Category: Nonprofit

Governments are sharing their technology solutions with other governments through open source tools. These tools are helping state, local, and federal governments respond quicker, and at the scale needed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one of the challenges governments face is finding out what open source tools are available. To help public sector customers use open source tools better, AWS launched Open Government Solutions, which aggregates open source projects and assets from public sector entities around the globe for governments at all levels to find, adapt, and reuse. During a panel conversation around the launch, government leaders outlined five key reasons why governments are choosing open source technologies to deliver citizen services.

For public sector organizations, there is no room for service disruption. When faced with a natural disaster, emergency, or cyberattack, these organizations need to continue running mission-critical applications to power essential platforms such as call centers, patient and judicial databases, and online learning sites. A disaster recovery (DR) strategy is necessary for public sector organizations that need to be there for their communities. CloudEndure Disaster Recovery, offered by AWS, can help organizations reduce DR total cost of ownership (TCO) and achieve business continuity.

AWS is committed to helping our customers address the challenges brought about by COVID-19. In the months since the pandemic started, we have helped governments and organizations around the world accelerate efforts to track the virus, understand its outbreak, and better contain its spread. These are principles that have been reinforced by the World Health Organization (WHO). With the number of worldwide cases continuing to rise at an alarming rate, there is a global imperative to discover, test, and isolate patients in order to slow the viral spread, save lives, and fully reopen economies. To meet this public health imperative, governments are expanding their use of a well-established technique called ‘contact tracing’.

According to the World Bank, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) account for about 90 percent of all companies. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), more than half of our partners serving the public sector are fast-growing SMEs and minority-owned businesses (MOBs). To support this important partner community, we’re launching a pilot of the Think Big for Small Business Program in August 2020.

As government agencies and public sector organizations modernize their IT and migrate to the AWS Cloud, the ability to gain a full, clear view of the security of their environments is a primary challenge they experience. This lack of visibility leads to blind spots and gaps in their security posture, leaving opportunity for security issues to arise. As a result, AWS developed a new open source Self-Service Security Assessment (with ransomware analysis modules) tool that provides customers with a point-in-time assessment to quickly gain valuable insights into the security posture of their AWS account.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network (APN) Public Sector Partners leaned into innovation and customer obsession to deliver amazing results, especially in the time of COVID-19. In light of these significant contributions, we are excited to announce the winners of the 2020 AWS Public Sector Partners Awards. Read more about our winners.

Reporting on Amazon WorkSpaces, a managed, secure desktop as a service (DaaS) solution, allows you to capture information about your Amazon WorkSpaces deployment and the relationships to Active Directory users. It helps capture important details that can help with chargeback, general utilization of Amazon WorkSpaces, and confirming consistency of what is deployed in your environment.

As a physical oceanographer focused on remote sensing, Dr. Chelle Gentemann, senior scientist at Farallon Institute, has worked for over 20 years on retrievals of ocean temperature from space. She uses measurements of sea surface temperature from satellites to understand how the ocean impacts our lives. Chelle’s work requires analysis of large volumes of data, which requires access to large data storage and computational resources. Although most large research institutions can secure those IT resources, that is not the case for smaller organizations or underserved communities around the world. As part of the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative, we invited Dr. Gentemann to share her perspective on the value of hosting high-resolution climate data on AWS.

Over the past decade, cloud technology has been the driver of digital transformation, allowing organizations to operate with greater efficiency—and more importantly, innovate at speed. But as institutions of every size and type have discovered, keeping up with the pace of technological change can be difficult. The key hurdle? Skills.

As the COVID-19 outbreak began, advocates and public health officials grew concerned for the more than half a million people experiencing homelessness. Homeless populations are particularly vulnerable because they have higher rates of serious underlying health problems, generally lack access to quality health care, and have no way to self-quarantine. This prompted many communities to implement interventions to reduce the risk of exposure for people experiencing homelessness. AWS customers and partners have acted with compassion and care to assist the most vulnerable individuals across our communities. Here are a few ways they are using cloud technology to support those in need.