Category: Government

A guest post by Chris Shenton, CTO, V!Studios The NASA Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Office at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) needed to be able to search and make decisions based upon a huge volume of spacesuit safety and test documentation, many of which were only available as scans of paper reports. Timeliness was critical, especially […]

In this blog post, we explore a use case for government organizations using the OpenStreetMap (OSM) dataset, a free, editable map of the world, created and maintained by volunteers and available for use with an open license. Using open source tools, we generate and render custom maps for a government’s digital property. By leveraging Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Amazon ECS, and multi-tiered architectures, map tiles server can run in an efficient and highly available infrastructure.

When the United States Air Force was looking to automate IT risk management and security compliance of NIPRNet and SIPRNet environments across the enterprise, their search led them to Xacta 360, the risk management and compliance solution from AWS Partner Network (APN) partner Telos Corporation. Xacta 360 is helping the Air Force accelerate authorizations to operate (ATO) – leading to faster AWS cloud adoption – and to continuously monitor systems and workloads for security compliance.

Cloud technology continues to be a major catalyst in how the federal government can achieve operational efficiencies and innovate on demand to advance their mission. Many government agencies, including the Department of Defense (DoD) and other agencies with mission-critical workloads, are using AWS’s utility-based cloud offerings to process, store, and transmit federal government data. As evidenced by the full range of our Authorizations-To-Operate, third-party attestations, and certifications, the AWS Cloud provides government customers with the only one-stop shop to handle Public, For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive, Secret, and Top Secret workloads.

As federal IT leaders recognize the major benefits of cloud computing, some worry that the efficiencies of the cloud will result in sacrificing the workforce that has powered IT for years. In reality, though, federal government technology employees can experience greater empowerment with new technology tools that allow them to focus on strategic, innovative, mission-critical work. By equipping staff with cloud computing capabilities and the confidence to take on new responsibilities, government agencies invite fresh ideas, a place to test them, and the potential to solve complex issues affecting the environment in which they operate.

Compliance with the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy is an ongoing task that includes data center infrastructure development and maintenance, creation of new cloud products and features, and performance of background checks on covered employees. In order to serve the Justice and Public Safety community’s most sensitive CJIS workloads in the cloud, AWS […]

The cloud enables organizations to achieve their missions faster, speed up innovation, and save costs by scaling up quickly without the lengthy and costly process of acquiring additional hardware. Although more public sector organizations are adopting the cloud for mission-critical workloads, misconceptions about vendor lock-in still exist.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides patient care and federal benefits to Veterans and their dependents. The organization is split up into silos of health, benefit, and cemetery benefits; VA’s web presence was similarly fractured and users had difficulty interacting with VA online. The U.S. Digital Service team at VA looked across VA’s many products from the point of view of the Veteran. What do they want to do? How do they want to interact with VA? They started as a small team, iteratively building out features on Vets.gov.

U.S. federal customers move workloads of all sizes to the AWS Cloud. These projects range from single deliverables to complete data center migrations, frequently implemented across multiple AWS accounts for cost-containment and security purposes. Regardless of size though, our customers face common governance challenges.

Cloud technology is helping to modernize IT in support of good government. By moving to the consumption-based model of the cloud, government agencies can save money, innovate faster, and deliver capabilities that help achieve their mission.