Core Insights - Amazon's recent global outage highlighted the UK government's heavy reliance on its cloud computing services, particularly Amazon Web Services (AWS) [1][2][4] Group 1: Investment and Contracts - Amazon has secured 189 UK government contracts worth £1.7 billion since 2016, invoicing approximately £1.4 billion during this period [2] - Currently, 35 public sector authorities utilize AWS services across 41 contracts valued at a total of £1.1 billion [3] Group 2: Regulatory Concerns - The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) have raised concerns about concentration risk in cloud service provision, which is ironic given the UK's reliance on AWS [3][4] - Recent initiatives by HM Treasury, PRA, and FCA aim to establish oversight of 'critical third parties' to mitigate risks associated with outages like the one experienced by AWS [4] Group 3: Outage Impact - The outage affected over 2,000 companies globally, with 8.1 million reports of issues, including 1 million in the UK [7] - HMRC reported problems with online services due to the outage, although most services were restored within hours [8] Group 4: Labor Conditions - Unions have criticized Amazon's working conditions in its warehouses, questioning whether this should disqualify the company from government contracts [9][10] - Concerns include reports of poor treatment of workers and inadequate pay, despite Amazon's significant revenue [10]