Tag: digital government

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Government Transformation team (GTT) has taken more than 5,000 senior public sector officials in 23 countries through its executive education program. Using participant feedback, GTT has identified five common digital transformation challenges that public sector leaders face and published a new series about the challenges. Read this blog to learn more.

At this year’s re:Invent conference, AWS is introducing Innovation Talks, which are deep dives hosted by AWS thought leaders. Dave Levy, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, is hosting the session, “Empowering citizens through digital innovation” and will be joined by speakers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Covered California, and Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (SNDGG). Read this blog post to learn more about these featured customers.

AWS today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Thailand’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research, and Innovation (MHESI) to boost innovation using cloud technology. Through this collaboration, AWS will support MHESI to identify pilot workloads for the ministry to start migrating to the AWS Cloud. MHESI will also use AWS training programs to upskill employees on AWS Cloud skills across over 200 education institutions and over 20 MHESI-managed research and education agencies across Thailand by early 2026.

Singapore’s National University Health System (NUHS) collaborated with Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), Singapore’s technology agency for the public sector, to develop the OneNUHS App. The mobile healthcare application extends healthcare services beyond the hospital, providing telehealth services like video consultations with doctors and more. To accelerate time-to-launch, save costs, and support reliable access for Singaporeans, the OneNUHS app uses AWS.

According to the United States Constitution, public access to judicial proceedings is a right covered by the First and Sixth Amendments. To make hearings visible to the public, even when in-person attendance is limited, state and local governments are beginning to mandate many court proceedings be live streamed, often with a very short window to do so. The cloud-native media and asset management platform Nomad, which is built on AWS, helps governments implement scalable live streaming capabilities quickly and simply.

In mid-February of 2022, the US federal government began planning the return-to-office after the COVID-19 pandemic. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Tax Division needed to quickly build and launch a telework authorization application by April 1, which would help their more than 500 attorneys, paralegals, and administrative personnel request a hybrid work arrangement—all while keeping sensitive information compliant and secure. To do this, the DOJ Tax Division worked with AWS to build an enterprise-level telework approval application in less than two months, before the Division’s re-entry in mid-April of 2022.

Governments across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) are taking bold steps to accelerate and simplify the process for public sector agencies to migrate to the cloud and leverage its benefits. Many are prioritizing digital transformation, putting in place cloud-first policies directing government agencies to use commercial cloud services, or defining national roadmaps to enable modernization of their IT services and systems.

Nominations are now open for the Future of Government Awards, a new global awards program to recognize the people and projects leading the digital transformation of governments around the world. The Future of Government Awards program seeks to celebrate the hidden public sector heroes who work tirelessly to modernize their governments to improve citizen services. The awards champion innovative technology solutions that the public sector has created and shared—as well as the stories of government organizations that have successfully adapted and reused them. Nominate a public sector digital transformation hero today.

In 2020, the City of Fort St. John in British Columbia began searching for innovative solutions to make life more simple for its young population. City staff wanted to better serve residents in ways that would suit their busy, digitally connected lifestyles. So the city worked with Cocoflo, a smart cities technology company, to implement a digital solution that could make municipal information and services more accessible through their SmartLiving portal—powered by AWS.

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.