Monday's global outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has highlighted the UK government's heavy dependence on the cloud computing division, with contracts worth £1.7bn since 2016. The disruption affected thousands of businesses worldwide, including UK government departments, raising concerns about concentration risk.
Figures from Tussell, a public procurement intelligence firm, show that 35 public sector authorities currently use AWS across 41 contracts worth £1.1bn. Key ministerial departments such as the Home Office, DWP, HMRC, Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office, and Defra are among those with contracts.
Tim Wright, a technology partner at Fladgate, described the exposure as 'very significant' and pointed to an 'uncomfortable contradiction' between the government's reliance on AWS and regulatory warnings from the FCA and PRA about concentration risk in cloud services. The Treasury committee has written to Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby questioning why Amazon has not been designated a 'critical third party' for financial services oversight.
More than 2,000 companies worldwide were affected, with 1.9m reports in the US and 1m in the UK. HMRC confirmed it was affected, with customers unable to access online services. Amazon stated that all services returned to normal by Monday evening.
Unions have also criticised the government's contracts with Amazon, citing poor working conditions in warehouses. GMB national secretary Andy Prendergast called Amazon's record 'truly terrible' and questioned the use of public money. Amazon did not comment on the outage but a spokesperson for its fulfilment centres defended the company's safety record.
