Category: government

No one denies that military operations are very high risk.  And in high risk operations, it is essential to assess risks and plan for mitigation.  Enter the business of military organizational assessments, in which squadrons, battalions, companies, and detachments routinely turn to their own members to assess the safety climate of their organizations.

In August 2005, Dr. Robert Figlock and Michael Schimpf formed Advanced Survey Design, LLC (ASD) to deliver reliable, relevant, and responsive data to a growing number of Department of Defense (DoD) organizations that embrace data-driven decision-making. To obtain real-time, anonymous feedback about the safety challenges a military organization faces, ASD conducts surveys on behalf of various military agencies. Survey topics range from flight operations, aircraft maintenance safety, ground safety procedures, hazing, sexual harassment, drinking and driving, and other areas of concern to military units. The goal is to help clients better understand their organizational climate so as to maximize the benefit of actions taken to mitigate hazards.

As a small business focused on supporting organizational assessments for thousands of squadrons and battalions each year within the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, ASD requires both scalability and the strongest information security.  For this, ASD turned to AWS GovCloud (US).

“What we got when we switched to Amazon was an improvement across the board in every metric. The cost dropped by more than 50%, security improved dramatically, we are now able to scale to over 2,500 respondents per hour, and the site runs better than it ever did before,” offered Michael Schimpf, VP Operations at ASD.

When you think of surveys (especially surveys containing DoD information), data integrity and security are of utmost importance. Prior to operating in AWS GovCloud (US), ASD had a dedicated server and the web hosting provider had access to the box. This raised concerns about the possibility of rogue employees at the web hosting company being able to view ASD’s customer data. That concern was eliminated with AWS because only ASD personnel have logical access to ASD’s GovCloud data. Additionally, the AWS GovCloud (US) region is managed by and accessible to U.S. Persons and adheres to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), as well as Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG) Impact Levels 2-4 requirements.

“A big driver of our decision to move to AWS GovCloud (US) was that the people who had access to the equipment were screened and were U.S. persons. This was important to us, and even more important to our customers,” Michael said, “Our Air Force customer was actually the one who suggested we look at Amazon Web Services back in 2013.”

With contracts with Naval Aviation, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Air Force, NASA, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the British Royal Airforce (RAF), ASD will not compromise with compliance and security in the cloud.

Learn more about ASD and whether AWS GovCloud (US) is right for your business.

Last weekend, we sponsored the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) Track hosted by the City of Austin, presented in conjunction with the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference.

The City of Austin invited mayors from across the US to attend for an opportunity to learn from their peers are doing, share best practices, and experience the latest technology positively impacting citizens. Throughout the sessions, the mayors in attendance focused on top-of-mind themes, including economic development, supporting startups and entrepreneurs, affordable housing, procurement challenges, and the new role of cities as hubs of innovation.

Cloud technology helps cities become these hubs of innovation by serving as the platform to help create new citizen services within cities. From mobility to the Internet of Things (IoT), we heard from local governments about what matters most to them to continue to innovate for the benefit of their citizens:

• Mobility— Mayors can take advantage of mobility to make smart changes in their cities including traffic, parking, energy, utilities, public safety, citizen connection, predictive maintenance, emergency management, budget, air quality, and waste management. Mayors can also serve as an agent of change in the rapid push toward smart cities.
• Internet of Things (IoT)— IoT can help cities leverage resources more effectively. For example, IoT can save water and money for cities by leveraging devices and sensors to collect data, including weather forecast, traffic, air quality, and water information.
• Partnerships— Agile legislation at the city level and engagement with startups to transform into a smart city is important in the quest for innovation. Cities can bring startups as change agents to lead innovation in partnership with their city leaders.

In addition to the great conversations and our launch of our third annual City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge (read the announcement post here), the US Department of Transportation (DOT) announced seven finalists for their Smart Cities Challenge. AWS will be providing $1M in credits to the winning city in June to help build their solutions on AWS. In addition, we will work with the finalist cities on their applications and identify how AWS can help make their vision a reality. The competition will award a total of $40M to one winner in June to implement smart transportation solutions within their city. The finalists are: Austin, Columbus, Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Portland and San Francisco. Congratulations!

