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Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

gds.blog.gov.uk

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Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#61

Post by the_other »

atwood22 wrote: post #39
maccard wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. Work smarter, not harder and all that. Productivity isn't tied to time spent in office - my experi…

> That's quite a stretch. Ask any engineer about having that a-ha moment in the shower, or when out for a walk. Downtime is incredibly important for mentally intense work. I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value. Not working usually doesn’t. The key word being usually. if you’re in doubt, just try to record the economic value delivered by your downtime. How many hours are idled…

> I agree but I think you’ll find that working usually contributes economic value.

_Some_ people have to be "not working" in order to make use of all the other areas of the economy - shops, transport, leisure centres, clubs, nightlife, the arts, self-care (beauty, massage, counselling etc). That's a fairly large slice of the economic activity in many countries.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#62

Post by mschuster91 »

atwood22 wrote: post #36
qbasic_forever wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the 19th largest country in world). Perhaps the Germans have figured out how to work smarter, not harder...

U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.

Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#63

Post by foxhill »

i was unable to update my driving licence for the best part of a year because of some (still unknown) internal issue.

i hope they have better luck bringing back up a degraded/read-only etcd service after a power cut.

unrelated - i guess i have some real contempt for the current deployment stack meta :/

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#64

Post by bluehatbrit »

tnwhitwell wrote: post #46
bluehatbrit wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is those are services various government departments can make use of. Notify being to send notifications to people, Pay to take payments, etc. These are basically SaaS offerings from GDS to over government departments. The GOV.UK PaaS is a hosting platform for other government departments to host their own software in the GOV.UK managed platform (like a Heroku kind of thing). They're investing more i…

Just a small correction, it’s not a homegrown thing, but a CloudFoundry deployment with a bunch of tooling around it

Ah yes I missed that bit, thanks for the correction.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#65

Post by filmgirlcw »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #34
atwood22 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel bad. Europeans have a much better work-life balance. Plenty of parental leave. A culture that prioritizes life outside the office. Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. Etc. Those things have a price. Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. I lived in Germany for two years. I…

Yet Germany is the 4th largest economy in the entire world with a GDP of near 4 trillion US dollars, despite being a country of only 83 million people (only the 19th largest country in world). Perhaps the Germans have figured out how to work smarter, not harder...

OK, but the state of California is the fifth largest economy in the entire world ($3.4T USD) and has less than half the population of Germany.

Arguments like this are pointless.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#66

Post by rorymalcolm »

capableweb wrote: post #5
whylo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOV.UK PaaS always ran on top of AWS (though in UK and Ireland regions), so it's always been dependent on a US company anyway

Is there any Europe-based PaaS currently operating, that are noteworthy? Most companies seems to be US-based.

I feel the biggest PaaS offerrings in Europe are internal deployments within the enterprise!

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#69

Post by tarjei_huse »

atwood22 wrote: post #25
mordae wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Don't feel bad. Europeans have a much better work-life balance. Plenty of parental leave. A culture that prioritizes life outside the office. Six weeks of guaranteed vacation that people actually take. Etc. Those things have a price. Namely, when people work less, less innovation happens, which means less productivity growth happens, which means less innovation happens, and so on. I lived in Germany for two years. I…

This may cut both ways with regards to innovation. For example, Europe as come way longer than the US when it comes to automation in various sectors (see f.x. the recent Economist article about inefficiencies in the US retail sector).

The main US advantage wrt to the last generation of tech giants (i.e. Google, Facebook and Amazon) is language. You will reach scale far faster in the US than in Europe because you do not have to translate your product to new languages and markets. Thus the US giants reached scale before similar European products could compete.

Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS

#70

Post by andrekandre »

mschuster91 wrote: post #62
atwood22 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. productivity is higher than Germany (outputs / inputs), so it appears Germany hasn’t quite figured out how to worker smarter than people in the U.S.

Yeah, but how much of the value that this is based on is artificially inflated, either by outright bullshit such as HFT and other forms of "wealth" that are solely created out of numbers or to account for indirect bullshit such as absurd healthcare and rent costs that drive up wages and, indirectly, product prices?

  > artificially inflated
a huge chunk of that is excessive healthcare costs

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184968/us-health-expendi...

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