Category: Government

In September 2021, Japan took a leap with the establishment of its Digital Agency and the creation of the government cloud. With the goal to build a society in which no one is left behind by improving convenience, health, and happiness through digital technology, Japan’s Digital Agency represents the nation’s bold commitment to digital innovation across government and society. In June 2024, two cloud engineers from the Digital Agency, Kazuma Takeda and Shinichi Nishihata, shared their process and learnings at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit Japan, the largest AWS learning event in the country. For those who were unable to attend or watch virtually, this post summarizes their presentation.

Transit authorities have to maintain the location and schedule of large numbers of vehicle fleets on a daily basis. Most commonly, GPS coordinates are used to track vehicle location and transportation route. GPS coordinates often have anomalies that can contaminate location reporting. Additionally, if a vehicle takes a detour, it will offset public transportation schedules. Both cases impact the riders negatively. Keeping track and getting notified is a challenge. In this post, we look into an anomaly detection mechanism for public transportation using Amazon Web Services (AWS) offerings.

Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) faced a significant challenge: the need to perform complex fuzzy string matching across two different datasets. IRCC embarked on a transformative project that redefined its data processing capabilities and showcased the power of cloud computing in overcoming substantial data challenges. Instead of dealing with months of undifferentiated heavy lifting activities, IRCC successfully used Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances to complete the work in a only few days. Read this post to learn more.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently enabled states to extend Medicaid coverage to eligible incarcerated individuals, with hopes of ensuring continuity of care upon release, reducing the risk of relapse, and encouraging better health management. To help states begin benefitting from this new CMS policy, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a suite of data storage, telehealth, analytics, and reentry services. In this post, we break down four specific areas where AWS services—and AWS Partners—can help.

Many Amazon Web Service (AWS) customers in regulated environments such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) struggle to gain security approval to take advantage of the scaling of Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) using its Auto Scaling capabilities. This is often attributed to configuration management, total asset inventory, compliance with agency third-party security tools, and agency authorization documentation. This post provides AWS recommended best practices for implementing EC2 Auto Scaling in DoD environments. 

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Global Cloud Infrastructure is a secure, extensive, and reliable cloud platform, offering more than 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. When you want to distribute your applications globally, closer to your end users with single-digit millisecond latency, AWS offers the cloud infrastructure you require, whenever and wherever. In this post, we examine the part of the Global Cloud Infrastructure located in Canada and discuss the architecture of its AWS network backbone connectivity.

The potential of open data to transform governance and public services is immense, but realizing this potential requires overcoming common obstacles. In this post, we will explore best practices and solutions for Canadian public sector organizations seeking to use the cloud for open data, specifically examining how Amazon Web Services (AWS) can enable open data success.

Can generative artificial intelligence (AI) help in addressing complex societal issues, such as the equality of access to education? Despite efforts from educators and policymakers, students with additional needs and those who come from socio-economically deprived backgrounds continue to consistently perform worse than other groups. Student performance gaps stubbornly refuse to close while the demands placed on teaching professionals by time-consuming administrative tasks and the challenges associated with lesson preparations continue to increase. Generative AI presents educators with an opportunity to change things.

Kim Majerus, vice president of global education and US state and local government for worldwide public sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS), led the keynote address at the AWS IMAGINE conference for education, state, and local leaders. Majerus shared how AWS customers are innovating for their communities with the cloud and announced new public sector initiatives from AWS. Two special guests joined Majerus on stage to share how a culture of innovation is transforming the student and citizen experience at their organizations. Read this post for some of the highlights from the AWS IMAGINE conference keynote.

The use of consumer-grade messaging applications poses significant security and sovereignty risks for Australian Government agencies, making it difficult to meet governmental information management obligations. Official guidance from the National Archives of Australia (NAA) unambiguously states that “instant messaging posts … created or received as part of Australian Government business are Commonwealth records.” Amazon Web Services (AWS) Wickr is an end-to-end encrypted messaging and collaboration service that provides the advanced security, administrative controls, and data retention capabilities government agencies need to protect sensitive information and meet legislative requirements. Read this post to learn more.