Category: Government

City and state government leaders are on the front line fighting COVID-19. Government agencies need to reach their constituents at a moment’s notice to communicate everything from the location of disease hot spots, calls for volunteers, providing life-saving guidelines, and keeping the public informed about the current state of affairs. They need to be able to reach citizens virtually or through electronic methods, since meeting in person isn’t an option. In this blog, you learn how to create an Amazon Connect instance, set it up in over a dozen languages, and send messages to millions of people in a short period of time.

Chatbots and modern call centers provide governments with an efficient way to connect with citizens during critical times. Governments, health systems, and educational institutions are responsible for communicating and maintaining information portals regarding public safety, health and human services, emergency services, social services, and more. Now more than ever, communities are turning to their public sector organizations for up-to-date information. Read on to learn from organizations across industries and how they have scaled their services to meet increased demand.

I am happy to share that the first AWS Public Sector Summit Online will happen virtually on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Registration is now open, and we are building an experience that you will be able to access right from your own home. Leading up to the Summit, I am also excited to announce the release of a new, five-part series of the Fix This podcast. I will be one of the guest hosts, and I look forward to speaking with government, education, and healthcare customers about how they are solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges with technology.

Public sector organizations are experiencing a high volume of requests for information ranging from health to finances to municipal services. At a time when in-person interaction is limited, citizens can call into contact centers to get the insights they need to make real-time decisions about their health and safety. Many organizations are turning to the cloud to quickly scale and deploy a contact center. But, understanding your cloud contact center at granular level can help better serve your constituents.

Last December, AWS announced the expansion of its collaboration with the U.S. NOAA to make environmental data easier to access and use through the Big Data Program. Users can now access new, authoritative NOAA data on AWS without needing to download and store their own copies. Researchers and entrepreneurs can deploy compute resources on-demand in the cloud, perform analysis quickly and efficiently, and save costs by letting researchers ask more questions and experiment more easily. One of the foundational datasets now available on AWS through this collaboration is Himawari-8, the Japan Meteorological Agency’s satellite dataset.

Far above the clouds, one of the fastest growing missions for the public sector is taking place. Technological advances and open data initiatives provide new paths to explore space, impacting our lives here on Earth. From satellites to rovers, cloud computing and cloud-enabled technologies help us find answers to our biggest questions.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Amazon CodeGuru (Preview), a machine learning service for automated code reviews and application performance recommendations, at AWS re:Invent 2019. The new service helps development teams find code defects or performance issues and gives recommendations to improve code quality, saving time and expense.

Happy Earth Day! In April, the Fix This podcast focused on how the cloud can help people and organizations further understand human impact on the environment, and help them to achieve their sustainability goals. All episodes are available for streaming and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, iHeartRadio, and via RSS.

Finding IT budget to drive new initiatives can be a challenge, especially for public sector organizations. Most public sector organizations use IT funds for foundational initiatives such as disaster recovery, supporting critical applications, or delivering key collaboration tools. As new priorities emerge, organizations might not have the funds to adopt new workloads or advanced technologies that address urgent, new, or emerging needs. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides cost optimization tools, services, and guidance to help public sector organizations lower cloud costs so they can better serve their stakeholders and achieve their missions.

As the world grapples with COVID-19, researchers and scientists are united in an effort to understand the disease and find ways to detect and treat infections as quickly as possible. Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched CORD-19 Search, a new search website powered by machine learning that can help researchers quickly and easily search tens of thousands of research papers and documents using natural language questions.