Thank you to all of the mayors who attended the conference and participated in this track. Smart minds can do amazing things for our cities and we look forward to continuing to innovate with the cloud to help transform our cities.

Last week, we announced a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Busan City, the second largest city in Korea, to establish the Amazon-Busan Cloud Innovation and Technology Centre.

A few months ago, you heard about our region launch in Korea. This is another step forward in our cloud computing efforts between a Korean government and AWS.

AWS will work with Busan City and the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning (MSIP) to establish the Amazon-Busan Cloud Innovation and Technology Centre. This will be one of the Korean National Creative Economy and Innovation Centers (integrated facilities nationwide to enhance the creative economy), an initiative of President Park Geun-hye.

Amazon-Busan Cloud Innovation and Technology Centre will promote and showcase Busan-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. In particular, we will help Busan use SaaS solutions and cloud technology to capitalize on Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives. This will support Busan’s commitment to continually improving the lives of their citizens. Together with Busan city and MSIP, we will collaborate on cloud technology programs that will help Busan realize the city’s long-term vision of becoming the nation’s most intelligent city through the use of cloud computing technology.

Additionally, AWS Cloud Training and Global Certification programs, as well as the AWS Activate program, which provides support to startup businesses, will be implemented to help grow and scale the city’s cloud-enabled economy, fostering a globally competitive workforce in Busan.

We look forward to working with Busan City and MSIP to help raise the bar on innovation, and realize its vision of developing a cloud-based ‘Intelligent City,’ boosting the city’s economy and job growth.

“Busan is a global logistics centre with prominent film, tourism, and ICT industries. The ICT industry, in particular, is a strategic priority for Busan. As a large port in South Korea with established infrastructure, Busan is considered one of the most attractive cities for technology investments. In collaborating with AWS, Busan strives to become a cloud-based high-technology ‘smart city,’ with job growth and economic vitalization,” Byung-Soo Suh, Mayor of Busan City, said.

Check out the photos below from the day of the announcement with Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Amazon Web Services, Worldwide Public Sector.

Today, we announced the call for entries for the AWS 2016 City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, a global program to recognize local and regional governments and technology partners that are innovating for the benefit of citizens using the AWS Cloud.

We have consistently seen our customers engage in innovative, out-of-the-box thinking to take advantage of the cloud. Cities offer an immediate experience of technology that can directly impact you, the citizens who work, live, and raise your kids in these communities. That is why we started the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge!

The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge recognizes state and local governments for how they are innovating on behalf of citizens today, and to share those best practices throughout the world. Cloud technology has led to the creation of modern programs and services that are enhancing citizens’ lives and making the world a better place, and we want to continue to discover how cities are using the cloud—and help other cities realize their dreams.

From an innovative data archival system to a platform of custom sites that allow citizens to review, analyze and comment on local government priorities in ways previously unavailable, the winners of previous City on a Cloud Innovation Challenges included a cross-section of local and regional governments who used AWS Cloud to further their mission and better serve their constituencies in meaningful ways. For example, London City Airport won the 2014 “Best Practices” award for their “Smart Airport Experience” project, which demonstrated how Internet of Things (IoT) technologies could be used to both enhance customer experiences and improve operational efficiency at a popular business airport. Last year, PARK SMART took home the “Partners in Innovation” award for their software platform which indicates real-time availability of parking lots in monitored areas. Also, last year’s “Dream Big” winner was the City of Chicago with their OpenGrid project, an open-source geographical information system that supports real-time monitoring of data and historical data retrieval using open data.

And dreaming big is what it is all about.

“With the AWS Cloud, the City of Chicago was able to launch OpenGrid, a first-of-its-kind, open data website and mobile app that city residents can use to search for useful information and events around them ranging from real-time weather, Tweets and requests for city services to street closures, transit data, and potholes nearby,” said Tom Schenk, Chief Data Officer and 2015 City on a Cloud Dream Big Award winner. “OpenGrid is representative of Chicago’s commitment to making city data available to all residents in a transparent, innovative, and open source platform.”

