AWS Public Sector Symposium Canberra
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Location
National Convention Centre CanberraDate
20 August, 2025Bringing the cloud community together to innovate, build, and learn
Join us for the AWS Public Sector Symposium Canberra, a complimentary, one-day event bringing together leaders and innovators from government, education, health, and nonprofit sectors.
Experience a program designed to deliver practical insights and transformative solutions for the public sector and connect with peers who are utilising the cloud to move their missions forward.
Hear from innovative leaders in the keynote and get practical insights from technical sessions covering topics including AI, security, and digital transformation.
Event Highlights
Keynote
Discover how organisations are leveraging AWS's latest innovations in compute, storage, and AI to achieve their missions, and learn how you can accelerate your journey from imagination to reality while maintaining security and sustainability at scale.
Breakout Sessions
20+ sessions featuring Public Sector leaders and technical experts with cloud solutions for government, healthcare, education, and aerospace. These sessions are designed to suit a range of technical experience and cover topics including AI, security, and digital transformation.
Experiential Zones
Immerse yourself in innovation with hands-on demos and lightning talks. Explore data trends and cutting-edge technologies guided by AWS experts.
Partners
Meet 20+ AWS Partners and discover innovative solutions to digitally transform your organisation.
Keynote Speakers
Louise Stigwood
Managing Director ANZ, Public Sector, AWS
Simon Elisha
Director and Chief Technologist, Australia & New Zealand, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS
David Appel
Vice President, US Federal, Worldwide Public Sector, AWS
Bettina McMahon
Chief Executive of Healthdirect Australia and Board Director of SNOMED International
Agenda
This event is specifically designed to help public sector organisations across government, education, nonprofit, healthcare, and financial services navigate the increasingly complex and ever-evolving tech landscape.
Our goal is to empower you, the leaders and architects of public sector digital transformation, with new capabilities and insights that help you accelerate your mission and improve the lives of people and the planet using cloud technology.
Lightning Talks
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Timing
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Sessions
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9:40 AM - 9:55 AM
L200
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QLIK From legacy to cloud. A data journey for real time analytics Ben Davis from Qlik & Sagar Anand from Accenture will jointly share the success story of how to replicate data from mainframe environments for real time analytics on AWS |
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10:00 AM - 10:15 AM
L200
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Capgemini To satisfy our stakeholders, you need a new approach Governments across the globe are challenged to accomplish (much) more with fewer resources. While incremental approaches can help, it is doubtful that their cumulative effect will deliver the results that the public and politicians expect. Marc Reinhardt will outline an approach for governments to reach these ambitious goals – leveraging cloud, data, AI, and applying insights from other parts of the world to achieve a next level of government efficiency. |
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11:35 AM - 11:50 AM
L200
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Crowdstrike Defend Against the New Era of Cyber Threats Join Sen Philip, Solution Architect Team Lead, CrowdStrike, for an exclusive threat briefing looking at the current threat landscape. Learn about critical events and trends that defined 2024, the latest adversary tactics and techniques, and tips to strengthen your defences. |
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11:55 AM - 12:10 PM
L200
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Red Hat OpenShift LightSpeed: AI Power for Public Sector Applications As agencies adopt container platforms to modernise, complexity can slow progress. Red Hat OpenShift LightSpeed— our app platform AI assistant—guides users in plain language, easing modern app use. Discover how it works, deploys secure LLMs like Granite, and drives faster onboarding, troubleshooting, and fewer tickets. See how LightSpeed boosts efficiency and scales expertise in government teams. |
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12:15 PM - 12:30 PM
L100
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Lucid Lucid Software: Driving Public Sector Transformation with Collaborative Clarity In today’s public sector, delivering impactful services requires clarity, speed, and alignment—yet legacy methods often slow progress. Join our 15-minute session to see how top government organizations are simplifying collaboration with a unified visual platform. Learn how to achieve shared understanding across stakeholders, accelerate project delivery, and build stronger digital foundations. We’ll cut through complexity and show what’s possible when teams ideate, plan, and execute in one collaborative space. Walk away with inspiration—and a clear path to greater efficiency, innovation, and impact. Stick around after the session to explore solutions tailored to your agency’s specific challenges. |
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12:40 PM - 12:55 PM
L100
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Capgemini GenAI Enabled Application Modernisation How emerging GenAI tools are acelerating the modernisation of legacy application estates, reducing cost to operate, and enabling future business productivity. |
