Tag: public sector

Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of a Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. Part of an ongoing relationship between AWS and UBC, the CIC will provide students, staff, and faculty access to cloud technology to advance research projects, while employing Amazon’s innovation processes. The CIC is the first of its kind in Canada.

The United States Marine Corps (USMC) and Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) are developing a new course of study in collaboration with AWS Educate focused on “Data Intelligence,” focused on cloud computing, data analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI).

Different students learn in different ways. While many traditional classrooms continue to rely on a one-size-fits-all approach, Course Hero delivers personalized learning to every student through its innovative, machine learning (ML)-powered online platform. Operating under the slogan “Master your Classes,” Course Hero was founded with the vision of a world where every student graduates confident and prepared. The platform provides students access to study materials, including study guides, class notes, and practice problems. The service also includes on-demand access to subject matter expert tutors, available to help students 24/7.

Leaders at all levels of government are continuing to think big about how they can leverage technology to modernize citizen services and better deliver on mission. Cloud is playing a foundational role in enabling this innovation. Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), led a fireside chat with Andrew Hallman, Deputy Director of Digital Innovation at the CIA, at FedTalks 2019. In the conversation, Andrew covered the need for agile adoption of the latest technologies within the CIA to compete more effectively in an increasingly complex threat landscape, the intersection of innovation and security, and CIA’s commitment to strengthening its digital acumen.

The Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS) is the state’s primary social service provider. Through 24 local social services agencies, the department assists people in economic need, provides preventive services, and protects vulnerable children and adults in each of Maryland’s 23 counties and the City of Baltimore.

The University of Nottingham has a history dating back to 1881, and while the university is now global with campuses in China and Malaysia, its flagship campus remains in the UK. Today, the university’s research efforts span nearly every discipline. One current project is Crossbow, a new, open source software project conceived and developed by Dr. Christian Suess, a research fellow at The University of Nottingham in conjunction with principal investigator Prof. Charlie Laughton, professor of computational pharmaceutical science. Crossbow is based out of the school of pharmacy at the University of Nottingham, where there is a particular interest in researching the design of new medicines using computer simulations of drugs and proteins.

From new cloud degrees to highlights from the AWS Public Sector Summit, take a look at the top stories from June.

Digital transformation is changing the modus operandi of organizations – both in the public and private sector. This is also the case for Italy, that is still lagging behind more advanced countries. The speed of transformation will also impact Italy’s growth and the international competitiveness of Italian companies. The study by the Institute for Competitiveness analyzes policies that are being implemented to enable Italy to achieve the targets set by the European Digital Agenda and to speed up cloud adoption.

Scientists at NC State University’s North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS) work with large datasets and complex computational analysis. Traditionally, they did their work using on-premises computational resources. As different projects were stretching the limits of those systems, NCICS decided to explore cloud computing. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, we invited Jessica Mathews, Jared Rennie, and Tom Maycock to share what they learned from using AWS for climate research. As they considered exploring the cloud to support their work, the idea of leaving the comfort of the local environment was a bit scary. And they had questions: How much will it cost? What does it take to deploy processing to the cloud? Will it be faster? Will the results match what they were getting with their own systems? Here is their story and what they learned.

Countless popular websites maintained by public institutions – including whitehouse.gov and PMIndia.gov – are built on the WordPress platform. It’s essential that these sites are highly scalable. Amazon Lightsail helps ensure that they can handle high-traffic situations. These sites often require on-demand scaling during high-traffic spikes, for example, when media coverage mentions government websites or an educational institution is registering during admissions season. Given these requirements, if the website isn’t set up properly, the features that make WordPress popular for public websites can sometimes become a challenge to manage.