Category: Government

Governments, like the state government of California, are in the midst of a transition to a new way of delivering vital information, services and programs using technology and the cloud. Government organizations are adopting approaches pioneered in the technology industry, including user-centered design, agile development, data science, modular contracting, and the use of modern technology platforms. Many of these governments, like the state of California, are using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to respond quickly and scale to battle unprecedented challenges, like COVID-19, and help them quickly make decisions about how to protect their constituents.

According to the 2020 Deloitte-NASCIO Cybersecurity Study for state governments, 54 percent of states are not confident in their ability to protect emerging technology. Traditional cybersecurity approaches can result in singularly focused solutions that don’t provide holistic protection. It can also inhibit an organizations’ ability to monitor and respond to security threats in real time. As more organizations shift to cloud-based workloads, security mechanisms and components need to be developed and integrated using a Security by Design (SbD) approach. Our AWS Partners have developed pre-configured security solutions, which allow customers to deploy applications using SbD strategies and also use AWS security solutions to ensure continuous security alignment. 

This month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) celebrates 50 years of “science, service, and stewardship.” Over the past five decades, NOAA has demonstrated its ability to push the boundaries of technological innovation to collect and understand data, as well as share that knowledge and information with others. AWS supports NOAA’s mission, in particular by providing public access to the agency’s environmental datasets since 2015 through the Registry of Open Data on AWS.

Over the past few months, one of the biggest challenges for organizations and employees alike has been the sudden transition to remote work. But we have learned that remote work works when the right technology and leadership come together. Check out some impactful stories that demonstrate how governments have gone above and beyond using the cloud to quickly adapt to this new environment and shift away from the status quo.

The AWS Public Sector Summit Online is happening October 20, 2020—registration is now open and at no cost. Max Peterson, vice president of international sales of worldwide public sector at AWS, is hosting the opening keynote, featuring inspiring stories from leaders who are serving their missions with AWS. In the keynote, Max will also share insights into emerging trends in the public sector and discuss topics around digital transformation, business continuity, resilience, security, and privacy—as well as training and workforce development. Meet the inspiring leaders featured in the keynote and learn a bit about their stories.

Azavea believes in the power of geospatial technology to improve communities and the planet. Azavea has been exploring the power of this technology to help their clients to answer complex questions in a wide range of domains from urban ecosystems, infrastructure planning, and economic development to water, energy, and climate change. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), we invited Jessica Cahail, product manager at Azavea, to share how her organization is using AWS and open data to develop tools that help users address environmental challenges and deliver knowledge to support decision making.

A new IDC whitepaper, sponsored by AWS, “How Government Agencies Meet Security and Compliance Requirements in the Cloud” examines why federal agencies are moving more systems and information to the cloud as a launching point for agency-wide IT modernization. The paper shares executive, legislative, and other government-wide initiatives influencing agencies to accelerate their cloud adoption plans, risks IT leaders face by delaying cloud migrations, and how secure, compliant cloud environments help agencies achieve compliance and security for their sensitive workloads.

Serverless applications are typically discreet pieces of code that customers can use to manage security-related processes or stitch together multiple AWS services to solve a larger problem. They allow customers to build and run applications and services without dealing with infrastructure management tasks such as server or cluster provisioning, patching, operating system maintenance, and capacity provisioning. In this blog, I explain the serverless computing model, the Serverless Application Repository (SAR), solution constructs and implementations, why they matter to our government customers, and how they can use them to solve common problems.

Governments at all levels rapidly addressed the rising challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Canadian governments  met citizens’ needs quickly by building secure, compliant solutions on AWS to deliver critical information and services. Working with partners and AWS, Canadian governments and agencies released multiple solutions for providing a modern, digital-first experience for all to interact with the government and receive the information and services they need.

Organizations face a host of threats to business continuity, from extreme weather events to cyber-attacks to human error. Many turn to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to house their workloads in an environment that can withstand disruptions of any type or scale. IT resilience hinges on developing strong architectural, technological, and operational management. Cloud environments require assembly, execution, and maintenance. Here are five best practices for organizations to build IT resilience.