AWS and a panel of worldwide experts will award a total of $250,000 in AWS promotional credits to eight grand prize winners from three award categories: Best Practices, Partners in Innovation, and Dream Big, a category that recognizes the best ideas for a cloud innovation, and award credits for its implementation.

Entries must be received no later than May 13, 2016 and will be judged based on one or more criteria, including:

• The impact of the solution
• Likelihood of long-term success
• Implementation of AWS services
• Potential to help other local governments solve similar challenges.

Learn more about the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge here, and see the official rules for more details here.

City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge winners will be announced on June 21, 2016, at the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. You won’t want to miss it!

All City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge entries must include AWS cloud computing services – either implemented or proposed, depending on the category. Entries will be reviewed and considered by a panel of AWS representatives and international experts.

We look forward to this year’s City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge and to seeing what local governments will use the cloud to accomplish next.

To learn more about the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, visit the challenge page. Get inspired and see how local and regional AWS customers around the world are using the AWS Cloud, by visiting the interactive “City on a Cloud Innovation Map.”

We are excited to bring to you a three-part series around smart and collaborative cities showing how AWS can help cities of all sizes benefit from the cloud. In this post, we will explore how cloud computing can help cities build a collaborative framework to gather and distribute data to provide better services to citizens.

With cities becoming the gravitational center of people’s lives, it’s understandable that city leaders all around the world are working hard to improve the quality of life of their citizens and increase the number of useful services. Projects around smart cities are gaining attention in several countries, with administrators, industry, and citizens working together to enhance our cities.

As the number of initiatives grows, so does the need to increase the IT infrastructure to support both the growing set of citizens’ services and the amount of data storage needed for these projects. This can increase the costs of a smart city project and sometimes lead city administrators, especially in small cities, to abandon the endeavor or narrow its scope.

That’s where cloud computing comes in. The AWS Cloud enables cities to obtain a flexible, secure, and cost-effective IT infrastructure. Cloud computing replaces up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low, variable costs and increased scalability, security, and faster time-to-market. It also liberates administrators from devoting time and budgets to activities that don’t directly contribute to the bottom line. Local governments, like the City of McKinney, are embracing AWS because it increases their agility and ability to deploy new solutions faster, avoid long lead times, and reduce the time between the inception of a project and the production phase. This approach lowers the cost of failure and helps to increase innovation.

And innovation is key to a smart city.

Sensors in the city

When it comes to smart cities, our imagination usually depicts something between futuristic cities, like the Minority Report, and a slightly improved traffic light. This is not too far off, as sensors become the central nervous system of the smart city. We see a lot of examples of cities gathering data from parking sensors, air quality metering devices, or remote devices. However, we understand deploying physical sensors is usually an expensive task, and managing and maintaining them can be even more difficult.

To overcome this roadblock, we suggest reusing devices and assets to adapt quickly to changes and have an agile approach around service development and deployment. Solution developers recognize constraints around existing infrastructure and are trying to develop services that leverage current sensors. AWS supports numerous DevOps principles and practices that will help IT departments deploy these services, such as AWS CodeDeploy, AWS CodePipeline, and AWS CloudFormation.

Smart cells in the central nervous systems of our cities

We need to remind ourselves that we have smart cells in addition to sensors in the central nervous systems of our cities that we can leverage: our citizens.

Technologies, like smartphones, are everywhere and offer new ways to acquire information without deploying new sensors. Citizens are also important because engaging them in the process is crucial to start smart city projects. For instance, social media can help gather dissatisfactions and opinions, as well as events happening in real time around the city to detect potential threats. And with open data, organizations around the globe are making their data available for the public to discover, access, and use, fueling entrepreneurship, accelerating scientific discovery, and creating efficiencies across many industries.

Open data in action

For example, the City Of Chicago decided to release a spreadsheet containing the dates when streets were going to be cleaned. A group of individuals decided to build an app on top of this information, allowing people to view information on a map and be alerted with email or push notifications, enhancing the overall value of the original information provided.

