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points by iAMkenough 2 days ago | 0 comments
I'm of the mindset that "GovCloud" and related products that make government dependent on private companies for vast government services is a bad idea.

If it's critical infrastructure, it should be publicly owned, funded, and protected by the federal government directly. Not rented from someone else under contracts that can be violated.

[–] sailfast 1 day ago
It’s a good sentiment, but that’s not how it currently works outside of agencies like the NSA that have some special needs and maybe the technical capacity. (Granted it’s been a minute for me so maybe this has changed) Either way it’s all contractors for the most part. In-house roles are not as flexible and don’t pay market.

I don’t actually think you want the federal government doing their own cloud work tbh. It’s a hugely expensive endeavor and the incentives are not there to do it right across government.

These agreements are pretty iron clad and the data centers are often separate and have their own setups.

Once a cross-cutting services agency like DISA or GSA own the stuff they quickly become a bottleneck for government agencies because they can, and then each agency goes out and fights for their own budgets to avoid the bottleneck, and then we’re back to renting.

It’s often better for service to have separate agreements with agreed upon commercial providers for this reason.

[–] iAMkenough 1 day ago
The interstate highway system is also a hugely expensive endeavor, but boy am I grateful for it. Maybe we should privatize that too?
[–] gnabgib 2 days ago
GovCloud is not, Google (https://cloud.google.com/gov) and Azure (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/solutions/government) also provide said services
[–] iAMkenough 2 days ago
Notably, all three of those providers have an incentive to increase costs for taxpayers in order to serve their investors. And all of those providers have federal politicians invested in their stock price.
[–] sailfast 1 day ago
Turns out anyone with a 401K is also invested.

But we’re also taxpayers. So maybe there’s an equilibrium.

Also ideally some competition between those providers that will keep prices in line. (Spoiler: it absolutely does)

GSA also requires that the government is the lowest cost customer so nobody on earth is allowed any better deal. This also applies pressure. You have to rely on incentives in the end.

If you assume nobody has any integrity and incentives are all fake and nobody will hold to their agreements then there isn’t really a “public” good anymore anyway so what’s the point in trying to make a public cloud? It would just lead to grift at larger scale that wouldn’t even benefit our stock portfolios.

[–] tancop 13 hours ago
> Turns out anyone with a 401K is also invested.

The problem with that thinking is not everyone is invested equally or in proportion to how much they pay in taxes. It's a transfer to people who can afford to invest more of their income, paid by everyone else.