Category: Government

As we continue to see our public sector customers move more mission-critical workloads and applications to the cloud, we seek to further support them, delivering on the tools and services they need to focus on their organization’s goals. To help customers move to the cloud securely and successfully, we have collaborated with SAP National Security Services, Inc. (SAP NS2), an AWS Government Competency Partner with an AWS GovCloud (US) Skill.

We are excited to announce the lineup of keynote speakers joining us on the main stage for the ninth annual AWS Public Sector Summit June 20-21st at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. These visionaries will share strategies and tactics for shaping culture, building new skillsets, saving costs, and achieving missions.

In keeping with the spirit of Earth and space exploration, here’s another glimpse into the growing dialogue around how the cloud is reshaping planetary science. It’s all ahead of our Earth & Space on AWS Summit Pre-Day experience, which we’re over the moon to present on June 19. (Bear with us, we’re just that excited).

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has multiple Identity partitions: AWS, AWS GovCloud (US), and AWS China. You can see these represented in their ARNs (arn:aws, arn:aws-us-gov, arn:aws-cn). For security, services like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) do not have access to credentials beyond their boundaries, which can make it difficult to transfer information from inside one Identity boundary to another. There is a new tool though, that reduces time and complexity for customers migrating their workloads into AWS GovCloud (US) – gov-cloud-import.

Looking ahead to the future of federal cloud adoption and the steps government has already taken, John Hale, Chief of Cloud Services at Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), joined Doug VanDyke, Director of Federal Civilian and Nonprofits at Amazon Web Services (AWS), for a fireside chat at FCW’s recent Cloud Summit. They discussed how agencies have approached their cloud migrations and have taken advantage of the benefits the cloud brings.

While the fires spread in Sonoma County in October 2017, the focus was on fighting the flames that burned more than 110,000 acres and on helping the citizens displaced from their homes get access to emergency response resources. In addition to shelter, food, and water, time was another important resource. Citizens have high expectations for government services, whether at the state or municipal level, especially in the aftermath of a disaster. Immediately following the Sonoma County fires, the staffing resources in place could not handle the demands required to provide services and educate the public on what resources were available. To scale to meet the demands of citizens, QLess, an innovator in customer-interaction management (CIM) technology, worked around the clock to deploy its Amazon Web Services (AWS)-hosted solution for Sonoma County in a single weekend.

The United Nations has named 17 goals that will help boost sustainable development worldwide. DigitalGlobe worked to find passionate participants who can leverage DigitalGlobe’s GBDX platform and imagery for geospatial projects supporting work in areas such as disaster response, food security, poverty elimination, and ending malaria. DigitalGlobe’s GBDX uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud-based access to its entire 100-petabyte imagery library. With the support of AWS, the GBDX for Sustainability Challenge taps into the potential of that vast digital library to support the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Extracting meaningful information from satellite imagery at scale is only possible because of the AWS Cloud.

Security is a top priority for our public sector customers around the world, and security is best addressed through preventative measures before a compromise occurs. With the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD)’s development of eight key strategies for cybersecurity risk and threat mitigation, our customers can now implement the ASD Essential Eight with our services and support. The ASD Essential Eight is set of cyber security best practices that, when implemented successfully, will provide your agency with a baseline cyber security posture.

The public sector blog continues to cover critical news and information impacting our public sector customers. Check out our top posts from April, according to our readers.

The deadline to apply for the AWS City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge is this Friday, May 18, 2018. Submit your application(s) now! Tell us how your organization uses the cloud to innovate on behalf of citizens. Enter for a chance to win up to $50,000 in AWS Promotional Credit to use toward a qualifying program.