AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog

With October already in the rear-view mirror, take a look at the month’s highlights from the public sector blog.

This year, we have seen many new updates to AWS Educate from new badges to new relationships, all with the common mission of building skills for the future worldwide. With over 1,500 institutions and hundreds of thousands of students who use AWS Educate, we wanted to take you on a trip around the world and highlight how students are learning and innovating with the cloud.

On October 19, 2018, at the California Cloud Workforce (CA Cloud) launch event, over a hundred Los Angeles-based education, government, and business leaders came together with a shared mission: develop cloud career pathways for all students to promote opportunity and economic growth. Hosted by CA Cloud, a consortium of 19 L.A. County community colleges and their sister high schools, the event aimed to build and maintain momentum around the launch of the consortium and the Cloud Computing Certificate. The five-course, dual enrollment Cloud Computing Certificate, created with AWS Educate, serves as a valuable talent pipeline for employers in need of cloud-skilled workers across all sectors.

EdTechs around the world are creating programs to help revolutionize education. Behind every EdTech is the technology that powers the next generation of learning. The missions may be different, but the need to build solutions that are secure, smart, scalable, and cost-effective remains the same. From guiding students to the best graduate programs to providing entertaining educational content for young children, EdTechs around the world are using the AWS Cloud. Learn about AWS EdStart’s hottest new members – Masters Avenue, Saasyan, Salty Cloud, and SmartGames.

The UCLA School of Medicine’s BREATHE (Biomedical REAl-Time Health Evaluation) project for pediatric asthma wanted to know if real-time data collection could pinpoint ways to predict and prevent asthma attacks in children. To explore this, the School of Medicine Research Computing (RC) Team designed an Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment that uses 24/7 data collection, machine-learning algorithms, and heavy computation that their on-premises cluster could not handle.

EDUCAUSE is almost here! Discover how cloud-based virtual desktops and application streaming increase access to learning and how moving your database to the cloud helps boost flexibility, agility, and cost effectiveness. Throughout the event, we will also be sharing examples of how to personalize and increase access to learning with machine learning and voice technology. One example is Alexa for Business by CDW.

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Institute today released a briefing paper that illustrates how cities are using technology to enhance access to services and quality of life for their residents. As cities become home to the majority of the world’s population, leaders must ensure that urban infrastructure and services can accommodate growth, and that no one is left behind. Increasingly, they are turning to cloud technology for solutions to the challenges they are facing – from problems like traffic, parking, and waste management to public health crises and natural disasters.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) is a worldwide organization for law enforcement leadership to communicate new ideas, share experiences, disseminate information, and build relationships with other law enforcement entities. This year’s conference included sessions on trends in the law enforcement environment, new ideas, technology, and real-world applications. Here are some of the topics that AWS and our network of partners and solutions providers are working on to improve with law enforcement.

The United States Diplomacy Center and World Resources Institute hosted ImpactHack, a data visualization hackathon in Washington, D.C. Sixteen teams competed to demonstrate diplomacy’s impact, from state economies to global issues, using their coding and design skills. Amazon Web Services (AWS) sponsored the event, donating the time of several solutions architects, technology, credits, and expertise in managing the hackathon. Over the course of over a single Saturday, these teams developed their submissions. Projects from the hackathon will be used to develop Diplomacy Center exhibit prototypes. Congrats to the three winners!

Today, VP of Public Policy, Brian Huseman, attended the White House signing ceremony for the SUPPORT for Patients & Communities Act, which seeks to help those impacted by the opioid crisis. Amazon was one of 21 companies in attendance who are working in different ways to solve for the crisis.