Author: AWS Public Sector Blog Team

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) believes that technology is a powerful tool for driving results and innovation on campus. Their chief information officer, Mark Henderson, developed a task force—called the Data and Technology Innovation Lab—to identify department challenges and task individuals to build innovative solutions using technology. One area where UIUC identified an opportunity was sports analytics using machine learning (ML). Learn more about how UIUC was inspired by what they were seeing in professional sports, using data to shift their approach to coaching football.

Artificial intelligence (AI) solutions are helping solve some of the biggest short- and long-term challenges within the public sector. But how can you quickly identify new AI-powered opportunities and use cases to solve unique and specific challenges within your organization? AWS AI and ML Week, taking place from September 14-18, includes seven curated webinars from introductory to expert level. Whether you’re new to AI or an experienced machine learning developer, attend our webinars and dive into some of the most common AI use cases for the public sector from this year.

This year, AWS is hosting the first IMAGINE: The New World of Education Webinar Series. In these webinars, we will feature conversations that provide best practices, guidance, and advice as millions of students and educators worldwide continue to adjust to remote teaching, learning, and working. You’ll hear from education industry leaders as well as subject matter experts on how the cloud has helped bridge the divide between campus or the classroom and remote learning and instruction.

Starting today, Instructure will provide users of its Canvas Learning Platform with access to extensive cloud computing curriculum through AWS Educate to help prepare students for careers in cloud computing. With this addition, more than 700,000 higher education educators will have access to curriculum suitable for virtual, in-person, or blended classroom environments.

Novel challenges require novel solutions. To address the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector organizations are holding virtual hackathons to solve problems that arise from the virus and its effects on society. Hackathons #WirVsVirus in Germany, Hack the Crisis in Sweden, and #EUvsVirus brought together thousands of stakeholders to brainstorm and create innovative solutions using technology and cloud computing to address the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Attendees at these virtual events worked to find solutions for problems like faster diagnosis of COVID-19 and connecting food with those in need. From technical mentorship to AWS Promotional Credit and providing access to technologies like AI, AWS supported these hackathons, their participants, and their solutions.

In July 2020, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for education, best practices for moving your research workflows to the cloud, and more. For more blog highlights from this month, you can also check out The Brief.

The leading vocational and professional education provider in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) Information Technology Discipline, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), through its AWS Educate initiative, announced the launch of a new cloud computing diploma to prepare students for entry-level cloud technology jobs. Starting in September 2020, the two-year program will be available to IVE students and will support approximately 100 cloud computing students annually.

The impact of COVID-19 has K12 and higher education institutions working hard to prepare for students to return to learning that will be anything but typical. The 2020-2021 academic year will include various teaching and learning modalities—virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face—and most expect a shift from one to another throughout the year. Globally, EdTechs are working with AWS to accelerate features and solutions to better support students and educators in teaching and learning, physical and mental wellness, and health and safety.

For public sector organizations, there is no room for service disruption. When faced with a natural disaster, emergency, or cyberattack, these organizations need to continue running mission-critical applications to power essential platforms such as call centers, patient and judicial databases, and online learning sites. A disaster recovery (DR) strategy is necessary for public sector organizations that need to be there for their communities. CloudEndure Disaster Recovery, offered by AWS, can help organizations reduce DR total cost of ownership (TCO) and achieve business continuity.

As government agencies and public sector organizations modernize their IT and migrate to the AWS Cloud, the ability to gain a full, clear view of the security of their environments is a primary challenge they experience. This lack of visibility leads to blind spots and gaps in their security posture, leaving opportunity for security issues to arise. As a result, AWS developed a new open source Self-Service Security Assessment (with ransomware analysis modules) tool that provides customers with a point-in-time assessment to quickly gain valuable insights into the security posture of their AWS account.