NHS Education for Scotland defends ‘decade-long’ public cloud deal with AWS

An NHS Scotland coaching body has hit back again at accusations that a ten years-lengthy cloud deal signed with Amazon Web Services (AWS) around twelve months ago is anti-innovation, anti-aggressive and places the organisation at high-danger of lock-in.

The £15m agreement was awarded to AWS by NHS Schooling for Scotland (NES) in April 2020, but the agreement award see was only designed community in early May possibly 2021. Because then the particulars of the deal have been the subject of a lot critique in just the govt IT supplier group, Pc Weekly has uncovered.

Various members of the IT supplier group expressed their misgivings about the deal, on condition of anonymity, to Pc Weekly with a lot of the criticism they shared focusing on the “extraordinary” length of the agreement. As mentioned in the initial tender, the agreement is set to run for one hundred twenty months.

In accordance to the complainants Pc Weekly has spoken to, the contracts conditions are “anti-competitive” and “completely out of step” with how community sector cloud contracts are expected to be done.

“We now have a monopoly that has locked in a community sector organisation for 10 years and locked out the opposition for 10 years, like the British isles tech market and SMEs,” a single supplier informed Pc Weekly.  

The British isles government’s several cloud procurement frameworks restrict the length of contracts to a optimum of five years on the basis that shorter agreement conditions make it less difficult for community sector buyers to enhance their technology stacks as essential, when fostering a aggressive atmosphere for suppliers – notably SMEs – to work in.

From this context, Rob Anderson, principal analyst for central govt at investigation company GlobalData, mentioned he understands why the deal length is boosting eyebrows.

“Ten years is ridiculously lengthy for a cloud agreement due to the fact the [technology] atmosphere is modifying so rapidly,” he informed Pc Weekly.

“When the British isles government’s G-Cloud procurement framework was set up in 2012, the optimum agreement term was two years. And even nevertheless the tech has matured, the agreement conditions now are even now now only a few to five years on the Cloud Compute Framework the govt announced recently.”  

In a statement to Pc Weekly, an NES spokesperson played down the contract’s length. “It is not automatically for 10 years: there are split points all through that time period if required.”

In accordance to sources who participated in the procurement process, the agreement with AWS initially runs for five years, but there is an selection to increase it by a further five years without needing to re-tender the deal.  

Even with these conditions in put, the mother nature of what NES will be employing AWS for indicates it is liable to obtain it complicated to migrate to a different web hosting supplier must it have to have to later down the line, claimed a single supplier, which could stifle the organisation’s capability to innovate in foreseeable future.

“Any financial savings designed by modifying the web hosting supplier, for instance, would be massively negated by the expenditures of rewriting the apps [hosted on top of it]. So are the NES split clauses meaningful? I feel not,” they extra.

In reaction to statements the deal is anti-innovation, the NES spokesperson mentioned the platform does make it possible for for other suppliers to build features on top of the fundamental AWS infrastructure, which will foster innovation and supply a way in for other parties later down the line.

“The prospective for innovation is less about which cloud supplier is being applied, and much more about what can be constructed on top of the platform. We seem forward to exploring this with other suppliers in the foreseeable future,” the spokesperson extra.

Plotting out the route to procurement

AWS is acknowledged to have commenced function on the project in April 2020, but suppliers have queried why it took until twelve May possibly 2021 for Amazon to be publicly named as NES’s selected cloud supplier.

“It is typical practice for there to be a hold off amongst awarding a agreement and publishing the particulars, when we function out the particulars of how the agreement and providers will be structured,” the NES statement extra. “The elevated time on this celebration was a element of the unparalleled stress that all NHS providers have been beneath.”

The NES also favoured a “competitive procedure with negotiation” procurement system for this agreement, which has also been identified as into dilemma by suppliers presented that it is viewed as to be an “onerous and complex” method of procuring providers that can show off-placing to SMEs.

“It is a procedure that is ordinarily reserved for outsourcing-model preparations,” yet another supplier extra.

The agreement award see confirms that two unnamed suppliers were being also in the managing for the agreement together with AWS, but none of the bids the tender garnered were being submitted by SMEs.

In accordance to the Scottish government’s Procurement Journey site, the aggressive procedure with negotiation procurement system is designed so community sector organisations can clarify the submissions they have obtained with the bidders at the time they have obtained a “fully-fashioned initial tender”.

“You must use this procedure if you are unable to outline how to fulfill your requirements technically and/or you simply cannot specify the lawful or economic specifications of your agreement,” the site extra, before citing that it can be applied for “complex purchases” involving “major facts and interaction technology tools”.

In its statement to Pc Weekly, the NES spokesperson mentioned the use of this procurement system is commonplace across NHS Scotland.

“This is a typical approach across NHS Scotland, pursuing Scottish govt rules, aimed at searching for the correct supplier at greatest worth for revenue,” the statement extra.

“This agreement was awarded in April 2020 pursuing community agreement rules and searching for greatest worth for taxpayers’ revenue.”

AWS mentioned it has no comment to make at this time.