Tag: Canada

AWS Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) focus on solving real-life societal challenges facing the public sector. These public-private partnerships between a public sector organization—like a university or local city—and AWS can help unlock innovation, faster. Through the CIC challenges, organizations and students work to solve societal problems through digital solutions and Amazon’s innovation processes while providing students a platform to learn. These solutions and results are published open source, so others can benefit from this innovative work. This past quarter, CICs worked on address Alzheimer’s, citizen services, and coronaviruses.

Launched in 2018 as a two-day in-person cloud education program for government officials, AWS has redesigned AWS DigiGov in a virtual format. AWS DigiGov is a two-day education program with curriculum based on the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam. Through lectures, cloud-based curriculum, and hands-on labs, participants representing federal, provincial, and municipal government learn to use the cloud within their environment and remove barriers to the cloud technology.

Governments are sharing their technology solutions with other governments through open source tools. These tools are helping state, local, and federal governments respond quicker, and at the scale needed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one of the challenges governments face is finding out what open source tools are available. To help public sector customers use open source tools better, AWS launched Open Government Solutions, which aggregates open source projects and assets from public sector entities around the globe for governments at all levels to find, adapt, and reuse. During a panel conversation around the launch, government leaders outlined five key reasons why governments are choosing open source technologies to deliver citizen services.

Moving all-in to the cloud is a big achievement for technology teams. For some customers, the migration is fast, and for others with behemoth systems and complex applications is staggered over years. D2L, a learning technology company, based in Canada took just over three years to shut down its last colocation facility in late 2019. This completed their all-in migration to the AWS Cloud. D2L leaders celebrated their success migration by sharing advice for other companies considering the move to the cloud.

Students from two secondary schools on opposite sides of the world used AWS DeepRacer to learn about machine learning (ML). Using AWS DeepRacer, students from a school in Vancouver, Canada and Instanbul, Turkey learned how to design, train, and deploy a model car using ML. These students competed on virtual racetracks against each other—all within the AWS Management Console.

Technology and the cloud can help address some of the world’s most pressing and immediate challenges, like battling COVID-19 and improving cities. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we encourage innovation through technology in our AWS Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs). CICs are long-term, strategic collaborations with public sector organizations interested in solving societal problems through digital solutions while providing students a platform to learn by doing. Check out a few of the challenges CICs around the world have worked on so far this year.

As we continue to work with public sector bodies around the world, AWS understands how valuable open source software and development communities are at this time. To accelerate the combined global response to COVID-19, we gathered examples of third-party open code, tools, and standards that reformers in the public sector can immediately use. We’ve included these in a new resource now available in Open Government Solutions.

CyberPatient, a Canadian startup, provides an online, digital learning environment to help medical students around the globe practice skills virtually before they ever enter into clinical rotations or step foot into a hospital. In the platform, students can interact with virtual patients and work through scenarios that mimic real life. As more students turn to virtual learning, CyberPatient’s platform is being offered to medical students at no cost.

Education ministries, colleges, and schools around the world are rapidly adopting remote learning and working to maintain business continuity and provide students with continued access to education. From quickly scaling learning management systems and launching virtual classrooms to upskilling educators and setting up remote help-desks, AWS and its education technology partners are providing mission-critical infrastructure that is enabling our customers to continue delivering against their missions, safely and efficiently. From Italy to Bahrain to the United States, check out these stories.

How can healthcare organizations use Amazon Web Services (AWS) to better serve patients and meet their mission? Learn how government, education, and nonprofit healthcare organizations are using the AWS Cloud to keep patient information secure, achieve interoperability, and speed time to science.