Yes. RDS is a very reasonable choice if you are a tech company, let alone a govt org. The alternative isn’t “let’s host this ourselves” it is “let’s host this with Oracle at a much higher cost”.
It isn't? AWS is crazy expensive and you don't have as much control over things as you may occasionally need. The best decision we took in the past few years with regards to infrastructure was moving away from AWS and doing everything ourselves.
On RDS we had inexplicable spikes in cost, deteriorating support and no real support for any of our issues. When we tried using DMS, it just didn't work as expected, even after spending two days on the phone with their support.
The alternative - at government scale - is absolutely 'let's host this ourselves' and that's what they should be doing, to ensure that institutional expertise remains. They should also own and operate their own datacentres which should be physically secure, not shared with commercial ventures and guarded by the armed forces, not civilian security.
Why doesn't the government manufacture their own cars? They're going to lose institutional expertise in building cars! They should also own and operate their own manufacturing facilities which should be physically secure, not shared with some 'civilian commercial venture'.
By golly, the government can't do business if it isn't a datacenter operations company, a software vendor, and a car manufacturer.
On RDS we had inexplicable spikes in cost, deteriorating support and no real support for any of our issues. When we tried using DMS, it just didn't work as expected, even after spending two days on the phone with their support.