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1:35 PM - 1:50 PM
L200
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Datadog Unified Observability and Security for Public Sector Innovation As Australian public sector agencies accelerate their cloud adoption with AWS, observability is essential to delivering secure, high-performing digital services. Datadog provides end-to-end visibility across infrastructure, applications, security, and user experience in a single platform. In this session, learn how government organizations use Datadog to detect issues proactively, reduce downtime, ensure compliance, and optimize cloud costs. We’ll showcase how unified monitoring helps teams break down silos, respond faster to incidents, and deliver reliable, citizen-facing services at scale. |
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1:55 PM - 2:10 PM
L100
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F5 Quantum-Ready Security: Integrating PQC into Cloud and Data Centres Learn what post-quantum cryptography (PQC) means for the future of digital security and discover practical approaches for integrating quantum-resistant protection into both cloud and data centre environments. This session will guide you through the essentials of PQC and offer clear strategies for safeguarding your applications and APIs as quantum computing evolves. |
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3:20 PM - 3:35 PM
L100
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Versent Conversational AI for Elderly Wellbeing Loneliness is a rising crisis among older adults, significantly impacting mental and physical health. Many seniors struggle with digital tools, limiting their ability to stay connected and supported. Versent’s conversational AI, built on Amazon Bedrock Nova Sonic, engages seniors via scheduled phone calls, no apps or internet needed. It checks on wellbeing, supports care coordination and reduces healthcare workload, enabling scalable, human-like support across communities. |
Sessions
Track: Securing Public Sector data in a digital world
Open all1:00 PM - 1:30 PM | L200
Discover how VicRoads transformed its digital driver's licence security by implementing passkeys across web and mobile platforms. Learn how this government agency leveraged AWS security services to eliminate traditional multi-factor authentication while enhancing protection of citizen identities. This session will demonstrate how VicRoads strengthened security through passkey integration, improved citizen experience with faster, frictionless access, reduced operational costs while maintaining compliance, and achieved their strategic vision of passwordless authentication. Join us to learn how you can modernise authentication systems while enhancing user experience.
Speakers
Jigar Mangukiya
Solutions Architect Public Sector, AWS
Igor Gjorgjioski
Senior Product Lead,
Customer Identity & Product Enablement, VicRoads
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM | L200
Healthdirect Australia demonstrates how regulated healthcare organisations can enhance cybersecurity using AWS solutions. Learn how this national health information service transformed their security posture using AWS GuardDuty, Security Hub, and Shield Advanced to combat increasing cyber threats. Discover how they created an integrated defence system that improves threat detection while maintaining compliance. Through practical examples, gain insights into breaking down security silos and building robust security frameworks. Join us to learn how to strengthen your security infrastructure against evolving threats.
Speakers
Zuelma Sterling
Senior Account Executive (Healthcare), AWS
Shruti Gaur
Technical Accounts Manager, AWS
Francisca Munhoz
Engineering Lead, AWS Platforms,
HealthDirect Australia
2:45 PM - 3:15 PM | L300
Learn essential threat modelling skills for securing AI applications on AWS. This technical session demonstrates how to identify, assess, and mitigate AI-specific risks using industry-standard frameworks like OWASP LLM Top 10. Discover practical implementations of security controls through Amazon Bedrock Guardrails, IAM, KMS, and other native AWS services. Perfect for both newcomers and experienced practitioners seeking to protect AI workloads. Gain actionable insights for implementing robust security measures from initial deployment through ongoing operations.
Speakers
Farhan Farooq
Senior Solutions Architect, AWS
Zohreh Norouzi
Security Solutions Architect, AWS
3:45 PM - 4:15PM | L300
Learn how to effectively implement AWS Service Control Policies and Resource Control Policies to enforce consistent security controls across multiple accounts. Through real-world examples, discover proven strategies for creating preventative guardrails at scale. This session provides practical implementation guidance and ready-to-use policies you can apply to enhance your organisation's security posture. Perfect for security professionals and cloud architects managing complex AWS environments seeking to strengthen their security controls.
Speakers
Jansen Sena
Security Consultant, AWS
Pujah Goviel
Technical Accounts Manager, AWS
Track: AI-enabled Government: from vision to reality
Open all12:10 PM - 12:55 PM | L200
Big AI strategies often sound compelling, but they rarely survive first contact with the real world. In this session, David from Decidr will explore how businesses are making real progress by breaking work into atomic tasks, linking them to clear goals, and running them through Agentic Apps on a unified platform. You’ll learn why this horizontal approach outpaces prompting and vertical tools, and how it helps teams move faster, stay lean, and build true AI-native capability.
