Legislation coming into force this week formalises the transfer of the digital unit to DSIT, which has prepared the ground by signing a major tech deal for its new addition
Following the formal introduction of legislation to support its move between departments, the Government Digital Service has agreed a £20m-plus deal for Amazon Web Services cloud hosting.
According to a newly published commercial notice, the contract was put in place as a result of the legal completion of GDS’s move from the Cabinet Office into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology – a process which took place on 13 May. The move, which also included the former Central Digital and Data Office and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence – both of which now sit within GDS – was provided for by new legislation: The Transfer of Functions (Digital Government) Order 2025. The legal instrument was put before parliament last month and came into force on Tuesday.
The cloud deal, which came into effect on 1 June and was awarded via the G-Cloud 14 framework, was awarded by Integrated Corporate Services (ICS), a unit that oversees the joint provision of services – including procurement, digital, property, finance, HR and security – principally across DSIT and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. ICS also provides some services to the Department for Business and Trade, as well as to several other government entities.
The unit’s agreement with AWS covers the provision of a “GDS-configured flexible hosting system for digital end-to-end services”, according to the text of the contract.
The deal addresses cloud computing infrastructure, a ‘bring your own licence’ service for managing software subscriptions, and AWS support and managed services.
“It is acknowledged that supplier is unable to and has no responsibility in terms of limiting buyer to a maximum quantity or value of services purchased under this call-off contract,” the contract says.
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The deal provides the ability for GDS to choose in which of AWS’s locations it wishes data to be stored and processed, and the text stipulates that the cloud firm “will not alter buyer’s selection… and will not move buyer personal data unless” doing so is covered by other addended terms.
After the deal expires – which is scheduled to take place on 30 September 2027 – AWS is contractually required “to provide services to support the buyer in transitioning from the supplier’s cloud service” to an alternative, if requested to do so.
The contract adds: “Following termination or expiry of this call-off contract, if requested by the buyer, the supplier shall also provide the following support to the buyer: information setting out the processes that the buyer can use to export data and images from standardised services that will enable buyer to initiate exiting a cloud environment in a self-service manner; provide portability tools and services to help migrate to and from the supplier’s cloud infrastructure; a broad set of standardised features and services, which buyers can use as building-blocks to create their bespoke exit plans, together with readily available documentation as to how to use these services; information to enable buyer virtual machine images to be downloaded and ported to an alternative cloud provider or to a different environment; and/or instructions on how to retrieve content from a particular supplier service to enable buyer to delete any content and terminate all Supplier services in their account.”
The deal between ICS and AWS is valued at a little over $24m, which equates to £18.1m at government’s May 2025 exchange rate, according to procurement documents. Inclusive of VAT, spending is likely to add up to about £21.7m.
The agreement was awarded under the terms of OGVA 2.0 – the second iteration of AWS’s public sector discount scheme the One Government Value Agreement. The first version of OGVA was a memorandum of understanding agreed in 2020 between Whitehall procurement unit the Crown Commercial Service and AWS and offering discounts to all government agencies and other public bodies by, effectively, treating the public sector as a single customer.
Following the conclusion of the initial agreement, AWS and CCS agreed to put in place another MOU for three years until 2026.
While details of both the first and second versions OGVA have not been publicised, PublicTechnology exclusively revealed that the initial iteration offered an across-the-board baseline discount of 18% on cloud hosting services. In addition to this saving, a further price reduction of 2% was available when services were paid for upfront and in full, while a partial upfront payment of at least 50% conferred on the buyer an extra 1% discount.
