The government already owns computational infrastructure. We already bought plenty of servers.
So why are we, as taxpayers, paying to migrate all of that to rented infrastructure? That is cloud services from AWS, Azure, or Google.
Owning is almost always cheaper than renting for steady, predictable workloads, which is what government mostly runs.
Yes, renting infrastructure is cheaper short term (say, the first two years). But long term renting drains the pockets (in 5 years you might be paying double).
Companies like Basecamp have already moved off the cloud and saved millions.
Meanwhile, cloud vendors are some of the biggest government lobbyists.
So we're effectively paying a premium. And our public money flows into the most profitable companies in the US.
Yes, it's "modernization", cloud providers provides excellent infrastructure and super talented consulting. But at what cost?