Category: Thought Leadership

The higher education we knew before the pandemic will not be the one that emerges post-pandemic. Leaders must meet this moment by redefining the constructs of higher education. The “Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve” report released by EDUCAUSE groups the top 10 priorities into three imperatives: 1) shared vision, shared strategy; 2) student success as institutional success; and 3) sustainable business models.

As governments around the world digitize services, individuals are required not only to prove their identities, but to do so on digital channels. This is a challenge not only for people without legal ID, but also for individuals with ID documents that are hard to use digitally. Cloud-based digital ID systems can be a solution to this challenge. Plus, digital ID creates a robust scope of benefits — and cloud-based approaches to implementing these systems provide the speed, scale, and security needed for digital ID to succeed.

Whether you are a local employer, a dean at a higher education institution, or a government entity, finding and training your workforce is top of mind. As we continue to find solutions to skill, reskill, or upskill our workforce, the answer will not be found by working in silos but rather through public-private collaboration. Recently, a number of education and government leaders from across the country participated in a panel to discuss the challenges facing local state leaders and education institutions around workforce. Five key suggestions emerged as ways to improve the workforce of tomorrow.

At AWS, we see cloud computing as enabling accelerated innovation on the path to net zero carbon. That is why we recently hosted our first public webinar on Meeting Sustainability and Climate Goals with the Cloud in APAC, bringing together industry, government, and other key stakeholders, and featuring experts from 451 Research, Environment Resource Management, Intel, Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and AWS customers DBS Bank and Canva. Here are four overarching lessons for APAC policymakers.

The 2021 IMAGINE Education conference brought together education leaders and executives from across the country and around the world in an all-day event to discuss the future of education. It was my honor to deliver the keynote address to highlight some of the ways that the education community in the public sector are transforming the very essence of learning with the cloud. I was joined by Kathryn Finney, the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Genius Guild and General Partner of the Greenhouse Fund, who expressed how educators are driving innovation for their students and making the impossible, possible.

At the AWS Summit Online – Americas fireside chat hosted by Max Peterson, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, three public sector leaders discussed recovery and digital transformation across education and healthcare in the Americas following the COVID-19 pandemic. The fireside chat panelists experienced firsthand the need to scale rapidly due to the pandemic and their stories illustrate the transformational power of the cloud to drive impact in the public sector.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the need for both faster digital transformation and urgent development of digital skills in the public sector. A new IDC study, which surveyed 250 health, government, and education organisations in seven countries across Europe, has now revealed the full extent of the IT challenges the public sector faces.

Recent events, from public sector cyberattacks and severe weather events to the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, have revealed that many educational institutions, as well as regional and local governments, are not fully prepared to respond to these incidents. At the same time, large-scale disruptive events illustrate how important it is for public sector organizations to respond rapidly to keep essential services running as well as quickly pivot to offer new services. In an IDC survey of 2,000 U.S. residents in September 2020, 31% said they would like to continue virtual government services as a replacement for in-person interactions, while another IDC survey of U.S. teachers revealed that 38% expect a growth in hybrid or remote learning to be a lasting change.

The surge in cloud-based online learning is “positive disruption,” said Melissa Loble, chief customer experience officer at Instructure, the maker of Canvas. She believes online learning has transformed the classroom on a global scale—in many ways for the better. Read four ways that Canvas and other cloud-based learning platforms have disrupted the educational landscape, both for traditional colleges and universities and global programs.

Higher education leaders agree the coronavirus pandemic forced many institutions to adapt and innovate. Which strategies worked? Which tactics didn’t? What role did cloud technology play? The AWS education team recently convened a small group of university leaders for a roundtable discussion to learn about how higher education institutions innovated to support learning, teaching, health and administrative processes, campus culture, and physical infrastructure.