Sponsored by
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM | L300
Learn how iCare, a New South Wales government agency, transformed processing of complex documents using AWS and Generative AI (GenAI). This session demonstrates how the combination of AWS services and GenAI enhances efficiency and accuracy in processing documents. Discover the challenges faced, solutions implemented, and productivity gains achieved through this innovative approach. Gain practical insights into streamlining document analytics across various industries using cloud and AI technologies. Perfect for organisations seeking to modernise their document analysis and management processes through cloud-based AI solutions.
Speakers
Zuelma Sterling
Senior Account Executive (Healthcare), AWS
Reza Zolfaghari
Senior Data Scientist, icare
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM | L200
Learn how public sector organisations can drive AI innovation while ensuring security and sovereignty. This session explores Australia's AI opportunities and practical security implementations using AWS services. Gain actionable insights into building secure generative AI systems, addressing challenges like bias and hallucination, and establishing effective governance frameworks. Through real government use cases, discover how to implement responsible AI practices that align with public sector requirements. Perfect for leaders seeking to navigate AI deployment while maintaining public trust and security standards.
Speakers
Karthik Murugan
Head of Data and AI, AWS
Craig Lawton
AIML Solution Specialist, icare
2:45 PM - 3:15 PM | L100
Discover how NSW eHealth transformed patient support services using Amazon Connect's integrated GenAI solution. Learn how they achieved significant improvements in call handling efficiency and customer satisfaction while serving over 2 million citizens. This session showcases how GenAI technology delivers consistent healthcare support while enhancing experiences for patients, clinicians, and staff. Gain insights into expanding GenAI capabilities across digital channels and learn from NSW eHealth's successful implementation. Join this session to gain insights on how to revolutionise your citizen engagement through AI innovation.
Speakers
Poppy Mosses
Product Owner eHealth, NSW
Max Tennant
Head of Amazon Connect PS ANZ, AWS
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM | L200
Discover how Monash University leverages Generative AI to revolutionise research equipment analysis through RAPPA (Research And Publications Pattern Analysis). Learn how this innovative solution automates the identification of research equipment usage across publications, replacing manual review processes. See how graph database technology reveals valuable relationships between faculties, facilities, equipment, researchers, and publications. Perfect for institutions seeking to optimise equipment investments and understand research impact through AI-powered analytics.
Speakers
Mahyar Nasabi
PhD - Program Manager (Systems and Analytics),
Monash University
Philippe Gabert
Solution Architect, AWS
Track: Modernising Public Sector data
Open all12:10 PM - 12:55 PM | L200
Discover how SAP Sovereign Cloud capabilities can cater to the unique needs of the public sector and regulated industries. Learn how these capabilities address the heightened needs for digital sovereignty while allowing companies to leverage the immense advantages of the cloud, and how they are delivered in the Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) region. Hear from Toll Group on their SAP S/4HANA transformation journey on SAP Sovereign Cloud.
Sponsored by
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM | L200
Public sector organisations face growing challenges in managing and extracting value from unstructured, multimodal data—including documents, images, audio, and video. This session demonstrates how Amazon Bedrock Data Automation simplifies insight extraction from diverse data formats using a unified API. Learn how to automate and scale complex data analysis workflows efficiently and discover key features and real-world benefits of processing multimodal data at scale. Attend this session to learn practical tips to streamline your data analysis processes through automated solutions.
Speakers
Saeed Barghi
Senior Specialist Solutions Architect, AWS
Vishwa Gandhi
Solutions Architect, AWS
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM | L200
In this panel discussion, Revenue NSW share their analytics transformation journey and the implementation of a unified, scalable, cloud-based platform that achieved significant performance improvements and near real-time capabilities. Learn how they empowered their teams and evolved their infrastructure while maintaining security and compliance. Discover strategies for modernising your organisation's analytics capabilities using cloud technology.
Speakers
Moha Alsouli
Solutions Architect, AWS
Miroslaw (Mick) Mioduszewsk
Director of Analytics, Revenue, NSW
Saeed Barghi
Senior Specialist Solutions Architect, AWS
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM | L300
Learn how to overcome data analysis challenges by implementing multi-agent AI systems using AWS services. Through a real government case study, you'll discover how to architect conversational AI solutions using Amazon Bedrock, AWS Lambda, and LangChain to query multiple data sources, generate reports, and provide explainable insights. You'll gain practical patterns for agent orchestration, security controls for sensitive data, and scalable designs. Attend this session to gain practical insights on how to transform manual processes into intelligent, automated workflows that enhance operational efficiency
Speakers
Nicholas Moretti
Senior TPM, AWS
Callum Smits
Senior SDE, AWS
Track: Driving Public Sector innovation
Open all12:10 PM - 12:55 PM | L200
Join this session with Deloitte to explore how engineers can use AI daily to accelerate outcomes, illustrated by a case at a global investment bank where Bedrock-powered AI-driven automation reshaped software development—accelerating delivery, improving quality, and reducing technical debt.
