Telehealth, new resources, and new office: What you missed last month

Last month, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered the announcement of a new office in Athens, the launch of a new program to help GovTech startups, new education resources, and more. Check out below for a list of the highlights for the month.

And on our monthly video series The Brief, we covered telehealth. Check out the episode below and some of the stories mentioned including, Meeting evolving patient and clinical needs during COVID-19 and beyond, and Delivering modern, accessible virtual healthcare solutions with the cloud.

Ushering in a new era of innovation in Greece – AWS office launches in Athens

AWS is announcing the opening of an office in Athens, furthering our commitment to investing in Greece and responding to the expanding customer base in the country. The office will support organisations of all sizes—startups, enterprises, and public sector agencies—as they make the transition to the cloud. The opening of the office is our latest investment in Greece. Read this story.

Keeping Canadians safe while protecting their privacy: COVID Alert app

The Government of Canada (GC) set ambitious goals at the onset of COVID-19. One goal: to offer a mobile app to notify its users of possible exposures before symptoms appear in a way that wouldn’t jeopardize their privacy. In July, the GC released the COVID Alert app, an exposure notification application. COVID Alert doesn’t require users to enter—nor does it obtain from the mobile device—any personally identifiable information (PII) and doesn’t use location tracking. Let’s take a look at COVID Alert app’s cloud-based architecture and how the app is helping slow the spread of COVID-19, and helping keep Canadians safe while protecting privacy. Read this story.

AWS Educate releases new cloud learning resources for students and educators

It’s a new year, which means it’s the good time for students to learn new skills for their future career. AWS Educate released five new learning resources and badges to jump start learning goals for students and make it simpler for educators to teach in a virtual or blended environment. The resources focus on robotics, innovation, and Amazon Honeycode. Read this story.

AWS launches AWS GovTechStart to help GovTech startups

AWS announced the launch of AWS GovTechStart, a new program intended to help early-stage commercial government technology (GovTech) startups build solutions on AWS for state and local governments across the United States. AWS GovTechStart is a virtual GovTech accelerator, modeled after AWS EdStart, that offers eligible companies support including access to equity-free AWS Promotional Credit, technical training and support, a community of GovTech experts, and more. Read this story.

Amazon WorkSpaces supports CAC/PIV smartcard authentication

With a recent feature release, AWS customers can now use CAC/PIV cards when using Amazon WorkSpaces to access government systems. Amazon WorkSpaces is a desktop as a service solution that helps users access all of their desktop applications from anywhere. This feature supports pre-session and in-session authentication. Read this story.

Stay tuned to the latest for the cloud in the public sector on the AWS Public Sector Blog and check out more episodes of The Brief.