Plan and Cost a Government-Funded Free Cloud Storage Service for Every US Citizen

Suppose the US federal government decides to give every citizen free online storage space for their personal files. You are the product manager asked to stand up the program. Explain how you would set it up and run it, then estimate what it would cost over its first three years. When you ask what the estimate should include, the interviewer tells you to focus on the cost of the storage. Once you have a number, the interviewer asks what risks a program like this carries. ### Clarifying Questions - How much space does each citizen get: a fixed free allowance (and if so, how large), or as much as they choose to use? - Will the government build and run its own data centers, or buy capacity from commercial cloud providers? - Is every citizen eligible, including children, and are residents who are not citizens left out? - Is the service meant for general personal files such as photos and documents, or as a vault for official records such as tax forms and identity documents? ### Part 1 — Design the program Describe how the program would work: which part of government owns it, who supplies the storage, how citizens enroll and prove they are eligible, what the service does and does not include, and how it rolls out. ```hint Follow one citizen through the service Trace a single person from signing up to leaving the program, and note at each step what the government must do itself and what it could buy from someone else. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Ownership, oversight and the decision on who supplies the storage. - Eligibility, identity verification and the per-person allowance. - Service rules, citizen support, a phased rollout and how success is measured. ### Part 2 — Estimate the three-year storage cost Estimate the total cost of storage for the program's first three years. Write the formula first, label every assumption, and show the arithmetic. ```hint Allowance is not usage The space the program promises each citizen and the data people actually upload can differ a lot, and sign-ups build up over time. Decide which of these your cost should follow, and keep the other as a bound. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - A formula linking eligible citizens, enrollment, data stored per person and cost per unit of storage. - Year-by-year growth in enrollment and stored data, with consistent units. - A sanity check and the effect of the largest assumptions on the total. ### Part 3 — Risks What are the main risks of running this program, and how would you reduce each one? ```hint Who holds the data matters Ask what changes when a government, rather than a private company, keeps the personal files of a large share of its citizens, and what happens to those files if the program's funding stops. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Privacy, security and trust risks that come from government-held personal data. - Cost, fraud, abuse and illegal-content risks. - Continuity risk if funding or policy changes, with a mitigation for each risk. ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A stated purpose for the program and measures of success, set before the design and the numbers. - Design decisions on ownership, identity, allowance and suppliers, each with a reason. - An estimate that separates promised capacity from actual usage, with labeled round-number assumptions and correct unit conversions. - Risks paired with concrete mitigations, including how citizens keep their data if the program ends. ### Follow-up Questions - How would your estimate change if the government had to reserve each citizen's full allowance from the first day? - The interviewer now wants the full program cost, not only storage. Which cost would you add next, and which do you expect to be largest? - Would you run the storage in government-owned data centers or through contracts with several cloud providers, and what would change your mind?