AWS Public Sector Blog

Many nonprofits are called upon in mission-critical situations, when they don’t have time to waste on IT because lives may be on the line. The new AWS Disaster Response Program enables disaster response organizations access to cloud services at the edge, even in the harshest conditions.

Are you a nonprofit organization using technology as a mission-critical component of your projects? Are you looking for support to pursue your technology-driven goals? The AWS Imagine Grant is a public grant opportunity open to registered 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States, who are using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. As part of the program, we are seeking proposals for pilot projects, proof of concepts, strategic technology planning, or existing programs that utilize technology in a new or expanded way.

Imagine you are on a city street surrounded by skyscrapers. When you look up to the stars, you will only see the part of the sky that is not blocked by buildings. This type of vision is called sky view factor (SVF). The SVF denotes the ratio between the radiation received at a point on Earth and the available radiation for a hemisphere over that point. Dr. Andrea Pagani, a data scientist at the DataLab of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, has been looking at how to efficiently compute the SVF for the Netherlands. Read on to learn more about Dr. Pagani’s work to help us understand what’s between us and the sky – and why that matters.

July was another busy month for the AWS Public Sector blog. Here are the top five posts you won’t want to miss. 1. Microsoft Windows on AWS: How to Bring Microsoft Apps to AWS When you plan your data center migration to the cloud, it’s critical to consider how workloads will run for maximum performance […]

According to the World Wildlife Fund, approximately three billion people in the world rely on both wild-caught and farmed seafood as their primary source of protein; yet the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that eighty-five percent of marine fish stocks are either fully exploited or overfished. To combat this, the annual Fishackathon, first organized by the U.S. Secretary of State’s Office of Global Partnerships in 2014 and organized this year in partnership with HackerNest, took place in over 40 cities around the globe.

To kick off the AWS Opioid Crisis Council’s inaugural meeting, AWS public health leader, Michael Jackson, convened a panel of healthcare experts at the AWS Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC. Government health officials, research scientists, pharmacy executives, and industry pioneers examined proposed solutions with open data, and shared ideas for attacking this complex issue. All stakeholders rallied around a common customer: our community.

Over the past decade, consecutive administrations and the U.S. Congress have focused on IT modernization, issuing policies, directives, and passing legislation to help agencies move from legacy systems to modern commercial technologies. Policies that embrace cloud help save the government and taxpayer money and become more efficient, customer-focused, and secure. The following is a brief timeline of the U.S. government’s continued journey to the cloud.

The AWS Credit Program for Nonprofits offers $1,000 of AWS Promotional Credits annually to 501c3 organizations or global equivalents. With diverse missions to promote health and welfare, achieve medical breakthroughs, protect wildlife, and support many other causes, nonprofits around the world have unique needs. In collaboration with TechSoup Global, this program provides organizations in 50 countries with subsidized access to on-demand services to more easily store large files, keep data secure, and deliver engaging content to local communities.

One of the hottest security and compliance related topics that customers want to discuss is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On May 25, 2018, GDPR came into force. This new regulation raises the minimum bar where personal data protection is concerned.

There are many reasons why public sector customers are migrating to the cloud. Some are migrating to increase the productivity of their workforce. Others are looking to consolidate data centers or minimize costly infrastructure sprawl and modernize legacy applications that have lost value over time. Additionally, visionary organizations are re-imagining their missions by upgrading to cloud-hosted technologies that drive digital transformation.