AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog

Category: government

Ohio Region Launch Accelerating Sustainability, Economy, and Citizen Services

AWS announced the launch of a new region in Ohio, bringing technology opportunities, sustainability efforts, and a new way to meet compliance and data residency requirements to public sector customers.

At AWS, our customers’ requirements and feedback help us make key decisions when building new regions. The launch of a region in Ohio will allow more of our public sector customers to realize the benefits of the AWS Cloud. Our government, education, and nonprofit customers are helping to make the world a better place, and we are committed to helping these organizations innovate and achieve their missions using cloud technology.

“We are excited to know that Amazon Web Services’ new Columbus-area region is now live. The presence of one of the world’s leading cloud computing companies speaks volumes about how the City of Columbus and the surrounding area are focused on the future and to improving the lives of our residents in a sustainable manner,” said Mayor Andrew Ginther of the City of Columbus. “We welcome the activation of the new Amazon Web Services region, and we look forward to working with Amazon Web Services and our other Smart City Challenge partners on planning and implementing our vision for SmartColumbus.”

Region Launch Highlights for the Public Sector

  • Customers using this new Ohio region will retain complete control and ownership of where their data is physically located, making it easy to meet regional compliance and data residency requirements.
  • In addition to the environmental benefits customers inherently receive when running applications in the cloud, AWS has a long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for our global infrastructure footprint. In doing so, we hope to do our part to help tip the scales in the environment’s favor.
  • Customers and area citizens alike will benefit from new technology opportunities in state and local government organizations, and within the growing startup and developer community in Ohio. AWS looks forward to working closely with area businesses and public sector organizations to grow a cloud ecosystem.
  • AWS will also work with area students and teachers to help build the next generation of cloud computing workers.

Our work with cities and universities in Ohio is already underway. AWS has signed on to be a founding sponsor of HACKOHI/O, an event being hosted by Ohio State University (OSU) on November 19 (learn more information about the event and register here). Over 700 students will gather for a weekend to solve civic-minded challenges in the areas of health, agriculture, smart cities, and more. AWS will submit challenges based on our experience in the public sector and provide technical resources and credits through our AWS Educate program.

Watch this video of Michael V. Drake, President of The Ohio State University, welcoming AWS to Ohio.

This summer, the City of Columbus was announced as the winner of the US Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Smart Cities Challenge.  AWS worked with with US DOT during the competition and provided the City of Columbus with a total of $1M in AWS credits and professional services to help make their smart transportation initiatives a reality. We look forward to working with the city over the course of their implementation and helping them become a true smart city.

In addition, AWS recently worked with OSU by sponsoring the OSU Agriculture Analysis Day in tandem with the 2016 Farm Science Review and in support of Ohio State’s Discovery Themes, including data analytics and food and agriculture transformation.

Finally, AWS has also formed a partnership with JobsOhio and we look forward to seeing the impact this new region has on Ohio and the surrounding areas!

“With the launch of Amazon Web Services’ newest data centers, the global leader in cloud computing now has an Ohio home,” said JobsOhio President and Chief Investment Officer John Minor. “Along with our partners at Columbus 2020, we look forward to working closely with AWS as it grows its worldwide digital capacity here in Ohio.”

Learn more about the new region and hear about what it means to AWS and our customers:

AWS Signs CJIS Agreement with the State of Washington

 

 

 

 

 

AWS signed a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) agreement with the State of Washington. Washington joins other states, including California, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon, and Louisiana, that work with AWS to leverage the benefits of the cloud, while satisfying the most demanding information security requirements.

More than 30,000 of Amazon’s employees work in Washington and value the work that Washington’s law enforcement agencies do to protect citizens in the state.

AWS is proud to provide law enforcement agencies with the resources they need to address their unique IT needs, allowing state and local police to leverage the AWS Cloud for CJI data, including biometric, identity history, person, organization, property, and case/incident history data. When police departments are confident that their data is secure, they can focus on their mission to increase safety, transparency, and trust.

“As law enforcement agencies in the State of Washington implement new technologies, such as body cameras, this agreement allows them to take advantage of a secure cloud infrastructure to handle the deluge of data,” said Michael Wagers, AWS Global Justice and Public Safety Lead. “The AWS Cloud also enables better tools for analytics and information sharing, helping police departments keep communities and their officers safe.”

When a state signs a CJIS agreement, it enables local law enforcement agencies to run CJIS workloads in the cloud with the assurance that they are compliant with CJIS standards.

