Category: Public Sector

Novel challenges require novel solutions. To address the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector organizations are holding virtual hackathons to solve problems that arise from the virus and its effects on society. Hackathons #WirVsVirus in Germany, Hack the Crisis in Sweden, and #EUvsVirus brought together thousands of stakeholders to brainstorm and create innovative solutions using technology and cloud computing to address the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. Attendees at these virtual events worked to find solutions for problems like faster diagnosis of COVID-19 and connecting food with those in need. From technical mentorship to AWS Promotional Credit and providing access to technologies like AI, AWS supported these hackathons, their participants, and their solutions.

In July 2020, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for education, best practices for moving your research workflows to the cloud, and more. For more blog highlights from this month, you can also check out The Brief.

The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the health and financial strain in communities across the country. Before the pandemic hit, Wildfire, a state association for Community Action Agencies, was working with Prefix, an AWS Partner Network Technology Partner, to develop a cloud-based solution for utility and rental assistance. When the City of Phoenix requested they support the distribution of $20 million CARES Act funds, they shifted their resources and existing infrastructure and, in a matter of weeks, stood up a repeatable public-facing solution.

The leading vocational and professional education provider in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (IVE) Information Technology Discipline, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), through its AWS Educate initiative, announced the launch of a new cloud computing diploma to prepare students for entry-level cloud technology jobs. Starting in September 2020, the two-year program will be available to IVE students and will support approximately 100 cloud computing students annually.

The impact of COVID-19 has K12 and higher education institutions working hard to prepare for students to return to learning that will be anything but typical. The 2020-2021 academic year will include various teaching and learning modalities—virtual, hybrid, and face-to-face—and most expect a shift from one to another throughout the year. Globally, EdTechs are working with AWS to accelerate features and solutions to better support students and educators in teaching and learning, physical and mental wellness, and health and safety.

Governments are sharing their technology solutions with other governments through open source tools. These tools are helping state, local, and federal governments respond quicker, and at the scale needed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one of the challenges governments face is finding out what open source tools are available. To help public sector customers use open source tools better, AWS launched Open Government Solutions, which aggregates open source projects and assets from public sector entities around the globe for governments at all levels to find, adapt, and reuse. During a panel conversation around the launch, government leaders outlined five key reasons why governments are choosing open source technologies to deliver citizen services.

For public sector organizations, there is no room for service disruption. When faced with a natural disaster, emergency, or cyberattack, these organizations need to continue running mission-critical applications to power essential platforms such as call centers, patient and judicial databases, and online learning sites. A disaster recovery (DR) strategy is necessary for public sector organizations that need to be there for their communities. CloudEndure Disaster Recovery, offered by AWS, can help organizations reduce DR total cost of ownership (TCO) and achieve business continuity.

States are transforming their workforce and addressing immediate unemployment and re-skilling challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. One state—Utah—announced a plan to train and certify 5,000 students for cloud careers by June 2022. Yesterday, Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert announced the statewide initiative, enable training at Utah technical schools, community colleges, universities, and select K-12 career and technical education schools with access to AWS education and training programs.

AWS is committed to helping our customers address the challenges brought about by COVID-19. In the months since the pandemic started, we have helped governments and organizations around the world accelerate efforts to track the virus, understand its outbreak, and better contain its spread. These are principles that have been reinforced by the World Health Organization (WHO). With the number of worldwide cases continuing to rise at an alarming rate, there is a global imperative to discover, test, and isolate patients in order to slow the viral spread, save lives, and fully reopen economies. To meet this public health imperative, governments are expanding their use of a well-established technique called ‘contact tracing’.

According to the World Bank, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90 percent of all companies. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), more than half of our partners serving the public sector are fast-growing SMEs and minority-owned businesses (MOBs). To support this important partner community, we’re launching a pilot of the Think Big for Small Business Program in August 2020.