"But when it gets big enough, it might be worth the government spinning up their own hardware and competing." Not really, this is not something we want governm

"But when it gets big enough, it might be worth the government spinning up their own hardware and competing." Not really, this is not something we want governments doing. In Canada, we spent almost $1B on a simple gun registry - the equivalent of a few spreadsheets with a few million records with security overlay, and almost $1B on a Federal Payroll system that doesn't work. IT, particularly products, is one of those areas where budgets can go over by infinity, it's systematic white collar corruption. If AWS becomes less than ideal, there's maybe another service provider that can do it. Even this initiative, while laudable, may not be perfectly operationally ideal. Just like AWS actually has carved out a special government offering of their services, I believe a host of other providers should as well ... A PaaS/SaaS customized for a given domain, like a country, that built out basic identity services and privacy features given the local regulatory environment, would be ideal. Then the gov. can legislate, communicate, provide oversight while risking the fewest dollars doing the trickiest things. It's not entirely implausible that things can be managed effectively, Sweden has done some amazing things in particular with process and communication. But they are small and special and take 'design' seriously literally as a culture.