For example, King County, the most populous county in Washington, needed a more efficient and cost-effective solution to replace a tape-based backup system used to store information generated by 17 different county agencies. The county turned to AWS for long-term archiving and storage using Amazon Glacier and NetApp’s AltaVault solution, which helps the county meet federal security standards, including HIPAA and CJIS regulations. The county has saved about $1 million in the first year by not replacing outdated servers, and projects an ongoing annual savings of about $200,000 by reducing operational costs related to data storage.

To learn more about how AWS and our partner community are supporting Justice and Public Safety customers, please visit – https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/justice-and-public-safety/

 

Compliance without Compromise: Watch the Introduction to AWS GovCloud (US) Video

Customers with regulated workloads who want to take advantage of the AWS Cloud, turn to AWS GovCloud (US) — an isolated AWS region designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud, which helps customers support their U.S. government compliance requirements, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

If you are looking for the scalability, security, and agility of the AWS cloud platform but need to meet your regulatory and compliance requirements, then watch this video to learn how AWS GovCloud (US) can help.

AWS GovCloud (US) is available to U.S. government agencies and organizations in government-regulated industries that meet GovCloud (US) requirements for access.

Click here to get started with AWS GovCloud (US).

What do 5 Myths, Cloud Ninjas, and the Golden State have in Common? Find out at IACP!

Amazon Web Services and our justice and public safety partner ecosystem are gearing up to travel to San Diego for the 2016 IACP Annual Conference, October 15-18, 2016.

Cloud technology is becoming the new normal in many industries, such as financial services and healthcare. The same is becoming true for the justice and public safety community. We are seeing more police departments in the U.S. and around the globe move their mission-critical applications and data to the cloud.

To address any remaining questions you may have about the cloud, we will have our Cloud Ninjas at IACP to de-bunk myths.

Myth: The cloud is not secure.

True? No.

Fact: Security is our top priority, and our cloud infrastructure has been architected to be the most flexible, automated, and secure computing environment available today.

Myth: The cloud is only for storage

True? No.

Fact: More than 2,300 government, 7,000 education and 22,000 nonprofit organizations of all sizes use AWS to build applications, host websites, harness big data, store information, conduct research, improve online access for citizens, and more.

Myth: The cloud is not CJIS compliant.

True? No.

Fact: AWS complies with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS) standard. We sign CJIS security agreements with our customers, and law enforcement agencies are taking advantage of our rich security automation tools for greater visibility to move faster and meet CJIS security requirements. Learn more about CJIS here.

Myth: The cloud does not produce cost savings.

True? No.

Fact: AWS provides cloud services on a pay-as-you-go model, delivering access to the most up-to-date technology resources. Simply access AWS services over the internet, with no upfront costs (no capital investment), and pay only for the computing resources that you use, as your needs scale. By using AWS’s inexpensive and highly scalable infrastructure technology, organizations around the world can stop paying for computing power they aren’t using – and receive more mission for their money.

Myth: If I put my data in the cloud, I will no longer have control of it.

True? No.

Fact: The AWS Cloud actually allows for more control through a more accurate, more agile depiction of data in near real-time. With one click, you can get any information you need about an instance: who launched it, where they launched it from, how long it’s been running, what applications it’s running and with what data. Cloud gives you extreme control.

Read “In Cloud We (Should) Trust” featuring insights from Bill Murray, senior manager of security programs at AWS for more myth debunking. And let us de-mystify the cloud for you at IACP! You can find us here:

  • San Diego Convention Center Exposition Hall
  • Major Cities Chiefs Association Meeting
  • IACP Division of State and Provincial Police Meeting
  • Association of Criminal Investigative Agencies Meeting
  • Police Executive Research Forum Townhall Meeting
  • More than 15 IACP Committee and Section Meetings

We also look forward to connecting you with our partners – from solution providers that you have trusted for decades to the hottest startups – who can help you address the challenges you may be facing from video and digital evidence management to analytics and information sharing to moving your CAD/RMS to the cloud.

Watch for us on IACPTv featuring our partners Motorola Solutions and Socrata. Also, follow us on Twitter @AWS_Gov with #futureofpolicing and #cloudninja. Watch for our Periscope interviews with leading police chiefs.

If you would like to schedule time to meet with one of our AWS Cloud Ninjas while at the IACP Conference, please contact our AWS Public Sector lead, Mike Wagers at wagers@amazon.com.

Whiteboard with an SA: AWS Direct Connect

In this brief whiteboarding video, learn how to establish a dedicated network connection from your premises to AWS with AWS Direct Connect. Todd Gagorik, AWS Solutions Architect, shows you how you can establish private connectivity between AWS and your datacenter, office, or colocation environment with AWS Direct Connect. In many cases, this can reduce your network costs, increase bandwidth throughput, and provide a more consistent network experience than Internet-based connections.

