AWS Public Sector Blog

Category: Customer Solutions

student with backpack; Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

Shifting mindsets: K12 education in the cloud

K12 educational organizations are modernizing their institutions by providing secure anywhere, anytime access to learning for students. Whether a district or school is a cloud veteran or forging new ground, the cloud is helping break down barriers to opportunity, like the ability to access applications through any device. By using the cloud, many K12 institutions—including schools, districts, educational service agencies, and state education agencies—are having breakthroughs in educational models and student engagement.

open laptop by a window

Year one insights from the Louisiana workforce development collaboration with AWS Educate

One year ago, the state of Louisiana announced a collaboration with AWS to launch statewide an AWS Educate cloud associate degree program. Built in collaboration with the Office of the Governor John Bel Edwards, Greater New Orleans, Inc., and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS), the program provides cloud computing opportunities across the 12 LCTCS colleges. After the first year of the program, LCTCS provided an update on how the program continues to grow and scale.

Fix This episode 15: State & local government

Mission critical cloud: State and local government, on the Fix This podcast

The third episode of the Mission Critical Cloud Fix This podcast mini-series by Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), is now live. We dove into how the cloud helps state and local government customers deliver critical services to citizens. Interviews featured in the podcast include the state of West Virginia (WV), Smartronix, and Los Angeles County Internal Services Department (LA County ISD). You can stream all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, iHeartRadio, and via RSS.

AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region

AWS expands to South Africa, deepening roots in public sector

In April, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region. AWS has a long history in South Africa and numerous public sector organizations in the region are already spearheading technological innovations in the cloud. From healthcare to education, these four public sector organizations are leading innovation in the public sector in the Region.

Voting booth

Supporting elections through voter education and information access, security and scalability, and absentee voting

Even in uncertain times, election officials and political stakeholders are committed to serving a dynamic electorate in a secure, scalable, and cost-effective way. Cloud-based technologies from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the AWS Partner Network (APN) can help elections administrators, campaigns, and civic engagement organizations with access to information, security and scalability, and absentee voting workflow solutions.

COVID-19-Lungs

Helping battle COVID-19 and improve cities: How AWS CICs foster innovation

Technology and the cloud can help address some of the world’s most pressing and immediate challenges, like battling COVID-19 and improving cities. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we encourage innovation through technology in our AWS Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs). CICs are long-term, strategic collaborations with public sector organizations interested in solving societal problems through digital solutions while providing students a platform to learn by doing. Check out a few of the challenges CICs around the world have worked on so far this year.

Education Perfect

Improving learning with advanced algorithms and text-to-speech technology

In 2012, Education Perfect (EP) wanted to use the cloud to access the necessary infrastructure that would allow EP to reach classrooms globally and rapidly scale. EP is an education technology (EdTech) organization that uses advanced algorithms and text-to-speech technology to improve learning through a library of lessons and assessments across multiple subject areas. Our mission is to use technology to provide learning tools and tailored content for educators and students, regardless of location.

West Virginia Workforce

Accelerating the response to West Virginia workforce needs through the cloud

In the United States, unemployment insurance claims are rising, with the current insured unemployment rate at 15.7%—the highest since the end of World War II. Many states are struggling with the volume of applications, causing legacy back-office systems to crash. Workforce West Va. identified three actions they could take to improve constituent services; many of these actions were enabled by the cloud.

FamilyBookForm

Social emotional learning: Using cloud technology to support student learning

Research shows that social emotional learning (SEL) increases student engagement at school, increases academic achievement, and helps students to be more successful in all aspects of life. FamilyBookForm, an AWS EdStart Member, aims to encourage SEL through their online book creation tool that allows K12 students to interview members of their family or community to collect spoken stories, in any language. The tool uses speech-to-text voice recognition technology and is powered by the AWS Cloud.

Alexa Edu SXSW winners

Congratulations to the winners of the Amazon Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge

For the first-ever Amazon Alexa EdTech Skills Challenge, Amazon Web Services (AWS) teamed up with SXSW EDU to challenge U.S.-based EdTechs on how they would use Alexa to transform education. Out of six finalists, AWS recognized two winners: judges’ choice SayKid, the recipient of $50,000 in AWS Promotional Credit, and people’s choice VOGO Voice, the recipient of $25,000 in AWS Promotional Credit. The other four finalists will receive $10,000 in AWS Promotional Credit.