AWS Public Sector Blog

Coastal communities in the Southern United States are frequently impacted by flooding from storm surge, rain, and tides. To help monitor and enhance flood emergency preparedness, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at the College of William & Mary has been providing tidal forecasts since 2012 for a dozen locations in the lower Chesapeake Bay through its VIMS TideWatch Network. To expand and enhance these capabilities along Virginia’s seaside Eastern Shore, VIMS developed StormSense. The StormSense project works closely with coastal local governments leveraging a network of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled water level sensors, VIMS’s hydrodynamic flood modeling and forecasting capabilities, and the VIMS TideWatch Network to improve flood resilience in the region.

Fife Public Schools provides a device for every kid in the district. But like many schools with 1:1 programs, they ran into challenges when trying to provide specialty software programs to students. CTE (Careers and Technical Education) classes were using specialized applications like CAD, Project Lead the Way, and Photoshop – all programs that were only accessible via computer labs during school hours. Fife began exploring how they could offer students access to these programs at any time on their 1:1 devices.

During the first week of December, students all around the world will learn computer science during the annual Hour of Code event led by Code.org. It’s an important effort, aimed at helping kids from all backgrounds learn to code and work toward successful careers making use of computer science skills.

It’s almost the end of the 2018 calendar year. Still, no signs of holiday fatigue for the public sector blog. Here are the biggest takeaways from November.

The United Nations, World Bank, and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with support from Amazon Web Services and other technology companies, recently launched the Famine Action Mechanism (FAM). The FAM is the first global mechanism dedicated to preventing future famines. In the past, responses to these devastating events have often come too late, once many lives have already been lost.

On Monday during the Public Sector Partner Advisory Council at AWS re:Invent 2018, we acknowledged the achievement of 17 public sector partners from around the world who have completed the AWS Public Sector Partner Transformation Program (PTP).

Satellites are used by an increasing number universities and governments for applications including weather, surface imaging, communications, and video broadcasts. To do this today, they must build or obtain long-term leases on ground antennas to communicate with the satellites. This is a significant undertaking and cost because customers often require antennas in multiple countries to maintain satellite connectivity. Beginning with the recently announced AWS Ground Station, customers can save up to 80% of their ground station costs by only paying for satellite communications when their organization needs them.

Today at re:Invent, the AWS Public Sector Breakfast focused on tech for good. Read below for the key takeaways.

AWS Educate released significant enhancements to its job board and career-management tools for members to create a pipeline of cloud-ready students for companies that use AWS. The program, available at no cost to students and educators around the world, is also launching the AWS Educate Interview Accelerator in the U.S. and then followed by additional countries, putting qualified students in the fast lane to job opportunities.

We announced the Authority to Operate (ATO) on AWS program, which provides resources to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) who aspire to achieve a compliance authorization, such as FedRAMP, Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), Payment Card Industry (PCI), Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS), and many other compliance programs.