Using AWS, Agentschap Wegen & Verkeer (AWV) can comply with the latest data protection regulations and accelerate development to deliver a more reliable digital experience to inspectors on the road. The government agency is responsible for maintaining road infrastructure in the Flemish part of Belgium. AWV has created a secure infrastructure that allows easy compliance through services such as AWS Key Management Service.

Managing 6,970 kilometers of roads and 7,668 kilometers of cycle lanes in the Flemish part of Belgium falls to Agentschap Wegen & Verkeer (AWV), the agency for roads and traffic. Its work directly affects the safety of citizens. Issues need to be identified and repaired quickly to ensure that drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians aren’t put at risk.

A team of 250 road inspectors are deployed to do this. When they come across a pothole, for example, they use an app to log information about the issue and prioritize repairs. “When we were running on in-house servers,” says Bert Weyne, planning & coordination lead at AWV, “our road inspectors complained about the app’s reliability. At times, they were unable to access the app and would have to use paper and pen instead. It was embarrassing.”

AWV looked to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to support a more seamless digital experience for staff. “AWS had everything we needed: flexibility, automation, reliability, and speed,” says Weyne. “It also had the most advanced security features.”

Weyne says that AWV management trusts how the IT team approaches security. “They haven’t been disappointed since we moved to AWS. A great recent example is General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR] compliance, which we can now achieve easily using AWS.”

AWV now has a system whereby documents that contain personal data are encrypted with AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) data keys and stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The Amazon S3 identifier and AWS KMS data key are then stored in Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). “This means we can respond instantly to anyone who demands to see what information we hold about them,” says Weyne.

Using AWS has also helped the public-sector agency to reduce costs, speed development, and cut infrastructure management time. “We’ve halved costs compared to our on-premises setup,” says Weyne. “Plus, by using managed services, we’ve slashed system admin time by 67 percent, which has improved our agility. We can now develop and test features three times faster.”

The benefits have been felt on the ground, too. “Inspectors are really happy with the app,” says Weyne. “They’re impressed with its stability and speed. This feedback means we’re doing our job in supporting the agency’s work to keep roads safe for citizens.”

Learn more about GDPR in the public sector.