Todd will walk you through how to establish a dedicated network connection between your network and one of the AWS Direct Connect locations. This allows you to use the same connection to access public resources, such as objects stored in Amazon S3 using public IP address space, and private resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances running within an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) using private IP space, while maintaining network separation between the public and private environments.

Watch this video to learn how you can take advantage of the benefits of AWS Direct Connect.

Continue to whiteboard with our AWS Worldwide Public Sector Solutions Architects for step-by-step instructions and demos on topics important to you in our YouTube Channel. Have a question about cloud computing? Our public sector SAs are here to help! Send us your question at aws-wwps-blog@amazon.com.

AWS Public Sector Month in Review – September

Check out the AWS Public Sector Month in Review featuring the content published for the education, government, and nonprofit communities in September.

Let’s take a look at what happened this past month:

All – Government, Education, & Nonprofits

Education

Government

Nonprofits

New Customer Success Stories

Latest YouTube Videos

Upcoming Events

Attend one of the events happening in October listed below and meet with AWS experts to get all of your questions answered.

Follow along on Twitter for all of the latest AWS news for government and education.

Whiteboard with an SA: Tags

What are tags and what can you do with them? Tags help you manage your instances, images, and other Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) resources. Tags enable you to categorize your AWS resources in different ways – for example, by purpose, owner, or environment.

In this whiteboarding video, Jerry Rhoads, AWS Solutions Architects, walks you through how to tag. This is useful when you have many resources of the same type — you can quickly identify a specific resource based on the tags you’ve assigned to it. We recommend that you devise a set of tag keys that meets your needs for each resource type. Using a consistent set of tag keys makes it easier for you to manage your resources. You can search and filter the resources based on the tags you add.

Watch this demo video to learn more about how tagging works.

Continue to whiteboard with our AWS Worldwide Public Sector Solutions Architects for step-by-step instructions and demos on topics important to you in our YouTube Channel. Have a question about cloud computing? Our public sector SAs are here to help! Send us your question at aws-wwps-blog@amazon.com.

 

The Future of Policing: Not the Robocop Hollywood Imagined

As the technology landscape of state and local government agencies continues to grow and evolve, so does its dependency on cloud computing. Among the agencies most affected by this advancement are the 17,958 state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States. According to a survey conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and Major City Chiefs, 94% of these agencies have deployed or are in the process of deploying body worn cameras to first responders, resulting in thousands of hours of recorded video each day. This sudden influx of data will have a significant impact on the technology systems in place, since much of the agencies’ legacy hardware is not capable of scaling to meet these requirements.

While the future of law enforcement does not include invincible robots, it is data-driven and technologically advanced. The true future of policing is collecting and analyzing data provided by officers and first responders. Through this data, agencies are transforming the way that they operate, allowing officers better access to information, saving critical time, and ultimately, protecting the citizen. The cloud allows public safety organizations to increase agility, scale based on need, compile and organize data, and drive innovation to protect the regions they serve.

AWS leverages a dynamic partner ecosystem to deliver innovative solutions to its customers. For example, Appriss, the creator of the Victim Information Notification Everyday (VINE) platform, compiles and analyzes data to identify fraud, manage risk, and monitor persons of interest. By systematically monitoring thousands of persons of interest at a time, law enforcement agencies can stay ahead of crime, save valuable time and resources, and notify citizens of potential danger through social media and mobile applications. Through their MobilePatrol application, police agencies have received nearly 7,000 crime tips, many of which led to arrests.

Another example is Utility Inc, a leader in body camera technology. They have developed the BodyWorn technology many public safety agencies are adopting. Through video automation, cameras automatically record based on triggers, such as geography, biometrics, and physical activity, which allows officers to focus on the task at hand. With real-time wireless video offload and high-speed video and data communications, officers can connect with dispatchers, deliver vital information, and allow for an accurate assessment of danger and immediate suspect identification.

For over 10 years, AWS has developed 70+ services to support virtually any cloud workload. By leveraging AWS’s platform in conjunction with its extensive partner network, public safety agencies are able to organize resources for greater coverage in high crime areas and drive proactive policing activities and situational awareness.

For more information on AWS’s solution visit the Justice and Public Safety page, download the Future of Policing Webinar, and come see us at IACP in October.