Another example is OneMap, an integrated map system for government agencies in Singapore that delivers location-based services and information. Developed by the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) it functions as a collaborative environment for citizens, the private sector, and the community to use open data to create websites and applications.

AWS provides a comprehensive tool kit for sharing and analyzing data at any scale, so that when cities make data open on AWS, the public can analyze it quickly and easily with our scalable computing and analytics services, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).

Customers can rely on our services to deploy scalable, fault-tolerant applications that empower citizens with a reliable source of open data. Find examples on our reference architecture page. Finally, open data integration fuels innovation and interactions. Cities can open their application services and let developers build on top of open services with the help of  Amazon API Gateway, a fully managed service that makes it easy for developers to create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale.

Cities can expand their smart city vision by adopting a more agile, DevOps-oriented methodology. This can allow them to adapt and respond to new necessities and reuse the assets they already have deployed, empowering citizens to send data and collaborate with the government, which enables cities to gather data from the very people that demand the services. Finally, releasing the collected data as open data and opening services through APIs can be a cost-effective way to increase the value of an existing initiative.

Cities offer an immediate experience of technology that can directly impact you, the citizens who work, live, and raise your kids in these communities. That is why we started the AWS 2016 City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge, a global program to recognize local and regional governments and technology partners that are innovating for the benefit of citizens using the AWS Cloud. To learn more about the City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge and apply, visit the challenge page here.

And check back in our next post in this series where we explore how customers can use mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices on AWS to deploy smart city applications.

Post authored by Giulio Soro, Senior Solutions Architect, AWS and Steven Bryen, Manager, Solutions Architect, AWS

Faced with pressure to innovate within fixed or shrinking budgets while meeting aggressive timelines, local and regional governments around the world are using the cloud to transform services, improve their operations, and reach new horizons for citizen services.

We are happy to share with you the How Cities Can Stop Wasting Money, Move Faster, and Innovate white paper, coauthored by Frank DiGiammarino, Director, AWS State and Local Government and Carina Veksler, Public Sector Solutions, AWS Public Sector, to provide you with “how to” steps for governments to consider as you identify which IT systems and applications to move to the cloud.  Local and regional governments are adopting cloud computing, but identifying the correct projects to migrate can be overwhelming. The white paper outlines the steps to help governments identify, plan, and implement new citizen services that take advantage of current technology to boost efficiencies, save tax dollars, and deliver an excellent user experience, including suggestions such as:

1. Managing the scope of the project, releasing minimally viable product, and iterating
2. Taking advantage of new innovations and engaging your citizens in crowdsourcing
3. Automating critical functions for citizens

Use cases from around the globe—Moovit, London City Airport, City of Boston, King County, City of Asheville, and City of McKinney—give real-life examples showing you how cities can stop wasting money, move faster, and innovate. Read the white paper to learn more and find the tools to power your next big idea.

We are pleased to announce that the Open Source Election Technology (OSET) Foundation’s TrustTheVote™ Project is utilizing AWS to ensure that the democratic process is not threatened by archaic and obsolete systems. Often, these systems are no longer supported by manufacturers, and in the case of voting machinery, rely on proprietary software that’s difficult to inspect or audit.

OSET is a 501(c)(3) non-profit election technology research institute focused on creating open source software for elections administration in the US and around the world. The TrustTheVote™ Project is an open source software initiative that develops and provides an election technology framework with apps. States and counties can then adopt, adapt, and deploy the software to administer elections. Currently, OSET offers apps for states’ online voter registration services, with ballot design and election results reporting in development and testing. More apps are on the way for all aspects of election administration. The cloud-driven open source approach means that any election jurisdiction can adopt and adapt OSET’s apps and launch them faster and more cost effectively than ever before.

