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Comment by verst | Hacker News Reader

Congrats Matt. It was a pleasure to meet you at the USDS ice cream social last fall. Today was my last day at 18F. I'm returning to private sector, for now.

I'm proud of what we accomplished in building cloud.gov. I think 2017 will be a big year for the platform.

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Wow! Just took a look at the pricing page[^1]. This seems like a very expensive service. What makes it cost so much in comparison to what we see in the private sector? There's some info here[^2], but it's pretty general.

[1]: https://cloud.gov/overview/pricing/rates/

[2]: https://cloud.gov/overview/pricing/pricing-model/

Cloud.gov services can only be purchased by federal agencies. The pricing ensures that it is a cost-recoverable service. I for one am happy to see my tax dollars moved out of other federal agencies and into USDS.

The TL;DR answer is that compliance in the government is expensive (for example, the gov't can require companies to maintain amended terms of service[1]). There are many vendors who choose not to work with government for that reason and its one reason the government ends up paying more for services.

Edit to add this link to a place in a video explaining more about compliance.[2]

[1]: https://www.digitalgov.gov/resources/negotiated-terms-of-ser...

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwOG3BrdODo&t=1m30s

I'm a happy user of cloud.gov, so thank you for your work!

Why are you leaving 18F if you don't mind my asking?

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