Category: Public Sector

With in-person collaboration limited for much of 2020 and the foreseeable future, educational institutions have embraced new virtual means to connect with students and deliver information like classroom lectures, conferences, and dissertation presentations online. Recognizing the value and importance of high quality virtual collaboration, educational technology companies (EdTech) have been working to maintain the benefits of an in-person experience, for speakers as well as audiences, in online environments. Inspired by the increased demand for sophisticated virtual collaboration solutions, EdTech Mosaic Learning built and integrated new Amazon Web Services (AWS) features into its custom platform tailored for delivering dynamic video experiences at scale.

Research exploring how humans work with machines to solve problems in fields ranging from space to sustainability has established the potential to create far-reaching change in children’s education. The test-bed project is part of a wider program set up by Oxford University with support from AWS. Researchers have been as surprised by how quickly they have reached results as they are pleased with the outcomes. One of the test-beds, the Oxford X-Reality Hub Ed Tech project, set out to investigate how virtual reality (VR) could transform the classroom experience and close the gap between disadvantaged groups of pupils who statistically do less well than their peers.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India is establishing a Quantum Computing Applications Lab, in collaboration with AWS, to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries. This is MeitY’s first initiative in the country to provide scientific, academic, and developer communities with access to a quantum computing development environment in the cloud. This is also the first quantum computing applications lab on AWS Cloud to support a government’s science and technology mission at a country level.

If you share data with other researchers, especially if they are using a different tool, you can quickly run into version issues, not knowing which file is the most current. Rather than sending data files everywhere, AWS offers a simple way to store your data in one central location so that you can read your data into SAS and still share it with other colleagues. In this blog post, I will explain how to export your data, store it in AWS, and query the data using SAS.

C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to addressing climate change. C40 empowers cities to collaborate effectively, share knowledge, and drive meaningful, measurable, and sustainable action on climate change. C40 delivers insights to help city governments understand how to deliver emission reductions and climate resilience. C40’s primary platform for sharing this knowledge is the C40 Knowledge Hub, launched in 2019, to provide all participating cities with the knowledge and tools necessary to drive large-scale climate action. The Knowledge Hub is an online platform bringing together insights, practical experiences, and tested approaches from leading cities, for cities at every stage of their climate commitments.

Severe and extreme weather events not only wreak havoc on lives, property and the economy, but the extent of the destruction and devastation left behind can be difficult to map and quantify. Having high resolution imagery of areas devastated by weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and etc.) helps to characterize impacts, formulate needed recovery and response activities, support emergency managers in saving lives, and restart the flow of commerce. NOAA’s data plays a critical role in this process. As part of ASDI, we invited Jena Kent from NOAA’s Big Data Program to share how AWS is helping with disaster response by providing access to aerial data and imagery through open data initiatives.

Many organizations including the intelligence community, security organizations, law enforcement, regulatory bodies, news organizations, and non-governmental organizations work together to disrupt transnational crime networks. Their missions include combating illicit trade; disrupting human, animal, and narcotics trafficking; detecting money laundering; and exposing political corruption. This community needs rapid analysis of large, diverse streams of information about air transportation networks, because air transportation is the fastest way to conduct illicit trade internationally. The nonprofit Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) built the Icarus Flights application to meet this need. By building on AWS using managed cloud services, C4ADS spends less time and energy managing infrastructure, which frees them to focus on building innovative analytics and alerting services that their user community needs.

Internal Revenue Service Publication 1075 (IRS 1075) provides guidance for US government agencies, agents, and contractors that access Federal Tax Information (FTI), to make sure they use policies, practices, controls, and safeguards to protect FTI confidentiality and integrity of FTI throughout its lifecycle. Safeguarding FTI is critical to agencies that receive, process, store or transmit FTI. AWS and AWS Partner programs enable agencies to protect FTI and the confidential relationship between the taxpayer and the IRS.

Removing the barriers to rehousing, especially for those chronically homeless, is a critical part of a community’s efforts to combat homelessness. This month, the City of Baltimore is launching My Digital Data Locker, an innovative cloud-based platform that gives people who are experiencing homelessness a secure place to manage digital copies of vital documents. This service reduces one of the key barriers to housing for people experiencing homelessness: vital document storage and access. The solution uses the cloud.

I’ve always valued education, because it shapes our world and defines our future. At AWS, we work with K12 schools, higher education institutions, education technology, and learning companies to support both teaching and learning. The institutions and their dedicated instructors collaborate daily and deliver education to the current and future workforce. These students will help AWS, our customers and partners, and industries and governments across the globe continue to innovate. Alongside the education institutions, we are committed to providing access to cloud computing and technical skills to everyone, no matter their knowledge level. Learn how AWS is helping individuals on their cloud career journey for reskilling and upskilling, and how other companies can follow.