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Sorry, but that's absolute crap.
Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
41–50 of 163 posts
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> To be fair, Europe as a whole is 20-30 years behind on most fronts from the state of the art of information technology. This is a gross, unjustified generalization. Sure, there's a lot of old crap around, but that's no different from other parts of the world; but there's also lots of new, modern stuff, with a huge diversity across the continent. Just to give a common counterexample, the SEPA system allows me to tri…
Agreed, there are so many areas where the US trails the rest of the world as far as technology is concerned. The Australian taxation system tech would probably be enough to make most US citizens cry for what they have to endure, and I'm not even sure it's the best one out there.
Paying on credit card in the US was painful compared to the experience in Australia a few years ago. Australia had tap-to-pay everywhere and so many places in the US were still requiring swipe and signature (I mean WTF).
I have found SEPA to be quite good. Australia has PayID as well which works well.
To cherry-pick, Estonia is leading the world when it comes to digital government. It has been an absolute pleasure to use their e-resident system to run a company. They're fostering a startup ecosystem that is punching well above it's weight[0]. From autonomous delivery robots[1] to Wise.
Government technology can often lag behind private sector technology, both from an inately conservative approach, but also because they have to care about things that often get ignored with private sector tech, like supporting everyone (e.g. robust accessibility).
But to say that Europe is 20-30 years behind is just not a realistic view of the world.
[0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/estonia-has-just-1-3-million-p... [1]: https://estonia.ee/delivery-robots-created-by-estonian-engin...
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#43>The big cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP and others) have upped their game So now UK citizens are going to be forced to use services from a country known for largely non-working legal system (where being provably innocent is not enough to call off execution, see Scalia; where a monetary fine is an adequate sentence for premeditated murder, see OG Simpson, not to mention de facto legal immunity for cops committing cr…
Large parts of GDS already run on AWS, and I think that may even have been the case for PaaS itself.
I know HMRC went all in on DynamoDB when I was working indirectly for them via a provider. This was in 2017.
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#44They mention a handful of services like GOV.UK Notify, GOV.UK Pay, the GOV.UK Design System, the Prototype Kit, and the new GOV.UK Forms product. Is anyone able to clarify whether these things are collectively referred to or considered part of the Gov.uk PaaS offering (and therefore will all be decomissioned) or not? It wasn't clear to me from the article and I'm not otherwise familiar.
They're not, no. Think of PaaS as like Heroku, whereas Notify us more like Sendgrid (ie a SaaS) and DesignSysten is like MaterialUI.
Most services are not using PaaS, but are deployed onto AWS or Azure and integrate with other services (notably Notify) via APIs.
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
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In Hungary, you can digitally sign documents using your ID card or your online account at the local equivalent of gov.uk. Certificates are signed and managed by the government. Quite handy for everyday contracts like an apartment renovation.
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#46They mention a handful of services like GOV.UK Notify, GOV.UK Pay, the GOV.UK Design System, the Prototype Kit, and the new GOV.UK Forms product. Is anyone able to clarify whether these things are collectively referred to or considered part of the Gov.uk PaaS offering (and therefore will all be decomissioned) or not? It wasn't clear to me from the article and I'm not otherwise familiar.
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
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#47I don't get it, are they saying that public organizations should move to using AWS/Azure/GCP?
In a way, it could be interpreted like that.
It's another way of saying "maintaining infrastructure isn't a task of a public service." Generally, the "why/why not" tends to be answered with: "A public services can never provide a similar value proposition compared to private vendors." which isn't really an answer to the question.
One problematic aspect is that public entities don't just rely on infrastructure, but also on an entire stack of in-house expertise that provides support and understands the specifics that come with the problem domain - e.g. legal compliance, accountability,... - of providing public services online.
So, barring an alternative, this would effectively mean that public services would have to source consultancy themselves on the private market to set up / maintain their applications on a private cloud on a per-project basis. Both of which are easily a factor more expensive compared to a shared platform / framework / solution where resources and expertise can be pooled together to provide affordable and secure services towards other branches of the authorities.
Oddly enough, they seem to be all to aware of that conundrum:
> In parallel, we are starting a piece of joint work with the Central Digital & Data Office, in partnership with Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) across government, to understand what a future central hosting offer could or should be. We don’t know what we’ll conclude, the options ranging from doing nothing, to creating a reusable set of configuration and management components (similar to the GOV.UK Design System, but for secure cloud hosting) all the way through to building a new PaaS v2 using different architecture.
Personally, I believe this is a decision based on cost. The cost of keeping centralized hosting infrastructure based on old technology online, or migrating towards new technology, is just too steep and can't be readily justified anymore in 2022 compared to what the private market offers. Perhaps most surprisingly: there's no clear short-term plan B for all those entities relying on this service.
If I were managing a few projects from some department, I wouldn't be happy learning that I'd now have 18 months to scramble, figure out how to move forward, find funds, write a project proposal, align all stakeholders, source consultancy, etc. without going offline for a prolonged time.
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#48>The big cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP and others) have upped their game So now UK citizens are going to be forced to use services from a country known for largely non-working legal system (where being provably innocent is not enough to call off execution, see Scalia; where a monetary fine is an adequate sentence for premeditated murder, see OG Simpson, not to mention de facto legal immunity for cops committing cr…
Large parts of GDS already run on AWS, and I think that may even have been the case for PaaS itself.
Yes, GOV.UK PaaS runs atop AWS.
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#49> We also need to operate with a growth mindset in GDS
Is it just me or is it weird to see "startup speak" from gov agencies?
Re: Why we’ve decided to decommission Gov.uk PaaS
#50Earlier 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…
By that logic economic value is only created by active work, and not by any of the thought process that goes into it. That's an asinine thought process.