Texas State Library and Archives Commission Turns to the Cloud to Launch Texas Digital Archive

In February of 2014, it was announced that the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) would receive the records of outgoing governor Rick Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas State history, who served from December 2000 to January 2015. This was the first transfer of electronic records to the State Archives, and needed to be both securely preserved for the future and made accessible to the public.

Governor Perry’s records comprised approximately 7 terabytes (TB) of data, including a diverse array of video files, still images, office files, press releases, email correspondence, policy documents, and general files; in addition, TSLAC also had 18 TB of digitized audio cassettes from the state senate it needed to securely preserve.

With one year to go before needing to make Governor Perry’s records public, the team at TSLAC faced the challenge of not having a suitable system in place to digitally preserve and make accessible these important and historical state electronic records.

“Defining our requirements and selecting a standards-based digital preservation system for our electronic government records has been a year-long project involving an extensive formal tendering process. Preservica’s software, hosted on AWS GovCloud (US), stood out as a clear choice, not just in terms of meeting all our requirements, but also based on the company’s reputation and track-record with the other State Archives,” said Jelain Chubb, State Archivist and Director, Archives and Information Services Division at Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Government organizations, like TSLAC, are using digital preservation systems alongside their existing Content and Records Management systems to ensure digital records remain readable, usable, and trustworthy. In particular, the new system needed to offer a secure and easy way to provide public and internal access, as well as have minimal local IT overheads. “The physical cost of server space in our own state data center was prohibitively high and unsustainable for our agency,” says Mark Myers, Electronic Records Specialist at Texas State Library and Archives Commission. “A cloud deployment frees us of needing to have onsite software, servers, and IT maintenance.”

In addition, the system needed to accommodate the stringent requirements of the Texas Department of Information Technology including encryption of data in transit and at rest, which was achieved by hosting on AWS GovCloud (US). The AWS GovCloud (US) region is designed to address the specific regulatory needs of United States federal, state, and local government agencies. It is an isolated AWS region purpose-built to host sensitive data and regulated workloads in the cloud.

Myers continues, “Using cloud storage also gives us geographical dispersal of multiple copies of our data which is a key digital preservation requirement.”

Chubb also believes the cloud is the best solution for TSLAC: “You don’t have to be afraid of the cloud. Many government agencies are looking into cloud solutions because it means that they don’t have to build something from the ground up or worry about hardware and software, or have in-house IT support. It is one of the reasons we are now sharing our original Request for Proposal (RFP) with other state governments interested in leveraging the cloud to preserve and provide access to their own long-term and permanent digital records.”

Learn more about the Texas Digital Archive. And learn more about Preservica’s Cloud Edition hosted on AWS GovCloud (US) and how it delivers secure, digital preservation, and public access for the state’s archives.

 

AWS Signs CJIS Agreement with the State of Louisiana

 

 

 

 

 

AWS recently signed a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) agreement with the State of Louisiana, allowing state and local police to leverage the AWS Cloud for CJI data, including biometric, identity history, person, organization, property, and case/incident history data. As with the CJIS agreements we have signed with other states, including California, Minnesota, Colorado, and Oregon, this agreement allows law enforcement agencies throughout Louisiana to benefit from secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud technology.

Cloud technology has the power to help increase transparency and build trust in communities across the country. By enabling inter-agency data sharing, police departments will be able to arm their officers with data that will help them to make better-informed, real-time decisions.

“Law enforcement agencies are the heart of communities across the nation and Louisiana is no exception. In an effort to increase safety, transparency and instill trust, it is our hope that cloud technology will empower officers with tools to help in the improvement of police-community relations in the years to come. With more control, improved security, and greater flexibility, police departments can focus on more efficiently managing operations and investigations to protect their citizens,” said Teresa Carlson, VP of Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services.

AWS cloud technology and our AWS Partner Network (APN) ecosystem are helping to solve increasing demands for body camera implementation, video data storage, and digital evidence management, which will decrease the burden of administrative pressures so that law enforcement can focus on what matters most: protecting their citizens.

Currently, the Louisiana Department of Corrections is leveraging AWS to improve inmate education and post-prison outcomes by implementing a new secure and reliable online learning solution using Amazon Workspaces. By leveraging the cloud, Louisiana enables better inmate outcomes and security, ensures high availability, speeds technology deployment, and reduces the need for IT staff. Read the full case study here.

From prisons to the front line, the AWS platform is secure and helps justice and public safety organizations meet CJIS security requirements. Louisiana joins over 2,300 government agencies across the globe who trust the AWS Cloud for their workloads from the DHS to NASA to FINRA.

To learn more about how AWS and our partner community are supporting Justice and Public Safety, please visit – https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/justice-and-public-safety/