Driving Innovation in Europe – AWS Public Sector Summit Brussels Recap

For the second year, AWS hosted our AWS Public Sector Summit in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, April 9. This year, we welcomed over 700 attendees from across the European Union.

The Summit focused on key public sector themes across the region including training and workforce development, migration and transformation, data privacy and security, and machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector for Amazon Web Services delivered the keynote address and announced the addition of two new Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) – the Digital Transformation Lab based at Munich University of Applied Sciences and the Better Future Lab based at the CODE University of Applied Sciences. The centers will focus on driving innovation in Germany, helping government, education, and nonprofits tackle some of the most pressing challenges to delivering a wide range of citizen services. With this initiative, students will have access to AWS technologies, innovation methodologies, and technical expertise to experiment with ‘born-in-the-cloud’ solutions.

Last year at the Brussels Summit, we committed to providing access to cloud training to 100,000 people across Europe. In 2018, we provided access to training to 144,532 individuals. The programs included to meet this goal were AWS Training and Certification, AWS re:Start, AWS Educate, AWS Academy, and We Power Tech.

The keynote also included updates on the AWS investment in and around Europe. We now have 20 geographic Regions, including a new Region in Sweden that launched last year. We have also announced a new region in Milan, which will launch next year. We continue to grow our team in Europe too. AWS has 25 offices across 16 countries in Europe – from Spain and Portugal to Finland and Turkey.

Three customers joined Teresa onstage including the European Commission, VDAB, and SM Educamos who are using AWS around the region to enhance their mission and deliver new services to the people they serve.

• European Commission. The European Commission spoke about cloud-first policies, the ability to innovate faster in the cloud, and shared best practices for other government entities to follow.
• VDAB. VDAB explained how they are using machine learning to match people with open job vacancies. They emphasized the importance of proper planning when moving to the cloud.
• SM Educamos. SM Educamos discussed how students around the globe are using digital curriculum throughout their daily lives to learn and enhance their education across a multitude of topics. SM Educamos shared stories about how customers are using their courses through Alexa skills to allow students of all ages to interact with their content in any setting, providing learning opportunities to those who may be seeking new or supplemental education.

For the first time, AWS welcomed a government delegation made of senior decision makers across government organizations in and around the EU to join us at the Summit.

Thanks to all who attended!