Category: Government

The Newfoundland and Labrador Centre for Health Information (NLCHI) provides quality information to health professionals, the public, researchers, and health system decision makers. Through collaboration with the health system, NLCHI supports the development of data and technical standards, maintains key health databases, carries out analytics and evaluation, and supports health research. This post details how NLCHI is able to provide secure and scalable access to their on-premises provincial electronic health record (EHR) system, by trusted and authorized partners who run on AWS, through the use of AWS PrivateLink, Network Load Balancer, and AWS Site-to-Site VPN.

Today, AWS announced the launch of AWS GovTechStart, a new program intended to help early-stage commercial government technology (GovTech) startups build solutions on AWS for state and local governments across the United States. AWS GovTechStart is a virtual GovTech accelerator, modeled after AWS EdStart, that offers eligible companies support including access to equity-free AWS Promotional Credit, technical training and support, a community of GovTech experts, and more.

At re:Invent 2020, AWS announced the release of Amazon Location Service in preview. The fully managed service helps developers add location data to their applications while maintaining data security and user privacy. Amazon Location Service integrates data sources and services from AWS Partners Esri and HERE. AWS built Amazon Location Service to help users access high-quality global data from these longtime, trusted, geospatial location data providers.

Providing access through Azure AD to AWS GovCloud (US) reduces the number of credentials administrators need to manage and use for access to AWS GovCloud (US) and can also increase security to the account by using the same Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) mechanism used with Azure AD. This access also allows the use of scripts and programs to help manage resources in the AWS accounts. This post is a walkthrough of using an open-source utility called saml2aws to provide programmatic access to AWS for Azure AD users.

Even though Amazon S3 provides regional data resiliency, customers often have compliance and business requirements to replicate their data to a second Region that is hundreds (or even thousands) of miles away from their primary location. Amazon S3 replication provides an automatic mechanism to make identical copies of your objects in a destination Region of your choice. Replication enables automatic, asynchronous copying of objects across S3 buckets. Learn how to configure S3 Cross Region Replication with S3 RTC feature, and do a walk-through of how to configure event notification for S3 replication events and configuring Amazon CloudWatch alarms for the replication metrics.

AWS is announcing the opening of an office in Athens, furthering our commitment to investing in Greece and responding to the expanding customer base in the country. The office will support organisations of all sizes—startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies—as they make the transition to the cloud. The opening of the office is our latest investment in Greece.

With a recent feature release, Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers can now use CAC/PIV cards when using Amazon WorkSpaces to access government systems. Amazon WorkSpaces is a desktop as a service solution that helps users access all of their desktop applications from anywhere. This feature supports pre-session and in-session authentication.

This year, global health and economy challenged government, education, nonprofit, and health organizations to rethink operations. With a focus on their mission, organizations quickly shifted to better and more quickly serve their constituents, students, and customers. Many took advantage of ways to innovate and consider adopting the cloud. AWS looked for ways to help these organizations, educating them on the power of the cloud—no matter where they were on their cloud journey—as well as sharing inspiring stories from their peers. Here’s what we learned.

On the night before Christmas, children around the world wonder when Santa is coming to town. For the 65th consecutive year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will put its world-class technology to work to keep an eye on Santa’s whereabouts. Beginning at 6:00 AM EST on December 24, families can check on Santa’s location by calling the toll-free number 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723). AWS is supporting NORAD by helping their volunteers answer as many calls as possible through Amazon Connect, an omnichannel cloud contact center service. By transferring calls through Amazon Connect, NORAD staff and representatives will be able to answer calls from their homes or offices, supporting those on site at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center.

When wildfires broke out across northern and central California in August, a remote-sensing Earth observation satellite watched 381 miles (613 kilometers) above the planet’s surface. Built entirely in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), KhalifaSat captured imagery that could help governmental agencies and first responders monitor and assess the impact of the destructive blazes. To help KhalifaSat maintain continual coverage, MBRSC uses cloud services from AWS including AWS Ground Station.