Welcome to the AWS Innovating in the Public Sector Blog

A post by Teresa Carlson, Vice President of Amazon Web Services Worldwide Public Sector

I am thrilled to welcome you to Amazon Web Services’ “Innovating in the Public Sector” blog! This blog is all about you, our public sector customers, and will be your place for all public sector-specific content.

I’ve had the pleasure of traveling to many parts of the world – from Singapore to Bahrain to Sao Paulo to all over the U.S – to meet with local and national government agencies, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations. I kept hearing a lot of the same challenges, needs, and best practices that could be leveraged all over the world, so we decided to dedicate this space to sharing what we’ve learned with you.

Government, education, and nonprofits are faced with unique challenges, requirements, and missions. We want to bring you the latest content on the topics that matter most to you. From security to criminal justice to educational research, each week our dedicated team covering national, regional, and local government, education, and nonprofits will share insights with you.

By using the cloud, our customers are paving the way for innovation and making the world a better place. Some examples include:

• Operating the mars.jpl.nasa.gov website on AWS allowed NASA/JPL’s Mars Curiosity Mission to broadcast their message to the world without building this infrastructure themselves.
• The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) relies on open collaboration and public-private partnership with AWS to fill in the gaps of knowledge they need to fulfill their mission and adapt to change.
• University of Notre Dame started with pilot projects, lowering its operational costs by 40% and now operates with a cloud-first strategy.
• Ivy Tech Community College runs petabyte-scale data warehouse and analytics on AWS to provide services to help their students succeed.
•  By using AWS, the Stanford Archaeology Center researchers have easy access to vital data and have a system for ensuring that data used in collaborative efforts is accurate and up to date.

Cloud computing changing the game in the public sector

Cloud is becoming the new normal around the world. Currently we have 2,000+ government agencies, 5,000+ educational institutions, and 17,500+ nonprofit organizations changing the game with the AWS Cloud.

Whether it is for development and testing, enterprise applications, high-performance computing, storage, disaster recovery, web, mobile, and social apps, virtual desktops, or data center migrations, government agencies, education institutions, and nonprofits are using AWS to help achieve their missions.

Also, we have a strong and growing community of partner companies that offer a wide range of products and services on the AWS platform to address virtually any use case.

Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining your own data centers and servers, organizations can acquire technology such as compute power, storage, databases, and other services on an as-needed basis (similar to how consumers flip a switch to turn on lights in their home and the power company sends electricity).

Working together to bring you the resources you need, on the topics you care about

Check out the video from our public sector breakfast at this year’s AWS re:Invent where I share the AWS public sector footprint around the world, the partners who make it possible in an industry moving in the right direction for cloud, and the latest customer innovations using these technologies.

From the City on a Cloud, #smartisbeautiful, and the latest data sets released, hear about the innovative ideas driven in the public sector below.

• #smartisbeautiful. We are working to encourage girls and women to pursue computer science and working with our university partners to create computer science organizations for the women on their campuses.
• Latest Data Sets. We host a selection of public data sets that demonstrate the power of open data on the cloud. These are accessible at no cost, and drive new businesses, accelerate research, and improve lives. By hosting key public data sets, AWS can enable more innovation, more quickly, creating additional opportunities for public good.
• City on a Cloud. From healthcare to utilities and from transit to city planning, local and regional governments are embracing innovation.  Take a look at what these agencies and their partners are doing to move government forward on behalf of their citizens.

As we begin to publish content weekly, I am reminded that great projects has to start with great partnerships, so we want to understand how we can better serve you. Reach out to us at aws-wwps-blog@amazon.com with questions or comments.

And receive the latest updates from AWS government and education by following us on Twitter at @AWS_Gov and @AWS_Edu.