New contract came into effect on 1 July, as minister claims government has ‘robust measures’ to mitigate against possible conflicts of interest

Credit: PA

Amazon Web Services has been awarded a £6.62m one-year deal to host products developed by the Government Digital Service. The contract represents a twofold increase in the annual amount spent by the digital agency with the cloud firm.

And the award of the contract comes as a Cabinet Office minister has spoken to head off questions about a possible inherent conflict of interest in the recent retainment of Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr as an advisor to GDS.

Newly published procurement information reveals that the hosting deal came into effect on 1 July and runs until 30 June 2021. Scant detail is provided in the award notice, beyond stipulating that AWS will be tasked with providing a “flexible hosting environment for digital products”.

The contract will replace a deal that expired on 30 June. That agreement, which also lasted for 12 months, was worth £3.35m – meaning that GDS’s requirement for AWS storage has doubled in the space of a year.

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The two-year contract that ran from 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2019 was worth the equivalent of £1.11m a year.

The expansion of the use of AWS services comes shortly after it emerged that the UK boss of Amazon, Doug Gurr, was asked to contribute to a review of the government’s digital, data and technology function. He is also on the panel that will shortly conduct final interviews to select the first appointee to the newly created £200,000-a-year role of government chief digital officer.

In answer to a series of question from Labour life peer Lord Philip Hunt concerning Gurr’s role in advising GDS, Cabinet Office minister Lord True said that the Amazon head was one of “several members of the Digital Economy Council [who] were invited to contribute to [the] review… as part of the wider Civil Service Modernisation and Reform programme”. 

“The review was limited to the processes, structures and operations of the DDaT function, and did not consider particular strategies for government,” True added. “The Cabinet Office will continue to consult members of the Digital Economy Council as it considers how to implement the recommendations. As always, robust measures are in place to manage possible conflicts and the perception of conflicts.”

When it emerged that Gurr would have a hand in choosing the government chief digital officer, the Civil Service Commission told PublicTechnology that its representatives “are there to ensure that the process is fair and open to all candidates, and that all conflicts of interest are declared and addressed”.

It is understood that Gurr’s existing role as a non-executive director of HM Land Registry – as well as the fact that he is due to leave Amazon sometime by the end of year to take charge of the Natural History Museum – were considered in ratifying his inclusion on the appointment panel.

At the time, a Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “The new government chief digital officer is a critical role, with the successful candidate responsible for shaping digital transformation and innovation strategies for all of government. To reflect this, the interview panel has been designed to include both senior government officials and specialists in the field. This is entirely normal for such positions.”

While greatly increased in size, the new GDS deal represents a small fraction of Amazon’s overall government cloud-storage business. 

In the last 18 months its contract wins include a £100m deal with a Home Office, a £20m engagement with HM Revenue and Customs, a £9m contract with the Ministry of Justice, and a deal with HM Land Registry worth up to £4.8m.

Alongside Burr, the Digital Economy Council, also features representatives of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple as well as other tech industry figures, academics, and ministers – including council chair Oliver Dowden, the digital secretary.