modernised quite easily. How convenient that it just happens to be a good revenue generator for DVLA, so presumably it was easier for someone to justify the development costs.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#112

Post by jlelse »

barbazoo wrote: post #104
hughrr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's as German as you get. I'm sure there is a German idiom for "that's how it's always been done and the change is someone else's fault" because that's the attitude. Had that a couple of times in shops. Business is bad because we're closed at peak times and that's the customer's problem. Business is bad because we don't accept cards and that's the customer's problem. Business is bad because our customers don't hav…

I still remember last time I visited. One Sunday morning, I went to the Bäckerei and tried to pay for my Brötchen and Stückchen with my card and they just looked at me in disbelief. I quickly realized my mistake but it was too late. I had no cash so I left without any baked goods.

Thankfully that changed since 2020. Now many bakeries accept cards.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#113

Post by denysvitali »

46Bit wrote: post #59

I worked on this for nearly four years. It’s a great fit for a lot of government needs: they need a stable, reasonably secure platform that helps them build medium-complexity websites. It’s based on Cloud Foundry, a “run your own Heroku”-type project. That’s starting to show it’s age now but it’s been a great model and had major benefits in government. Happy to answer more questions.

Also interesting to mention: if you use gov.uk's PaaS, then you can use the Hashicorp Waypoint [0] plugin for Cloud Foundry [1] :)

[0]: https://www.waypointproject.io/

[1]: https://github.com/swisscom/waypoint-plugin-cloudfoundry

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#114

Post by kingcharles »

severalbadgers wrote: post #71
regularfry wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "based on", how much is layered on top?

(current PaaS person here) We've maintained the core Cloud Foundry experience, and added value around the edge with service brokers, good documentation, support, app autoscaling (using the CF-blessed autoscaler, which doesn't come "in the box"), some additional metrics, and a couple other bits.

Slightly OT: but how many badgers are we talking about here? This many? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyixC9NsLI

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#115

Post by manquer »

jsty wrote: post #109
pydry wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will if Amazon keeps boiling the frog with pricing. Having a consistent platform like this also gives them negotiating muscle because if they wanted to up sticks and move completely it is much more feasible.

> Amazon keeps boiling the frog with pricing Do they? AWS's pricing may be eye watering in a few cases - looking at you egress - but one thing they definitely get right from my PoV is rarely if ever hiking prices

They don't change unit pricing if that is what you mean not even at very high volume.

That means bill increases become costlier at scale as the volume discounts are not deep enough in a build vs buy on a pure cost basis (Lock-in, ease of use, reliability, talent reasons apart) at 100's of millions or billions spends governments do not to consider inhousing.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#116

Post by nonameiguess »

londons_explore wrote: post #28
ale42 wrote: post #7

"The platform is hosted on Amazon Web Services in the UK"... (see the beginning at https://www.cloud.service.gov.uk/features/ )

But when it gets big enough, it might be worth the government spinning up their own hardware and competing. Are there any other cloud providers who have started by reselling another cloud providers products? Even as a reseller they ought to be able to make a decent profit by relying on volume discounts.

> Are there any other cloud providers who have started by reselling another cloud providers products?

For government, yes. The USAF has a common infrastructure provider called Cloud One, built on top of AWS GovCloud. You can try to go to their website at https://aws.cdl.af.mil, but you won't be able to, since it requires a CAC and mutual TLS.

Among the things it gives you on top of AWS:

- CAC authentication, so MFA isn't optional like with vanilla AWS and you don't need separate IAM for human users (at least not the "I") since every user already has an externally provisioned and managed identity

- Air Force managed firewalls, so you can't just choose to be completely open, which vanilla AWS is perfectly happy to allow

- A limited subset of AMIs and managed services that are pre-approved as being sufficiently mature and secure for DoD production use

- Only pre-approved roles and policies, i.e. you can't accidentally create a publicly accessible S3 bucket because the system won't even allow that as an option

And yes, there are economies of scale and volume discounts and what not that have allowed some DoD infrastructure and platform providers to operate without any appropriated spending at least for some period of time, as in they fund themselves entirely by charging other government programs that use them. Platform One was like that I think for at least the first 18 months it existed, but then eventually received its own direct funding.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#117

Post by nonameiguess »

nonameiguess wrote: post #116
londons_explore wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when it gets big enough, it might be worth the government spinning up their own hardware and competing. Are there any other cloud providers who have started by reselling another cloud providers products? Even as a reseller they ought to be able to make a decent profit by relying on volume discounts.

> Are there any other cloud providers who have started by reselling another cloud providers products? For government, yes. The USAF has a common infrastructure provider called Cloud One, built on top of AWS GovCloud. You can try to go to their website at https://aws.cdl.af.mil , but you won't be able to, since it requires a CAC and mutual TLS. Among the things it gives you on top of AWS: - CAC authentication, so MFA…

Also, there are some instances of the government building its own data centers. Raytheon used to own the computing infrastructure for basically the entire NRO, and had their own commercial cloud offering built on top of OpenStack they called "EVE" but it never ended up being used outside of this single client and has since been effectively abandoned going forward now that C2S exists using AWS in classified data centers run by Amazon. There is still a limited subset of NRO programs using something called the "AUE" or Agency Unique Equipment, however, which is another Raytheon contract called Palinode, and this serves applications with extremely specific hardware needs that Amazon can't currently meet, i.e. FPGAs, ASICs, non x86/ARM architectures, bare metal clusters with guaranteed not-shared Infiniband SANs, but it will probably one day go away when commercial cloud providers are eventually able to do that, too.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#118

Post by djhn »

toyg wrote: post #32
chrisseaton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> setting up a skunkworks group that answered directly to the PM Isn't that massively excessive? Why does the Prime Minister need to be spending his time listening to a report direct from a team implementing software services?

Because otherwise the effort will end up in the quagmire of civil service politics, the sort of stuff you see on "Yes Minister" (greatly exaggerated, of course, in the same way "Silicon Valley" exaggerates Californian startup culture). With a direct line to the PM, every time a mandarin tried to block things (likely in order to favour his golf buddies from this or that vendor), GDS could go "ok, shall we take it up w…

> greatly exaggerated, of course, in the same way "Silicon Valley" exaggerates Californian startup culture

Which is another way of saying it conveys the reality more realistically than a documentary could ever get away with.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#119

Post by robertlagrant »

was_a_dev wrote: post #61
robertlagrant wrote: post #39

I went for an interview with GDS a few years ago. The interview itself was 5 hours long, which was gruelling, but it looked like a great setup. I'm not surprised they're doing well. (I got an offer, but turned it down in the end.)

Heaven forbid we think you failed the interview

People sometimes ask :-) apologies if it caused offense.

Re: Gov.uk Platform as a Service

#120

Post by 35mm »

12ian34 wrote: post #102
0898 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. Compare the process for renewing your passport with the experience of logging into My eBay. Gov.uk is something the UK can be really proud of.

Agreed. I was delighted that my passport renewal process from first applying all the way to getting my new valid passport was about 12 days. The UK government's digital services is honestly a big factor in keeping me a UK resident

As someone now experiencing Spanish gov systems after getting used to gov.uk - 100% yes. They’re actually really quite good.
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