Outage exposes government's rising reliance on Amazon servers

Amazon was left scrambling to fix a devastating global outage on Monday that left thousands of businesses in limbo - and shed light on the UK government's reliance on its cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

- Simon Goodley

Figures compiled for the Guardian hint at the British state's increasing reliance on the services of the giant US internet group, which has also drawn criticism from unions and politicians about working conditions within its logistics and internet retailing business.

AWS has won 189 UK government contracts worth £1.7bn since 2016 - during which time it has invoiced about £1.4bn, according to the figures compiled by Tussell, a public procurement intelligence firm.

The research group added that "35 public sector authorities currently use [AWS] services across 41 contracts worth a combined £1.1bn. Key ministerial departments have contracts with the company such as the Home Office, DWP, HMRC, [the Ministry of Justice], the Cabinet Office and Defra."