Author: AWS Public Sector Blog Team

The second annual AWS DeepRacer Army-Navy Competition brings teams together to train a robotic vehicle to discover whose car can autonomously navigate a track with the fastest time, using artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. The competition is for anyone affiliated with the Army or Navy, no matter their experience with AI, machine learning, or robotics. Novices can get started with machine learning quickly with hands-on tutorials. The second annual competition will happen on December 11 2021, prior to the Army-Navy football game. Registration is now open.

A recent report by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, commissioned by the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Institute, reveals that moving enterprise and public sector IT workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud can reduce energy consumption and associated carbon emissions by nearly 80%, and is five times more energy efficient than the typical on-premises Asia Pacific (APAC) data center.

The AWS Cloud Credit for Research Program launched a new opportunity for Amazon Scholars and Amazon Visiting Academics to apply for AWS Promotional Credit to accelerate innovation through cloud technology. Amazon Scholars are world-class academics and Amazon Visiting Academics are pre- to newly-tenured academics, selected to tackle real-world technical challenges as they continue to teach and conduct research at their universities. AWS Promotional Credit is offered through this initiative is to support the awardees’ impactful university research that’s distinct from their work at Amazon.

During the opening keynote of the AWS Summit Washington, DC, Max Peterson, vice president of worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), welcomed customers, partners, sponsors, and guests to the two-day event. Peterson highlighted the success of AWS customers from the past 18 months, and announced exciting new initiatives from AWS. Check out what you might have missed from the keynote from the AWS Summit Washington, DC.

Discovery Education (DE) provides standards-aligned digital curriculum resources, engaging content, and professional learning for K12 classrooms. Learn how they worked with AWS to enhance its K12 learning platform with machine learning (ML) capabilities.

To offer security conscious enterprises and government agencies the ability to implement important governance and security controls, AWS acquired Wickr in June of 2021. Wickr helps organizations protect their collaboration with a secure and compliant solution. Built with a security-first mindset, Wickr delivers advanced security features not available with traditional communications services.

President Biden’s executive order emphasizes the need to elevate information security as a core tenet of national security, and calls on federal agencies and public sector organizations to work with the private sector to prioritize the data security and privacy of the American people and government. AWS and AWS Partners can help government agencies align with the initiatives in this executive order.

AWS will open a new data centre design facility in Zagreb, Croatia. The new facility is part of AWS’s ongoing commitment to Croatia, which also includes team expansion to support the growing number of customers and Partners. The new centre will support development and operation of AWS Cloud services, with a focus on data centre design, product development, and research.

To solve some of the most pressing water and energy challenges, scientists and engineers need access to robust, reliable data that is often sensitive and protected. Data providers, researchers, and host institutions need to adhere to strict requirements for protecting and securing this data. The Center for Water-Energy Efficiency (CWEE) at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) used AWS to create a centralized, secure data repository that streamlines data sharing.

At the AWS Summit Online – Americas fireside chat hosted by Max Peterson, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, three public sector leaders discussed recovery and digital transformation across education and healthcare in the Americas following the COVID-19 pandemic. The fireside chat panelists experienced firsthand the need to scale rapidly due to the pandemic and their stories illustrate the transformational power of the cloud to drive impact in the public sector.