Election officials have to deal with aging hardware, shrinking budgets, and inefficient processes, while managing chaotic election logistics, polling place volunteers, and local web sites that often crash when everyone simultaneously wants election results. Cloud technology, combined with open data, open standards, and open source development, offers an ideal solution for elections administration with no hardware to buy or maintain, unlimited capacity for traffic, and a pay-as-you-go model.

The OSET Foundation is driving increased innovation in elections technology, like voter registration services, ballot creation, election results reporting, analytics, and voter information services with zero-footprint data center solutions that were not possible with traditional IT infrastructure. Since it’s on AWS GovCloud (US), the TrustTheVote Project technology can be used by any state or county looking to quickly improve elections administration without the high costs and long time frames of old computer systems.

OSET chose to make its software available on AWS GovCloud (US), because it offers the security and compliance for sensitive data, while having the scalability, agility, and cost savings of not buying hardware. And it can be quickly and easily delivered anywhere in the country.

Cloud-based voter registration, ballot design, and elections results reporting are ideal starting points to lowering costs and improving the public trust in our democracy.

Federal government agencies are adrift in a digital sea of big data. To stay afloat, these agencies need to gather, store, manage, process, analyze and use the massive amounts of data they collect every day from a variety of sources.

We have found that agencies that leverage cloud computing and big data analytics platforms can meet their IT infrastructure needs more efficiently and save money in the process.

The push for government agencies to move to cloud-based big data analytics is also being driven by the Internet of Things (IoT)— the ever-expanding network of physical “things” that can connect to the Internet along with the information they transfer without requiring human interaction.

As more federal agencies adopt IoT tools, they’ll need a managed cloud platform that lets them connect devices easily so they can securely interact with cloud applications and other devices.

For example, to respond to rapidly changing market dynamics, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), one of the largest independent securities regulators in the United States, has moved its platform to AWS. The reason: so FINRA can analyze and store approximately 30 billion daily market events it receives from exchanges and U.S. firms. With that data, FINRA creates an overall picture of financial markets, highlighting any wrongdoing.

Read the full Washington Post article on IoT here to learn more about how FINRA, Quorum, and other organizations are leveraging big data analytics in the cloud.

We are excited to announce our seventh annual AWS Public Sector Summit scheduled for June 20-21, 2016 in Washington, DC.

Join us for one of the largest gatherings of government, education and nonprofit technology leaders sharing their firsthand stories of innovation for the public good. Last year’s summit featured a star line up including the CIOs of the US, UK, Canada, and Singapore, as well as IT leaders from agencies and organizations near and far.

This year, we are excited to welcome Andy Jassy, Amazon SVP and the visionary leader of Amazon Web Services, along with even more customers innovating in mobility, the Internet of Things, scientific computing, advanced security, open data, and more. The Summit includes over 80 breakout sessions, direct access to AWS technologists and inspiring customer spotlights.

Check out this video to get a flavor for the event.

Register now for the AWS Public Sector Summit here!

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), based in Golden, Colorado, is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy-efficiency research and development. They are a true cloud visionary making an impact across renewable energy and energy efficiency research by bringing energy data access to the forefront.

Sharing information and fostering collaboration among scientific communities are long-standing goals for NREL. If more people are able to access the data, then more discoveries can be made. NREL’s OpenEI.org Open Energy Information portal is focused on publishing and sharing research data from a variety of sources. The organization currently hosts dozens of public-facing websites, which are updated frequently with the latest energy information.

To build a collaborative data repository, NREL needed to find a platform to meet all of its specific needs to create a scalable environment, so it is possible for anyone to use the site. Yet, it must be secure, due to the sensitivity of the data involved (to comply with all mandated FISMA cyber security requirements).

NREL turned to AWS to design and launch a moderate cloud environment to host data, such as the new Marine Hydrokinetic Data Repository (MHKDR) application, a geothermal energy research database, and several other sites that focus on collaboration and data access. Once the data can officially be released, the public gets access to the data for research purposes.

NREL is utilizing the AWS Cloud for ground-breaking energy data access web platforms and is able to focus on data quality and continue to share their research to others to make a difference in our environment. Learn more about the immediate benefits they received that helped their research and the research community here.