Category: Amazon Connect

On the night before Christmas, children around the world wonder when Santa is coming to town. For the 65th consecutive year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will put its world-class technology to work to keep an eye on Santa’s whereabouts. Beginning at 6:00 AM EST on December 24, families can check on Santa’s location by calling the toll-free number 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723). AWS is supporting NORAD by helping their volunteers answer as many calls as possible through Amazon Connect, an omnichannel cloud contact center service. By transferring calls through Amazon Connect, NORAD staff and representatives will be able to answer calls from their homes or offices, supporting those on site at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center.

Over the past few months, one of the biggest challenges for organizations and employees alike has been the sudden transition to remote work. But we have learned that remote work works when the right technology and leadership come together. Check out some impactful stories that demonstrate how governments have gone above and beyond using the cloud to quickly adapt to this new environment and shift away from the status quo.

For community organizations, government agencies, and educational institutions seeking to support a distributed workforce, citizenry, or student body with cloud capabilities, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has developed an online virtual booth to highlight remote work, learning, and call center use cases for the public sector. Learn how to connect your remote employees, constituents, or students on AWS by playing the AWS Cloud Champion: Virtual Workplace Interactive Challenge.

The third episode of the Mission Critical Cloud Fix This podcast mini-series by Teresa Carlson, vice president of the worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), is now live. We dove into how the cloud helps state and local government customers deliver critical services to citizens. Interviews featured in the podcast include the state of West Virginia (WV), Smartronix, and Los Angeles County Internal Services Department (LA County ISD). You can stream all episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, iHeartRadio, and via RSS.

In the United States, unemployment insurance claims are rising, with the current insured unemployment rate at 15.7%—the highest since the end of World War II. Many states are struggling with the volume of applications, causing legacy back-office systems to crash. Workforce West Va. identified three actions they could take to improve constituent services; many of these actions were enabled by the cloud.

City and state government leaders are on the front line fighting COVID-19. Government agencies need to reach their constituents at a moment’s notice to communicate everything from the location of disease hot spots, calls for volunteers, providing life-saving guidelines, and keeping the public informed about the current state of affairs. They need to be able to reach citizens virtually or through electronic methods, since meeting in person isn’t an option. In this blog, you learn how to create an Amazon Connect instance, set it up in over a dozen languages, and send messages to millions of people in a short period of time.

Chatbots and modern call centers provide governments with an efficient way to connect with citizens during critical times. Governments, health systems, and educational institutions are responsible for communicating and maintaining information portals regarding public safety, health and human services, emergency services, social services, and more. Now more than ever, communities are turning to their public sector organizations for up-to-date information. Read on to learn from organizations across industries and how they have scaled their services to meet increased demand.

Public sector organizations are experiencing a high volume of requests for information ranging from health to finances to municipal services. At a time when in-person interaction is limited, citizens can call into contact centers to get the insights they need to make real-time decisions about their health and safety. Many organizations are turning to the cloud to quickly scale and deploy a contact center. But, understanding your cloud contact center at granular level can help better serve your constituents.

State government labor and workforce development agencies are wrestling with an unprecedented surge in demand for services. In one week, 6.6 million Americans filed for initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims, nearly double the previous week. Many states are straining to meet this increase for demand in services. The cloud can help labor and agencies quickly scale and shift to meet constituent needs.

As part of our response to COVID-19, AWS is providing tools to support remote learning and teaching. This includes providing customers in the most affected regions with technical support, offerings, and AWS Promotional Credit, which help cover costs while enabling organizations to quickly stand up and scale their infrastructure and tools to meet demand, to help our educational technology providers and educators around the world quickly deploy or extend learning into the home.