Yes, I feel the same, at least for a lot of things. Certainly, all externally facing websites should be designed and maintained by gov't staff.

From time to time, HN features high quality UK gov't websites. In the last five years, the UK gov't has made dramatic strides on "digital gov't" initiatives that benefit regular citizens. As I understand, most of those sites are built and maintained by gov't employees. This runs counter to the normal, all-prevailing attitude in UK that "any gov't is too much gov't" (or "any gov't that does not directly benefit me...").

The trouble is, they're mostly Microsoft and either Azure or AWS behind the scenes. The UK government as a whole seems to love Microsoft. I just worry it will be out of the frying pan and into the fire...

Brit here. On your last point, there is no such widespread attitude in the UK towards government. We are historically conservative, but not libertarian. Don't forget two of the most famous and loved British institutions are the BBC and the NHS. I'm not saying such attitudes don't exist, because they do, but it's not "all-prevailing" by any stretch.

I think it's a typo/autocorrect and they meant US at the last instance instead of UK.

The Conservatives want to privatise the BBC and the NHS though - abolishing the BBC licensing fee is a recent move, and steps to privatise the NHS have been repeatedly popular among politicians over the last decade.

I would like that law. However, they would have to pay wages and offer working conditions, that actually attract good developers and they would have to stop outsourcing everything. Outsourcing everything is also a problem with otherwise qualified engineers unfortunately. The big picture long term consequences are unpleasant.

You have to draw a line somewhere with that logic, otherwise you'd have governments running their own fabs.

I'm fully in favour of governments doing everything from hosting up ( hosting, design, dev), with as much as possible open source.

For instance the French government fares well on this front, with most government services being developed in-house, and many parts are open source; in emergencies specific services were delegated to third parties ( e.g. vaccine bookings) so it isn't taken to a religious NIH level. However hosting is delegated to commercial entities.