AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Customer Solutions

public housing

How AWS customers and partners are supporting the homelessness crisis response during COVID-19

As the COVID-19 outbreak began, advocates and public health officials grew concerned for the more than half a million people experiencing homelessness. Homeless populations are particularly vulnerable because they have higher rates of serious underlying health problems, generally lack access to quality health care, and have no way to self-quarantine. This prompted many communities to implement interventions to reduce the risk of exposure for people experiencing homelessness. AWS customers and partners have acted with compassion and care to assist the most vulnerable individuals across our communities. Here are a few ways they are using cloud technology to support those in need.

Boolean Girl

Empowering girls with STEM education, safely and at scale

Boolean Girl is educating girls to code, build, invent, and animate. It provides enrichment classes, all-girl camps, special events, and partnerships, preparing girls everywhere to explore computer programming and engineering. Boolean Girl hosts its website on the cloud and is core to everything it does: telling its story, registering students and taking payment for camps and after-school clubs, processing donations, organizing events, building our email lists, and running its online university. Boolean Girl uses the AWS Nonprofit Credit Program to cover vital IT expenses while achieving its mission.

woman about to get her blood drawn

European Convalescent Plasma Collection Platform: Data-driven initiative to fight COVID-19

The European Commission, with three of its Directorates-General (DG) (DG SANTE, DG DIGIT, and DG CONNECT) in collaboration with the European Blood Alliance (EBA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), created the European Union (EU) COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) Platform. This database is based on the concept of passive immunization (an approach promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO) Blood Regulators Network), which tests the potential of plasma collected from convalescent persons to treat or prevent viruses and diseases such as COVID-19.

external shot of high school building with columns and stairs

Chesterfield County Public Schools uses machine learning to predict county’s chronic absenteeism

Chesterfield County Public Schools (CCPS) in Virginia uses machine learning on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to predict the county’s rate of chronic absenteeism in high schools. CCPS includes 64 schools and over 63,000 students. They started with a high-impact project that would use data the school system was already capturing about its students. to tackle predicting chronic absenteeism.

city skylines looking up

Helping more than 100 partners achieve FedRAMP Authority to Operate (ATO)

Government agencies have accelerated their transition to the cloud over the last few years, and COVID-19 has accelerated the urgency and pace of that move. A benefit of moving to the cloud is increased security. But to realize this, new infrastructure must be implemented and managed correctly, using best practices and the right technologies. Working with our partners, AWS has helped dozens of solutions accelerate their FedRAMP authorizations. There are more than 100 FedRAMP-authorized solutions running on AWS.

US Census online

U.S. Census brings nationwide count to the AWS Cloud

The U.S. Census Bureau has made history by inviting people to participate in its decennial count online for the first time, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). The decennial census is an official count of every person living in the United States and five U.S. territories, and it takes place once every ten years. To help bring the Census online, the Census Bureau moved its 2020census.gov website to AWS GovCloud (US).

AWS PSSO keynote

Mission Critical Cloud: What you missed at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online 2020 keynote

This morning, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector Teresa Carlson kicked off the AWS Public Sector Summit Online. Teresa reflected on the challenging times during these past few months, shared key trends and lessons learned and spoke about AWS’s commitment to helping people around the world continue to deliver on their missions. In her keynote address, Teresa highlighted AWS customers’ impressive global efforts and how AWS is helping support those customers’ missions. She also shared the latest news and announcements, resources, and more. Here’s what you missed.

satellite at night

Capella uses space to bring you closer to Earth

Capella Space, a provider of on-demand Earth observation data via synthetic aperture radar (SAR), is going all-in on AWS. Capella runs its entire IT infrastructure on AWS to automate and scale its operations. AWS Ground Station makes it simple and cost effective for Capella to command and control its constellation and receive its satellite data directly into AWS using a fully managed network of antenna systems located around the world.

Flooding in Venice, Italy. Photo courtesy Jonathan Ford

Communicating a national flood risk assessment using AWS

The First Street Foundation is dedicated to communicating the flood and inundation risks posed by a changing environment, with an emphasis on allowing Americans to discover and understand those risks. By building awareness, our hope is that every individual is empowered to take steps to reduce their risk exposure to flooding, as well as that of their communities—today and in the future. First Street created a nationwide assessment of flood risk for the CONUS and DC, and is now sharing that assessment through Flood Factor™.