AWS Public Sector Blog

In order to provide our customers with additional flexibility to architect scalable, fault-tolerant, and highly available workloads in AWS GovCloud (US), we have added a third Availability Zone (AZ) to the AWS GovCloud (US) Region, Amazon’s isolated cloud region designed to host sensitive data and regulated workloads that address the most stringent U.S. government security and compliance requirements.

With our attention on gender diversity this International Women’s Day, we want to share what we can all do to address the workforce gender divide. A 2017 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology reveals that women hold only 20% of computing jobs in the U.S. and that this number is declining, not increasing. In 2015, only 18% of Computer and Information Sciences bachelor’s degree recipients were women. In addition to We Power Tech, AWS is working with several nonprofit organizations who are leading the way by empowering, training, and creating a community for women engineers, developers, designers, entrepreneurs, leaders, and more, around the world

In November, with the launch of the AWS Secret Region, we achieved a Provisional Authorization (PA) for Impact Level 6 (IL6) workloads from the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), the IT combat support organization of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). The PA was recently updated to add 11 new AWS services. A service catalog for the Region is available through your AWS Account Executive.

Government organizations use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to address their unique challenges, requirements, and missions. We listen to our customers then innovate and deliver technology that helps them solve problems faster, adapt to changing environments, deal with sudden demand, and adhere to the highest security standards. With AWS, government organizations can rapidly prototype, trying several architectures in parallel, allowing them to more quickly evaluate their options and move to full deployment for new programs and systems.

With defense agencies looking to quickly migrate legacy applications to a government-approved, commercial cloud environment of their choice, the Department of Defense (DoD) has entered into an agreement with REAN Cloud to provide a new streamlined and consultative process to procure cloud solutions.

Amazon Polly, a Text-to-Speech service, is now available in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region, Amazon’s isolated cloud region built for sensitive data and regulated workloads. Powered by advanced deep learning technologies, Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech. With dozens of natural sounding male and female voices across a wide variety […]

NJEdge has built a state-wide fiber optic research and education network that is available to all NJEdge member schools. In collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), member institutions can now leverage existing NJEdge connections, or create new ones, and use AWS Direct Connect at a significantly reduced expense to connect to private AWS resources. NJEdge, a Research and Education Network (REN), is dedicated to creating a better world by providing statewide advanced networking, access to optimal technology solutions and services, and insight and expertise in information technologies.

The recent Winter Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah, showcased a breakthrough Sundance documentary, Dying in Vein. Its filmmaker, Jenny Mackenzie, joined a panel of public health and technology leaders, including Dr. Bill Hazel, former Secretary of Health and Human Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and Alex Chan, CEO of the Clinton Foundation Health Initiative, to discuss opiate and heroin addiction, which, as the film highlights, claims an average of 90 lives in the U.S. daily. A prevailing theme that emerged cast the opioid epidemic as an issue of public health – rather than one of criminal justice – and pressed the role of technology in mitigating its risks.

When the team at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wanted help addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic, they decided to do something simple – invite in the country’s brightest minds and give them API-enabled, up-to-date data.

Twitter has hundreds of millions of active users each month and supports multiple languages on their platform. These users engage with nonprofits, need citizen services, and learn at schools, universities, and other educational institutions. As a consequence, public sector organizations look to social media not only to communicate with the public, but also to gain insights about the citizens, volunteers, and students they serve. Wouldn’t it be great to know if people had positive or negative opinions about your city, school, nonprofit, or organization? What are they talking about and how many other people share that view?