I agree that this is an interesting development and I'm looking forward to hearing more from the Government Transformation Team at AWS about their proposition and plans. I think you've given them some good areas to consider here in this post.

I just want to correct one thing though. CDS does not seek to run a closed platform in Canada; it's precisely the opposite as I outline on the routemap for our platform contributions at https://trello.com/c/xaqTSZKt/37-read-me.

Our approach to a platform for government is aligned to your ideal: one where I can clone or even be a tenant of another jurisdictions product or service. Speaking at the Croydon Digital Service last year, I said that I looked forward to the day my CDS forks some of their code.

Sometimes, laws, norms or needs may not permit that but we can at least commit to the lowering or removal of technical barriers.

Government as a Platform should be an open marketplace; where we ask why should I not use the open source or open standard thing.

To be fair, i think that's a mindset I brought across to CDS from GDS. GDS does require that departmental product teams do build to standard and for integration with GOV.UK (the platform and/or domain), but there is a healthy exchange of code and products between central government departments. With admittedly more room to improve, including a register of things that qualify as #gaap components.