AWS Public Sector Blog

As we find ourselves working with a growing number of public sector customers, it’s important to look back at how the dialogue around public sector cloud adoption has evolved. This is particularly relevant for security, as we continue to earn trust with organizations around the safe-keeping of their data in the cloud.

AWS Educate is committed to providing students and educators with resources needed to accelerate cloud learning, which is why we have collaborated with Udacity – an online education provider for lifelong learners – to bring our members access to skills, knowledge, and practice for today’s machine learning technology. Beginning on May 18th, AWS Educate members will receive an exclusive benefit of $200 worth of free content on their Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree Program. With Udacity, AWS Educate members can master valuable machine learning skills and use their AWS Promotional Credits to gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge AWS Machine Learning technologies like Amazon SageMaker.

As we celebrate World Creativity and Innovation Day, we are reminded of the powerful alliance between creativity and innovation, and a third element – technology. Nonprofits and social impact organizations are increasingly looking to this combined approach for solving some of the world’s most pressing issues. Here are three nonprofits that are employing creativity and innovation for social good

I had the pleasure of taking the stage in Brussels and giving the keynote presentation at our first-ever European Public Sector Summit. I was inspired by the hundreds of organizations in attendance and by the number of whom have embraced the cloud to support their digital transformation initiatives. I also was awed by how much our customers have been able to achieve using AWS technology, notably the European Commission and Santillana. These leaders shared stories of saving money and delivering innovative digital solutions through AWS that are helping to build a better future.

Today at the AWS Public Sector Summit in Brussels, we announced that AWS EdStart, a program that is designed to help startup educational technology (EdTech) companies build teaching and learning solutions on the AWS Cloud, is now available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

We are excited to announce the launch of the Registry of Open Data on AWS (RODA). With RODA, you can find and share data staged publicly for analysis on AWS. Search for datasets by keyword and tags for common types of data, such as genomic, satellite imagery, and transportation, on a simple web interface. Every dataset listed in RODA includes basic information about the data, how to access it on AWS, its license, a link to documentation, and contact information if you have questions. Many listings also include links to tutorials or applications that make use of the data.

The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based policy research organization dedicated to developing evidence-based insights that improve decision making, strengthen communities, and make people’s lives better. As a leader in data-driven policy research, the Urban Institute was looking for a solution that would enable it to run sophisticated data analytics and microsimulation models with flexibility, speed, and accuracy.

Cities relying on smart city solutions find value in core technologies, such as compute, storage, databases, and data warehouses; and advanced technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence. A critical ingredient for any smart solution is data. It offers insight into the status of municipal processes, and the changes required to meet local government objectives.

One of the greatest advantages of cloud computing is enabling the government to use the latest innovations at a rapid pace. Cloud services can help government agencies deliver their mission more efficiently and modernize their infrastructure without a substantial upfront capital investment, allowing them to undertake more projects faster.

There are many arguments for building a serverless architecture. Chief among them, users only pay for the computing power they use. Organizations can begin by identifying and eliminating the bottlenecks in their workflow. For example, CSIRO Bioinformatics in Sydney, Australia, used AWS X-Ray to systematically evaluate their serverless architecture and, by doing so, improved their runtime by 80%.