Author: AWS Public Sector Blog Team

Organizations across the public sector are leveraging the cloud to drive their missions forward with cutting-edge innovation. At the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit Online, vice president of worldwide public sector and industries Teresa Carlson and vice president of worldwide public sector Max Peterson at AWS shared the latest updates and spoke with leaders who are reinventing what’s possible using the AWS Cloud. Here’s what you missed.

In June 2019, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific (NIWC PAC) awarded AWS the first Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) in the US DoD for DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide IL-6 cloud services. This BPA allows for Navy customers to bring the benefits of commercial cloud to Secret workloads. In 2020, NIWC PAC made available the first AWS Secret Region IL-6 environment available for both internal customers residing on the NIWC PAC Secret Wide Area Network (SWAN) and external DoD and U.S. Department of the Navy customers. To support external customers, NIWC PAC deployed SkyDesk, a Citrix Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution that allows any SIPRNet terminal to connect and access the NR&DE IL-6 Cloud.

RONIN is an AWS Partner solution that empowers researchers with a simple interface to create and control computing resources, set and monitor budgets, and forecast spend. RONIN is designed and architected to advance research institutions’ missions, by providing a research platform that manages the most common research use cases, and is also compatible with advanced cloud computing services from AWS. Learn what powers RONIN underneath the user-friendly interface.

With in-person collaboration limited for much of 2020 and the foreseeable future, educational institutions have embraced new virtual means to connect with students and deliver information like classroom lectures, conferences, and dissertation presentations online. Recognizing the value and importance of high quality virtual collaboration, educational technology companies (EdTech) have been working to maintain the benefits of an in-person experience, for speakers as well as audiences, in online environments. Inspired by the increased demand for sophisticated virtual collaboration solutions, EdTech Mosaic Learning built and integrated new Amazon Web Services (AWS) features into its custom platform tailored for delivering dynamic video experiences at scale.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India is establishing a Quantum Computing Applications Lab, in collaboration with AWS, to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries. This is MeitY’s first initiative in the country to provide scientific, academic, and developer communities with access to a quantum computing development environment in the cloud. This is also the first quantum computing applications lab on AWS Cloud to support a government’s science and technology mission at a country level.

To allow more visibility into and management of AWS resources and expenses and minimize the cloud skills training required to operate these resources, AWS Partner RONIN created the RONIN research computing platform. RONIN gives researchers the ability to create exactly the computers or storage that they need in minutes. With access to the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, researchers are able to store and process larger datasets, collaborate globally, and adapt to changing technologies and research methods instantly.

AWS is helping NASA JPL reach an inaugural and innovative milestone in deep space exploration. On Thursday, February 18, NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover landed on Mars, after its 7-month, 300-million-mile journey from Earth. This is the first planetary NASA mission, with mission-critical communication and transfer of telemetry data in the cloud. During Perseverance’s mission on Mars, the science and engineering data will be processed and hosted in AWS, enabling the Mars 2020 mission to benefit from the scalability, agility, and reliability of the cloud.

On February 9, a new object successfully began to orbit Mars: an uncrewed spacecraft called the Hope Probe. The mission has already returned the first image of Mars, taken by Hope’s Emirates eXploration Imager from an altitude of 24,700 km. Led by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), the Hope Probe is the first interplanetary mission for the United Arab Emirates, the fifth country in history to reach the red planet. It will also be the first spacecraft to capture a complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers during different times of the day and different seasons for one complete Martian year. Once data transmitted by the Hope Probe reaches the scientific teams on Earth, MBRSC will use AWS advanced technologies to process and analyze the vast amounts of data and imagery to help researchers better understand the Martian atmosphere and its layers.

We are excited to announce the winners of the 2020 AWS City on a Cloud competition. Since 2014, we’ve rewarded those who have positively impacted our communities in the City on a Cloud competition. This year, the competition expanded to include finalists from over 14 countries across the globe in search of how organizations are adapting to these unprecedented times and helping cities become more resilient. From building telehealth solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, to improving farmers’ quality of life, to increasing computer science education, the winning cities and organizations went above and beyond to innovate for and with their constituents using the cloud. Check out the winners.

Now, students have an even higher expectation for seamless digital experiences to register for classes, apply for financial aid, and access social services right from their phones—anywhere, anytime. As institutions scrambled to fulfill student demand and convert workflows to digital, COVID-19 made administrators aware of the need to create flexibility, help staff work as efficiently as possible, and overhaul processes. Read on to learn how Troy University used AWS Partner Ellucian Workflow to digitize important protocols and improve service to students and prospective students while reducing manual errors.