Actually yes, that would be an ideal intervention of state into computing infrastructure.
It could even be revenue generating as, once developed, it could be sold out to the private sector, instead of essentially being taxed by foreign corporations for such basic digital infrastructure as hypervisors and key/value stores.
It could also act as a buffer and wage-stabiliser for people like us, who work in tech, by providing guaranteed employment when the private sector implements layoffs.
I don't know why anyone in our position wouldn't support that.
The UK also needs better distribution of data centers. Ireland is off the table for some services, like police etc. So all data ends up in London, and you need to distribute between AWS and Azure, but you don't get the regional distribution.
So, yea, build some data centers in Scotland and somewhere in the midlands, setup some good cloud services, starting with the basics - Compute, DB, and storage.
I mean, you can work for government, it's excellent (if underpaid) work. But they absolutely don't have the long term scale, focus, or investment to build something like Databricks/Foundry over several decades.
Which, they could - in fact, government (specifically meaning Civil Service) is the ideal environment in which to manage long-term scale, focus, and investment - it's just that private (in fact multinational) interests have weaponized politics against "government", which in practice means "good governance".
It could even be revenue generating as, once developed, it could be sold out to the private sector, instead of essentially being taxed by foreign corporations for such basic digital infrastructure as hypervisors and key/value stores.
It could also act as a buffer and wage-stabiliser for people like us, who work in tech, by providing guaranteed employment when the private sector implements layoffs.
I don't know why anyone in our position wouldn't support that.