Sponsored by
1:00 PM - 1:30 PM | L200
ACT Emergency Services shares how they transformed their legacy alert system into an AWS-powered real-time response platform. Learn how they eliminated communication gaps and standardised emergency alerts across state boundaries using a centralised web application with multi-channel distribution. Discover the architectural decisions enabling cross-state warning integration, simultaneous multi-officer access, and real-time public safety notifications. Join this session to gain valuable insights into building resilient, scalable emergency response solutions that save lives. Perfect for public safety leaders seeking to modernise their emergency response systems.
Speakers
Alexa Donovan
Solution Architect, AWS
Jake Bradley
A/g Director of Intelligence, ESA
Chamal Perera,
Assistant Director, IT, ESA
2:10 PM - 2:40 PM | L100
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) shares how they modernised their security and developer experience through automated pipelines, infrastructure-as-code, and data perimeters. Learn how one of Australia's largest government agencies achieved excellence in security and DevOps practices through cloud innovation. Discover practical strategies for implementing modern development practices while maintaining robust security. Learn how to accelerate your cloud transformation journey through proven approaches.
Speakers
Hosh Elavia
Acting Deputy Commissioner,
User Technology Services, ATO
Sam Thomas
Program Director, Developer &
Application Shared Services, ATO
James Kingsmill
Senior Solutions Architect, AWS
2:45 PM - 3:15 PM | L200
Service NSW shares their transformative cloud journey, highlighting achievements in security optimisation, next-generation networking architecture, and cost management through FinOps adoption. Learn practical approaches to strategic planning, change management, and technical implementation that drove their success. Gain actionable insights for your own cloud transformation initiatives, from initial planning through execution. You'll leave with practical strategies to optimise your cloud operations, enhance security, and control costs.
Speaker
Kamaljit Bhardwaj
Platform Manager - Cloud, Service, NSW
Pranav Gothadiya
Senior Technical Account Manager, AWS
3:45 PM - 4:15 PM | L200
How do you scale a scientist? In this talk, CSIRO Tech Lead Alison Lynton shares how Nature IQ transforms world-leading biodiversity research into a cloud-native platform for land managers, investors, and policymakers. Learn how the team used AWS to build a scalable, responsive system that delivers extinction risk, ecosystem condition, and threatened species indicators — enabling data-driven, nature-positive decisions at landscape scale.
Speakers
Alison Lynton
NatureIQ Technical Lead, CSIRO
Carie Vito
Senior Account Executive, AWS
ChalkTalks
Open all1:00 PM - 1:30 PM | L400
Learn how to streamline your IRAP and Essential Eight compliance journey using AWS native capabilities. Discover practical strategies to overcome common implementation challenges and accelerate your delivery on AWS. You'll gain insights into leveraging cloud features that simplify security and governance requirements, reducing your compliance burden. Through real-world examples, you'll learn how to efficiently integrate these crucial frameworks into your cloud environment.
Speaker
James Kingsmill
Senior Solutions Architect, AWS
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM | L400
Learn how to unlock critical knowledge trapped across your enterprise systems, from SharePoint and Salesforce to Confluence and beyond. Discover how to transform time-consuming searches into instant insights using Q Business and AI-powered solutions. You'll gain practical strategies for accessing and leveraging enterprise knowledge more effectively, moving beyond traditional search toward autonomous AI agents. Perfect for organizations looking to enhance productivity by making institutional knowledge readily accessible to employees while maintaining security and compliance.
Speakers
Pauline Kelly
Solutions Architect for Public Sector ANZ, AWS
Shivonne Londt
Senior Solutions Architect for Public Sector ANZ, AWS
3:30 PM - 4:30 PM | L400
Attend this session to learn how to access and query data in-place using zero-ETL architecture and Apache Iceberg compatible tools. This session demonstrates flexible data collaboration using SageMaker Unified Studio without managing complex pipelines. Discover how to leverage scalable data services that handle growing data volumes while enabling real-time, data-driven operations. See how end-to-end data governance and zero-ETL solutions help teams work more efficiently with their data. Perfect for organisations seeking to modernise their data architecture and accelerate insights through simplified data management.
Speakers
Krisi Gay
Specialist, Data and Databases, AWS
Patrick Tsui
Sr. Specialist Solutions Architect, Storage, AWS
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