A43v2Delivery risk: AmberGate: pending
Make cloud exit and continuity work in practice
A new scope of action A43 (A43v2); A43 itself is unchanged and nothing is inherited from it.
Provisional single-reviewer desk assessment, 6 October 2026.
- Who and where
- Select a critical service and test usable backups, data export and a proportionate recovery route. (from the 6 October review) Jurisdiction: not defined.
- Result so far
- Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30 (equal weights; not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co))
- Funded now (baseline)
- Funded baseline not yet stated
- The change assessed (marginal)
- Select a critical service and test usable backups, data export and a proportionate recovery route. (from the 6 October review)
- Domain home: Technology
- In the national plan: Resilience and sustainability appraisal queue
What the evidence supports—and the next decision
A backup exists only as a resilience measure if data and services can actually be recovered within an acceptable time.
AI-assisted analytical follow-up · 8 October 2026. Proposed appraisal design; the attributed scores below are unchanged. No funding or delivery agreement is implied.
- Define the change
- Select a critical service, define recovery needs and rehearse loss of its cloud provider or identity layer using a proportionate alternate route.
- Test whether it works
- Demonstrated recovery time, data loss, integrity and essential-service continuity; use independently observed exercises and record failed tests.
- Establish the cost
- Backup, export, alternate capacity, licences, staff exercises and continuing maintenance. Do not invent a national outage-loss estimate.
- Protect against harm
- Protect sensitive data and avoid a nominal second provider that shares the same critical dependency.
Read with the outcome evidence and sources in the full assessment. Monitoring proposals are not existing baseline measurements. A numerical benefit or cost score needs evidence for the defined increment, not just the scale of the problem.
Full assessment of Make cloud exit and continuity work in practice: ten criteria, scenarios, delivery, costs and monitoring
The ten criteria (0–3)
Each criterion is scored 0 to 3 by the reviewer. “Not yet assessed” means unknown: it is never counted as zero.
Scale and severity (Sc)2 of 3 — Serious harm to a defined group or widespread moderate harm
Reviewer’s reason: Problem scale judged from the linked domain evidence; not a population estimate of those helped.
Increment beyond baseline (Ad)2 of 3 — Specific material change to existing delivery
Reviewer’s reason: Select a critical service and test usable backups, data export and a proportionate recovery route. This is a provisional marginal-change judgement, to confirm against commissioned delivery.
Confidence in the proposed action (Ev)0 of 3 — No effect evaluation
Reviewer’s reason: Concentration establishes exposure; it does not establish the cost-effective resilience design.
Expected incremental benefit (Bn)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown: no sufficiently supported magnitude for this exact change.
Residual harms (Hm)2 of 3 — Manageable harm with specified safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Duplicated cost, security complexity and a nominal exit plan that fails operationally.
Incremental affordability (Co)Not yet assessed
Reviewer’s reason: Unknown: the proposed increment has not been costed and matched to an approved affordable allocation in this review. Existing programme envelopes are not that allocation.
Delivery capacity (Ca)2 of 3 — Stretched but plausibly obtainable
Reviewer’s reason: No invented national AI-outage loss; retain service-specific risk thresholds.
Distribution (Fa)2 of 3 — Mixed or broadly neutral with safeguards
Reviewer’s reason: Distribution assessed against the target group and the burdens described here: Duplicated cost, security complexity and a nominal exit plan that fails operationally.
Meaningful first outcome (Ti)3 of 3 — Within one year
Reviewer’s reason: Timing judgement concerns the first meaningful outcome in: Recovery time, data loss and continuity under a rehearsed disruption. It does not imply all long-term benefits arrive then.
Readiness (Rd)2 of 3 — Named commissioning/allocation/coordination step
Reviewer’s reason: Run a costed service-level exercise before buying blanket duplication. Owner: Service owners, procurement teams and relevant regulators.
Four weightings
Normalised as 10 × weighted sum ÷ sum of weights, on a 0–30 scale. Where a criterion is not yet assessed, the range is the lowest and highest result if it were later scored 0 or 3 — not a score, a confidence interval or a rank.
