AWS hosts inaugural Federal Executive Forum at Amazon HQ2

Last week, Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted its first Federal Executive Forum at Amazon HQ2 in National Landing. Forward-thinking leaders from across the US federal government working in civilian, financials, defense, and national security gathered to discuss emerging technologies, and share best practices and ways to use the cloud to advance their missions.

David Appel on stage at the Federal Executive Forum.

I was honored to welcome more than 400 federal government innovators to Metropolitan Park, or Phase 1 of Amazon HQ2, which already supports 8,000 Amazonians. Amazon is committed to hiring more than 25,000 new employees at HQ2 over the next several years, in addition to the more than 39,000 Amazon employees already working across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Amazon’s $2.5 billion HQ2 investment strengthens the city of Arlington’s technology hub, just blocks from the Pentagon and satellite campuses of higher education institutions like Virginia Tech and George Mason University. Our investment has a wider impact of indirectly supporting more than 200,000 jobs across Virginia.

AWS teams supporting the US federal government appreciate HQ2’s proximity to our government customers, which allows us to convene regular in-person meetings and trainings. AWS has supported customers in the US federal government since the launch of our public sector business in 2010. The scale of our partnership today reflects our deep commitment to helping federal government customers drive innovation, lower costs, and deliver their critical missions.

The agenda of the first Federal Executive Forum included mission-focused topics such as the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, resilience, and zero trust. We also reviewed announcements AWS made at re:Invent 2023 and how they support customers in the federal government. Throughout the day, builders from across the US government learned together, including through one-on-one meetings with AWS solutions architects and Ask a Technologist sessions.

U.S. Treasury Chief AI Officer Todd Conklin gestures during his time on stage at the Federal Executive Forum.

The Federal Executive Forum featured senior US government officials such as Todd Conklin, Chief AI Officer and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Protection for the U.S. Treasury. In his first public remarks since becoming Chief AI Officer in January, Deputy Assistant Secretary Conklin said, “We appreciated the opportunity to spend time with AWS, as well as partners throughout the federal government, to discuss ways we can accelerate innovation with generative AI and other emerging technologies. Treasury is taking a data-centric focus to its AI strategy,” which builds on the work  the department started with AWS almost seven years ago.

Events like the Federal Executive Forum allow AWS to dive deeper with customers on how cloud technologies can continue to expedite modernization and support mission success. We look forward to continuing to convene important discussions around topics such as generative AI, resilience, high performance computing, edge deployments, and other technologies important to advancing government missions.

Learn more about AWS for government and contact an AWS public sector representative to discuss how we can help your organization.