Category: Public Sector

Data has become a new global currency in the digital age, thus the capacity to turn it into useful information is becoming increasingly important. Geospatial data is collected and used by the Canadian government to support goals such as economic growth, environmental management, and social well-being.

This fall, artist Suchi Reddy and Amazon Web Services (AWS), in collaboration with the Smithsonian FUTURES Exhibition, debuted me+you in Washington, DC, which embodies the collective answers to the question, “What do you want your future to look like?” me+you is an interactive work of art powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and is the centerpiece of the Smithsonian FUTURES exhibition.

AWS Top Secret-West is accredited to operate workloads at the Top Secret U.S. security classification level. The new Region adds multiple Availability Zones geographically separated from AWS Top Secret-East. With two Top Secret Regions, customers in the U.S. defense, intelligence, and national security communities can deploy multi-Region architectures to achieve the highest levels of resiliency and availability essential to their most critical national security missions.

At the 10th anniversary of re:Invent, Max Peterson, vice president of worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS) took to the stage to highlight AWS customers’ innovative advancements to empower communities and transform the future of research, as well as new cloud-powered paths to space exploration and the impact this has on our lives here on Earth. He was joined by customers who shared their stories of how they’re leveraging the cloud to drive their missions. Plus, Max announced a series of new initiatives for public sector customers.

During the 10th anniversary of re:Invent, I was thrilled to share announcements and achievements from AWS Partners and programs for the public sector around the world. Since its launch, AWS’s Public Sector Partner Program participation has increased by an average of 54% year over year, with partners providing solutions in mission areas across healthcare, space, energy, transportation, government, education, and nonprofit. In both the Global Partners Summit keynote at re:Invent 2021, as well as in my public sector leadership session, I highlighted the new and upcoming AWS Partner solutions and accomplishments.

In Africa, scientific data is critical to helping the nation’s leaders tackle issues like water scarcity and climate change. A collaboration between nonprofit Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) and the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) is helping them access the data they need. DE Africa operates a free and user-friendly Earth observation (EO) data service that provides African policymakers with insights into a range of challenges, from natural resource management to the impacts of climate change. The service has already helped Ghanaian officials identify and tackle illegal mining, and provided decision-ready insights on flooding and drought in Tanzania and Nigeria.

The new four-part documentary series Climate Next from Amazon explores how governments and organizations around the world use cloud technology from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive innovation in response to our changing planet, create scalable solutions to address climate change, and empower communities to protect and preserve our planet. One episode of the series showcases how the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico uses cloud technology to create a more efficient waste and recycling management operation to divert waste from landfills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Singapore’s national space office, the Office for Space Technology and Industry (OSTIn), and Amazon Web Services (AWS) today announced they have signed a Statement of Strategic Intent and Cooperation. This Statement is the first of its kind for AWS in Asia, and will help support Singapore’s focus on space as a potential new industry for economic growth and technology development. The Statement between AWS and OSTIn outlines specific areas of collaboration designed to foster the development of space technologies and support the creation of a vibrant, sustainable, and innovative space hub in Singapore.

This year’s cohort of nonprofit winners of the Imagine Grant represents the biggest group of winners out of a record number of applications, each exhibiting a commitment to innovation and an insistence on the highest standards for the mission areas they serve. For the first time, this year’s Imagine Grant offered two distinct award categories, inviting nonprofits of all sizes to put forward both advanced technical projects in the Go Further, Faster award category and foundational IT projects in the Momentum to Modernize award category.

According to a new IDC report, the cloud is helping researchers conduct research faster than ever before by reducing data analysis and processing times, and is allowing researchers around the world to collaborate on solving universal problems. In addition to the positive impact on research, IDC also forecasts that continued adoption of cloud computing globally could prevent environmental emission of more than 1 billion metric tons of CO2 from 2021 through 2024, almost equivalent to removing the 2020 CO2 emissions of Germany and the U.K. combined.