Category: Government

Happy New Year! As we start off 2019, we wanted to share the most popular posts from 2018. With a focus on developing our next-generation of cloud practitioners to best practices to get started in your cloud environment, read the top ten blog posts from the AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofit blog.

My grandma is 88-years old with reduced mobility. She lives alone, without a caretaker, in a small village. If she falls, then she is in danger. If something goes wrong when she’s in bed, she might need assistance. With an AWS IoT button, she can call for help in a simple way and potentially save her life. Her village provides free Wi-Fi coverage, so I built an emergency alert system using AWS. When she clicks the AWS IoT button, a series of events will take place to get her the assistance she needs. This can help her in difficult situations. It’s a solution that others can create as well. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to get started.

Quantum science offers amazing opportunities and will have profound impacts on society, the economy, and national security. Because of this, we are excited about and fully support the National Quantum Initiative Act. Greater quantum investment and a cohesive national quantum strategy are essential to ensuring American leadership in quantum science. This bipartisan legislation has received overwhelming support in both the House and Senate, demonstrating the national priority of quantum science.

The Center for Digital Government surveyed more than 170 state and local government technology professionals to gauge their cloud ambitions and identify sticking points. Based on survey data, government IT leaders perceive four key stumbling blocks around their cloud-adoption efforts.

When it comes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), there’s still ambiguity and uncertainy in the industry about how to effectively comply with it and how aggressive enforcement of it will be. Some organizations have made progress towards compliance despite this, while others have taken a “wait and see” approach.

Amazon today announced the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative to promote sustainability research, innovation, and problem solving by making key data easily accessible and even more widely available. The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative leverages Amazon Web Services’ technology and scalable infrastructure to stage, analyze, and distribute data, and is a joint effort between the AWS Open Data and Amazon Sustainability teams.

Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) is an important part of the federal government’s cybersecurity strategy, and it’s getting a boost in visibility since the House passed the Advancing Cybersecurity Diagnostics and Mitigation Act (H.R. 6443). Among other things, this Act directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to develop and provide the capability to collect, analyze, and visualize government-wide information relating to security data and cybersecurity risks and to make these program capabilities available for use by any federal agency.

Coastal communities in the Southern United States are frequently impacted by flooding from storm surge, rain, and tides. To help monitor and enhance flood emergency preparedness, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at the College of William & Mary has been providing tidal forecasts since 2012 for a dozen locations in the lower Chesapeake Bay through its VIMS TideWatch Network. To expand and enhance these capabilities along Virginia’s seaside Eastern Shore, VIMS developed StormSense. The StormSense project works closely with coastal local governments leveraging a network of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled water level sensors, VIMS’s hydrodynamic flood modeling and forecasting capabilities, and the VIMS TideWatch Network to improve flood resilience in the region.

Today at re:Invent, the AWS Public Sector Breakfast focused on tech for good. Read below for the key takeaways.

We announced the Authority to Operate (ATO) on AWS program, which provides resources to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who aspire to achieve a compliance authorization, such as FedRAMP, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), Payment Card Industry (PCI), Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), and many other compliance programs.