AWS Public Sector Blog

Tag: Amazon API Gateway

University of York; Photo by Joel Barwick via Unsplash

Scaling to zero: Serverless is the way of the future, says University of York

Since universities typically face reliable bursts of traffic, such as on admissions day, they are not often concerned with the ability to scale infinitely—a key reason for going serverless. By doing so with AWS, the University of York now has the ability to scale down to zero, which helps the university better manage applications, reduce costs, and increase agility.

phone notification

Building a government update notification system

Now more than ever, citizens expect effective communications from government agencies in response to COVID-19. These state and local leaders are committed to serving their citizens with the latest news as fast as possible, but not all strategies reach citizens in real time. However, it takes time for the government to implement widely available communication services to provide timely, accurate information. One solution is to concentrate the delivery of information in a single communication channel: SMS text messages.

Photo by Brandon Griggs on Unsplash

T Digital shares lessons learned about flexibility, agility, and cost savings using AWS

T-Digital, a division of Tshwane University Technology Enterprise Holding (TUTEH) in South Africa, built TRes, a digital platform for students living in student housing and for accommodation providers. TRes connects students with available housing and verified and authorized property owners. It addresses student accommodation needs and helps verified and approved property owners fully allocate their residences, while alleviating administrative burden. With help from AWS Professional Services, T-Digital experienced flexibility, agility, and realized cost savings.

aerial photo of doctor on laptop at desk with stethescope and chart

Adding an ingress point and data management to your healthcare data lake

Data lakes can help hospitals and healthcare organizations turn data into insights and maintain business continuity, while preserving patient privacy. A data lake is a centralized, curated, and secured repository that stores all your data, both in its original form and prepared for analysis. A data lake enables you to break down data silos and combine different types of analytics to gain insights and guide better business decisions. In my previous post, “Getting started with a healthcare data lake,” I shared how to get started using data lakes in managing healthcare data and what a good “first sprint” architecture might look like. Here, I walk through building your first solution on AWS using a healthcare data lake as our example workload.

Mars surface aerial shot

On Mars, powered by the cloud: Mars 2020 rover launches

Earlier today, NASA launched its Mars 2020 rover—Perseverance. Operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), the Perseverance rover will explore Mars for past signs of ancient life and collect rock and soil samples for return by a future mission. The images taken from the Mars 2020 rover will be available on NASA JPL’s public website, and will be shared with people around the world. All images returned from the mission will be hosted on the AWS Cloud.

Participants and volunteers at the re:Invent 2019 Code Green workshop and hackathon

Learning about AWS sustainability datasets at “Code Green” workshop and hackathon

At the 2019 re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Amazon Sustainability and the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) hosted a four-hour workshop and hackathon to showcase ASDI’s collection of sustainability-related datasets and new ways to put those datasets to use. Called “Code Green,” the event also introduced conference attendees and participants to geospatial weather and climate data on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Empty school hallway with lockers

Improving school safety: How the cloud is helping K12 students in the wake of violent incidents in schools

Research shows that students who feel safe are more likely to be engaged at school and be more successful in all aspects of life – not just academics. But students are dealing with the reality of increased violence in schools – finding it more difficult to feel safe. Administrator concerns in the wake of school violence have made school safety a top priority in K12. One collaboration is delivering a safer learning environment for students through a scalable, highly secure, and innovative cloud services solution.

kids playing on a computer

Gamifying math education: How Prodigy uses AWS to scale and process 20 million questions daily

Prodigy Game (Prodigy) has a mission to help every child in the world love learning and make education freely available to students globally. Prodigy’s math game – geared toward learners in the first to eighth grade – allows students to hone their math skills with questions delivered according to their individual needs. As their user base grew, so did the strain on their ability to handle the increasing demands. They turned to AWS.

Connect Our Kids People Search system architecture

Finding kids in foster care permanent homes: AWS powers People Search by Connect Our Kids

Connect Our Kids, a Virginia-based 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization, is using technology to connect children in foster care with permanent homes with People Search. People Search is a free search engine powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that makes it easier for social workers to find people connected to the child.

Serverless GPS monitoring system screengrab

Creating a serverless GPS monitoring and alerting solution

To help solve a few challenges I faced with my family, including the need to track the location of a child, I needed a serverless global positioning system (GPS) monitoring solution. Commercial geographic monitoring GPS solutions are not cost-effective because of the cost of digital map licenses from third parties and running servers around the clock. Existing GPS systems work with proprietary GPS devices that lock-in the users’ vendors’ devices. My solution? Build my own serverless GPS monitoring and alerting solution.