Category: Government

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.

The countdown is on until re:Invent 2018! This guide is designed to help public sector attendees plan their experience and identify breakout sessions and events of interest. It is intended to complement the re:Invent app, which will help attendees navigate the conference onsite.

Sharing data requires more than just making it available for download or creating an API to access it. In many ways, sharing data is similar to shipping a software product. Just like software; data is made up of digital information; it requires documentation; it will be used by groups of users who may require support; and it may become vital to those users’ work. Another common characteristic of software is that it often gets updated over time as software developers learn from their users and adapt to new technologies.

Government agencies often look to promote new technology for cost-savings and efficiency – but it doesn’t stop there. The second and third-tier effects of technology can be long-lasting for citizens, businesses, and economies. Our recent whitepaper, 5 Ways the Cloud Can Drive Economic Development, outlines the internal transformation most public institutions experience as a first benefit of cloud adoption. In other words, the cloud drives greater accessibility of data, information sharing, increased productivity, and smarter resource allocation inside the organization.