AWS Public Sector Blog

Climate Next: How sustainability champions around the world use cloud-powered tech to fight climate change

The theme of this year’s Earth Day is “Invest in our planet.” In celebration of this year’s theme, we want to highlight the important sustainability work featured in the AWS documentary series, Climate Next, which explores the ways organizations and communities in four distinct regions are investing in cloud-powered solutions to fight climate change.

Transforming animal conservation with open data and more on AWS

Open data is helping researchers and nonprofit conservationists protect vulnerable species around the world. In celebration of Earth Day, we are shining a spotlight on two sustainability stories from the AWS Fix This podcast from AWS, a podcast exploring the ways people use technology to address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Accelerating new materials design with open data on AWS

The Materials Project at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is an open database that offers information about material properties, or, all the elements and substances that make up the products we use every day. By harnessing the power of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) high-performance scientific computing and state of the art electronic structure methods, the Materials Project provides open web-based access on AWS to computational datasets on both known and potential materials, along with powerful analysis tools to help discover, inspire, and design new materials.

How students help modernize rocket launches at the Western Range with the AWS Cloud

Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), also known as the Western Launch and Test Range, is one of only two U.S. Space Force launch ranges. A safe rocket launch relies on the ability of Western Range meteorologists to gather and analyze weather data in real-time. The Western Range team wanted to switch to an agile, cloud-based solution that would streamline data analysis and keep operators safe—which prompted them to call on students and AWS Cloud experts at the California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) Digital Transformation Hub (DxHub), powered by AWS, to help VSFB prototype a solution.

Top 7 EdTech trends in 2022: A startup guide for EdTech entrepreneurs

The education technology industry is rapidly evolving. In 2021, education technology companies (EdTechs) had another record year of investments, mergers and acquisitions, and global expansion. To help early stage EdTechs entering the market navigate this unique point in history, AWS released the 2022 EdTech Startup Guide. The guide describes seven key trends in the EdTech market in 2022, along with market and technology recommendations for those who are developing or scaling their EdTech solutions. We’ve summarized these seven key trends for EdTechs in 2022 in this blog post; dive deeper into these trends by downloading the guide.

How to deliver performant GIS desktop applications with Amazon AppStream 2.0

Geospatial datasets are increasingly large, reaching terabyte and even petabyte scale, which can cause many challenges for geospatial analysts and educators–but Amazon AppStream 2.0 can provide some solutions. In this blog post, we walk through how to deploy QGIS, a no cost, open-source geospatial information system (GIS) application used by geospatial analysts, in Amazon AppStream 2.0. We also load an example dataset to demonstrate how desktop GIS application users can access large, cloud-hosted geospatial datasets with high performance by keeping the data and compute components together on the cloud, and streaming the desktop application instead of downloading the data itself.

Downscaled CMIP5, 1950 US Census, and open genomics data for Galaxy: The latest open data on AWS

The AWS Open Data Sponsorship Program makes high-value, cloud-optimized datasets publicly available on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our full list of publicly available datasets are on the Registry of Open Data on AWS. This quarter, we released 13 new or updated datasets including CMIP5, 1950s US Decennial Census, and open genomics data for Galaxy. Read on for some highlights.

Supporting those affected by sight loss with Alexa and AWS

At The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association (Guide Dogs), we provide a variety of services and support to anyone affected by sight loss, their friends, and their family. Our mission is to give them access to information and support to make a positive impact on their well-being, self-confidence, self-esteem and ability to function with loss of sight. Voice assistants powered by AWS allow our organization to support our communities and enrich their quality of life.

World Health Day 2022: Leveraging the cloud to build a healthier tomorrow

Today marks World Health Day, and this year’s theme is “Our planet, our health.” The World Health Organization (WHO) is using this day to drive global attention to the urgent actions needed to protect our planet and prioritize well-being in societies, and supporting these efforts is core to our principles and values at AWS. We’re proud to support our customers and partners who are solving some of society’s biggest problems with the cloud to make these ideas and changes a reality. Here are just a few examples of how our customers are leveraging AWS technology to innovate for our planet and our health.

Bias for Agile action speeds digital transformation in the public sector

When I worked in the UK government, I led the Government Digital Transformation Service (GDS) Transformation Program, where we used an Agile approach to modernize a range of services, from social care benefits to prison visit booking. Now, I work with the AWS Institute executive education program to teach public sector leaders how to accelerate and expand their impact for citizens with digital transformation. In this blog post, I share my experience using the Agile approach to transform government services, and offer some best practices for organizations who want to adopt a bias for Agile action to deliver successful modernization faster and at scale.