Introducing the Government Lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of a Government Lens for the AWS Well-Architected Framework. The Government Lens is a collection of customer-proven design principles, scenarios, and technology agnostic best practices designed to encourage the unique context and requirements of governments globally to be considered when designing, building, and operating government workloads on AWS.

Since 2015, the AWS Well-Architected Framework has been helping AWS customers and partners improve their cloud architectures and reduce their technical risk. The framework consists of questions, design principles, and best practices across the six pillars: Operational Excellence, Security, Reliability, Performance Efficiency, Cost Optimization, and Sustainability.

The Government Lens draws on the experience and learning from leaders and innovators who have worked in government driving transformation programs and bridging the divide between technologists and policy teams. It expands on the AWS Well-Architected Framework, providing detailed guidance and recommendations that account for the special set of legal, legislative, accountability, and trust requirements that governments have – and helps them deliver meaningful outcomes on AWS. This guidance covers a range of topics including responsible artificial intelligence (AI), classified information systems, verifiable credentials, and the creation and reuse of open source software in government.

The Government Lens recognizes that every government operates in a unique cultural and historical context, which means different expectations, needs, mandates, and even a different perspective about the role of government in that society. Anyone who is responsible for delivering services in government must understand the special local context they serve and consider what is appropriate from this Lens to apply.

The Government Lens includes a section, titled “Enabling service outcomes for government,” which covers best practices to help services measurably meet the intended policy or service outcomes, whether for public facing services (online or offline), grants management, budgeting, law enforcement, or any other function of government. Service outcomes is a responsibility of the government, but understanding the intended purpose and context of a service helps all parties involved to develop effective services with, or for, government customers. Customers should consider including this section when reviewing government services to assist in achieving appropriate outcomes.

The AWS Well-Architected Framework Government Lens is intended to be used by those in technology roles, such as chief technology officers, chief information security officers, service owners and designers, architects, developers, compliance officers, and operations team members.

The Government Lens, and particularly the “Enabling service outcomes for government” section, was written to be used by policy and service delivery roles to better understand the types of questions to consider when developing government services. It encourages a dialogue between technologist and policy professionals to create better government services.

In its development process, the Government Lens was tested with government leaders and AWS Partners, whose feedback has been incorporated in this launch. If you have any comments or feedback about how to improve the content, or suggestions for additional topics and scenarios to include, communicate with your account manager so the Government Lens working group can consider these as we refresh the Lens with emerging best practices and common scenarios.

Find the Government Lens on the AWS Well-Architected website or contact your AWS account team for more information. The Well-Architected Tool in the AWS Console provides a set of Lens assessments in its Lens Catalog, including the Government Lens. To apply the Government Lens simply select it from this catalog as you define a workload. As with the AWS Well-Architected Framework and other industry and technology lenses, we recommend leveraging the guidance and recommendations in the Government Lens early and often – as you approach architectural and service design decisions, and whenever you carry out Well-Architected Reviews of government services.

Additional resources:

• What is the AWS Well-Architected Tool?
• AWS Well-Architected – Getting started video
• AWS Well-Architected Labs
• Open Government Solutions
• Digital transformation insights – AWS Institute
• How human-centered design can help public agencies design better digital services

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