Category: Nonprofit

On June 17, Amazon Web Services (AWS) held its AWS Summit Online for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Check out content from the “I’m in the Public Sector” track, for government, education, nonprofit, and healthcare organizations—now available on demand.

We are less than two weeks away from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit Online and we are looking forward to “seeing” you there. Have you registered yet? If not, don’t wait. From technical content—foundations or advanced—to mission-critical and spotlight, check out just a few of the featured sessions you will find this year at the AWS Public Sector Summit Online 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that public sector organizations need modern infrastructure, capabilities and controls to overcome the disruption caused by global health outbreaks. Organizations that embraced cloud services proved more responsive. They were able to continue operating remotely and serving their customers and citizens, demonstrating agility, scalability, and speed. In How Governments Can Build Resilience in a New Normal: Emerging Practices from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, a new policy paper from the AWS Institute, we outline how organizations can use the cloud to recover from the disruption that the virus brought, as well as become more resilient for future challenges.

Atma Connect envisions a world where people use technology to amplify their voices, help one another, share solutions, and take action. We provide a digital platform, AtmaGo, and local trainings that help ensure communities will be able to help neighbors mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and bounce back from disasters. Building disaster resilience—the ability to rebound and rebuild health and economic well-being after a disaster—is directly related to the welfare of our AtmaGo users.

At Amazon, we are committed to providing immediate relief and response to global communities impacted by natural disasters. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Disaster Response team plays an important role in this response, and the team has supported customers worldwide in the wake of hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and disease outbreaks including COVID-19. We help by bringing our operational and logistics expertise, as well as cloud technology to support our customers and our communities when and where they need it most, working closely with organizations like the American Red Cross.

Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 specifies the security requirements for cryptographic modules that protect sensitive information. It is the current United States and Canadian government standard, and is applicable to systems that are required to be compliant with Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) or Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). In this blog, we demonstrate how to enable FIPS mode in Amazon Linux 2 and verify that unauthorized cryptographic functions are not being used in OpenSSL or the OpenSSH server.

In May 2020, the AWS Public Sector Blog covered stories on the AWS Public Sector Summit Online 2020, chatbots and call centers, and open source solutions. Check out some of the top stories from the blog below. For more blog highlights from this month, you can also check out The Brief, hosted this month by Mike Colson.

The breadth of challenges that can be addressed by overhead imagery is broad and continues to grow as new and improved sensors are deployed. To make the best use of this data, you need to have high-quality training data—data that you know is true (often called ground truth data) so that your algorithms can learn from it. A lack of this high-quality labeled training data continues to impede progress in many areas of remote sensing analytics, including machine learning. Two of the SpaceNet collaborators, Capella Space and AWS, are providing access to a unique dataset to help foster innovation in geospatial-based artificial intelligence. Learn more about Earth observation data, the SpaceNet 6 Challenge, and available datasets.

In April, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region. AWS has a long history in South Africa and numerous public sector organizations in the region are already spearheading technological innovations in the cloud. From healthcare to education, these four public sector organizations are leading innovation in the public sector in the Region.

AWS announced the launch of a preview version of an online gamified tutorial, “AWS Cloud Champion: Virtual Workplace Interactive Challenge,” that highlights cloud capabilities available for online meetings, cloud-based contact centers, and virtual desktops. The tutorial is presented as a 3D, virtual tradeshow experience, which includes kiosks and an AWS avatar that guides you through a self-directed path, explaining applicable AWS services in a concise and engaging format.