Category: Government

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.

Cities relying on smart city solutions find value in core technologies, such as compute, storage, databases, and data warehouses; and advanced technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence. A critical ingredient for any smart solution is data. It offers insight into the status of municipal processes, and the changes required to meet local government objectives.

One of the greatest advantages of cloud computing is enabling the government to use the latest innovations at a rapid pace. Cloud services can help government agencies deliver their mission more efficiently and modernize their infrastructure without a substantial upfront capital investment, allowing them to undertake more projects faster.

There are many arguments for building a serverless architecture. Chief among them, users only pay for the computing power they use. Organizations can begin by identifying and eliminating the bottlenecks in their workflow. For example, CSIRO Bioinformatics in Sydney, Australia, used AWS X-Ray to systematically evaluate their serverless architecture and, by doing so, improved their runtime by 80%.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) charted their path to the cloud back in 2012 with the cloud directive. Since then, they have made strides in accelerating the adoption of cloud computing throughout the department. Critical to the success of cloud adoption is training the warfighter on how to use the new technology. What better way to train soldiers in the cloud, than through a “born-in-the-cloud” startup. The Data Incubator is a growing startup and AWS Partner Network (APN) member who not only uses AWS, but also trains defense agencies on how to use AWS tools in the cloud across all data classification levels.

March was another active month for the public sector blog. Here is a look at the top five posts that resonated most with our readers.