- Equal weights: Range if completed: 15.0–21.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Evidence doubled: Range if completed: 13.6–19.1 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Scale doubled: Range if completed: 15.5–20.9 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
- Cost ignored (the funding gate still applies): Range if completed: 16.7–20.0 out of 30. Not yet assessed: expected incremental benefit (Bn), incremental affordability (Co). Funding gate: not passed.
Funding gate: Not passed — the cost is not yet assessed or no allocation is committed for this scope. Ignoring cost in a weighting never removes the gate.
Delivery risk and gate
Delivery risk shown: AmberReview’s claim: Amber. Best the recorded evidence allows: Amber.
Review’s reason: Incremental lifetime costs and funding not established. No invented national AI-outage loss; retain service-specific risk thresholds.
Why it is not Green yet
- Scope (population, place and increment) not verified against the delivery baseline.
- No verified owner with the powers in place.
- Delivery capacity not verified.
- Lifetime incremental costs not complete.
- No credible funding (a committed allocation for the scope).
- Safeguards not specified.
- Monitoring lacks a metric, a data source or a baseline.
Green needs verified scope, a verified owner with the powers, verified capacity, complete lifetime costs with credible funding, specified safeguards and monitoring with a metric, source and baseline. Amber means appraisal gaps remain; Red means a material delivery obstacle. Red does not mean unimportant.
Gate: Pending — appraisal incomplete (review label: “Pending cost, funding, scope and capacity appraisal”).
Why: Scores incomplete; Funding gate not passed (cost unknown or no credible funding).
The gate is separate from national list membership: being listed does not make an option eligible, and an eligible option need not be listed.
Cost and funding
Lifetime costing: Not established.
Still to cost: Incremental lifetime costs and funding not established. No invented national AI-outage loss; retain service-specific risk thresholds.
Funding status: not established in review.
Owner, powers and capacity
Proposed owner: Service owners, procurement teams and relevant regulators. (proposed, unverified).
Powers: needs a decision or allocation. Capacity: unverified.
Powers and capacity read from the review’s Rd and Ca anchors; no proposed owner has agreed to act (the review: “Proposed owners have not agreed to act”).
- England:
- not assessed
- Scotland:
- not assessed
- Wales:
- not assessed
- Northern Ireland:
- not assessed
Not defined in the review.
Dependencies, safeguards and risks
Depends on: No invented national AI-outage loss; retain service-specific risk thresholds.
Safeguards
None specified yet.
Risks and residual harms: Duplicated cost, security complexity and a nominal exit plan that fails operationally.
Monitoring and measured results
Metric: Recovery time, data loss and continuity under a rehearsed disruption.
Data source: Not yet named. Baseline: Not yet established.
Measures already on the domain page
- Cloud customers switching provider in a year: latest not published; baseline not published (United Kingdom).
A page measure is not necessarily the review’s metric; linking the two is an editorial decision still to be made.
Evidence for the outcome
Outcome: Recovery time, data loss and continuity under a rehearsed disruption.
Concentration establishes exposure; it does not establish the cost-effective resilience design.
SWOT points it addresses
- Cloud infrastructure is concentrated: Microsoft and AWS each held 30–40% of UK cloud infrastructure and platform services in 2024 (CMA estimates), and fewer than 1% of customers switch provider in a year. (Technology)
- Lock-in may persist: the CMA chose provider commitments on egress fees over formal cloud investigations, with a review after six months, so whether switching rises is untested. (Technology)
- Tested exit plans for critical workloads, and evaluated AI pilots compared with current processes, would show where AI helps and where dependency is a real risk. (Technology)
Review record
Assessment status: Provisional single-reviewer desk assessment, 6 October 2026.
Reviewer: Original assessment author (name not supplied). Reviewed: 6 October 2026.
Carried from the earlier domain review (C record): must be calibrated jointly with the G/W/E/NG/NW/NE records before any combined comparison.
Decision route: Run a costed service-level exercise before buying blanket duplication.
An editorial screening framework by one reviewer, not a formal appraisal or business case. Proposed owners have not agreed to act.