Powering the generative AI era: What you missed at the AWS Public Sector Symposium Brussels

Davy Levy, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, delivers the keynote at the Brussels Public Sector Symposium on 12 March.

On 12 March, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Symposium Brussels returned to the Brussels Expo in Belgium. The no cost, in-person conference gathered cloud enthusiasts interested in the public sector for a day dedicated to deepening knowledge of how the cloud and generative artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming organizations and businesses around the world.

Central to the event were the themes of generative AI, sustainability, security, and—importantly for Europe—digital sovereignty.

Yaara Tam, head of multinational organizations, and Barbara Baeyens, head of Benelux, announced the launch of new AWS learning plans for civil servants, specifically designed for European Union (EU) government agencies to help government employees build cloud skills and accelerate digital transformation.

In his keynote, Dave Levy, vice president of AWS worldwide public sector, said, “We’re here today because of our commitment to the region, serving you with the solutions and technology you need to improve the lives of your citizens, students, customers, and constituents.” Levy highlighted how AWS is helping customers use generative AI in a responsible and flexible way, providing more options to enable digital sovereignty through the upcoming AWS European Sovereign Cloud, and showing dedication to data protection and privacy, sustainability, and social impact. Customer speakers from bpostgroup and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) shared stories about how they use the cloud to drive impact for their missions.

Read this post for more key takeaways from the Brussels Symposium.

Building a strong data foundation

Secure, reliable, and scalable cloud infrastructure helps public sector organizations to innovate quickly while meeting strict security and compliance requirements. AWS enables customers to get the most value from data by providing a comprehensive set of integrated tools and robust governance capabilities that balance access and control. Customers such as Belgian broadcaster RTBF use AWS data services like Amazon Redshift and AWS Glue to power personalized content recommendations for millions of customers across its media platforms.

Wendy Joos, chief data officer of bpostgroup, spoke of the value of data and her company’s digital journey. “We wanted a platform that allowed us to do more with our data,” said Joos, who explained how bpostgroup is using data models to ensure timely delivery, and digital twins to preempt problems, such as in sorting centers, and with distribution rounds.

Generative AI opportunities and challenges

Generative AI allows anyone to leverage machine learning (ML) capabilities using natural language. When users can search, analyze, and draw conclusions in seconds—from information across their organization or the internet—they can make informed decisions at speed. This can help answer customer queries efficiently, pinpoint changes to contracts, and accurately assess risks such as fraud. A newly commissioned AWS European study, Accelerating AI Skills: Preparing the Workforce for Jobs of the Future, focuses on organizations rapidly adopting generative AI. This research found that almost 90 percent of employees expect to benefit from generative AI in the workplace by 2028.

AWS provides the most comprehensive set of capabilities across the three layers of the generative AI stack. The bottom layer is the infrastructure required to train and run large language models (LLMs) and other foundation models (FMs). The middle layer is where you build and scale generative AI applications with foundation models. At the top layer live the applications that leverage LLMs and other FMs so that employees can utilize generative AI at work.

At the bottom layer of the generative AI stack, it is vital to have high quality, up-to-date data for training the models. A critical step to achieving this is moving data to the cloud. The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) worked with us to build their models. They launched Falcon LLMs, three foundational large language models, to facilitate research in healthcare, finance, education, and more.

The middle layer lets you build and scale applications using leading FMs like Anthropic’s Claude 3. Customers choose the best model for their use case, while maintaining enterprise-grade security, privacy, and access control. AWS enables government agencies and regulated industries to experiment and innovate in a secure, compliant manner.

Swindon Borough Council, a UK local authority, uses Amazon Bedrock to make government information more accessible to the learning disability community. They created a solution that makes complex documents more accessible, enabling a community where no one is disadvantaged.

And at the top of the generative AI stack is Amazon Q, for organizations who want an assistant to enhance productivity and decision-making. “When you chat with Q, it provides immediate, relevant, and actionable information and advice to help streamline tasks, speed decision-making, and help spark creativity,” said Dominic Delmolino, vice president of technology for AWS worldwide public sector, who presented a demo during Levy’s keynote. 

Responsible AI mitigating the risks

Organizations that use generative AI must build responsible AI systems that are fair, explainable, robust, secure, transparent, and safeguard privacy. Good governance is fundamental for responsible systems. It’s important to be able to justify how these process-support systems arrived at choices. AWS is committed to responsible AI development and deployment, and welcomes the overarching goal of the EU’s AI Act to ensure trust in AI products and services. We recently launched Guardrails for Amazon Bedrock (Preview), which helps customers implement responsible AI policies when building generative AI applications. AWS is focused on collaborating with regulators and the industry to support the safe, secure, and ethical advancement of AI technology.

Digital sovereignty without compromise

Globally, 82 percent of organizations are using, planning to use, or considering sovereign cloud solutions in the next two years, according to marketing intelligence firm IDC. 

AWS has always been sovereign-by-design. We committed to expanding our capabilities to allow customers to meet their digital sovereignty needs, without compromising on the performance, innovation, security, or scale of the AWS Cloud. The upcoming AWS European Sovereign Cloud will allow government agencies, regulated industries, and the independent software vendors (ISVs) that support them, to store sensitive data and run critical workloads on AWS infrastructure that is operated and supported by AWS employees located in and residents of the EU. It will be separate from, and independent of, the eight existing AWS Regions already open in Europe, and will give additional options for deployment, while providing the AWS services, APIs, and tools that customers are already familiar with. The design will help customers meet their data residency, operational autonomy, and resiliency needs.

Sustainability in the cloud

There is increased recognition that sustainability cannot be a siloed approach within an organization. With government-mandated climate action targets, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements, and demands from consumers on the environmental and social impact of goods and services, sustainability should be intrinsically linked with each organization’s value proposition.

AWS offers capabilities to help customers innovate while reducing costs and carbon emissions. Amazon has a goal to reach net-zero by 2040 and is on a path to match all of our global electricity use, including AWS data centers, with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025 – five years ahead of our original 2030 target. Since 2020, we are the largest corporate purchaser of renewable in Europe and worldwide. AWS is on track to be water positive by 2030 through water replenishment projects, with a current rate of 3.9 billion liters returned to communities annually.

AWS is working with WindEurope to simplify renewable energy project permitting through an online portal called EasyPermits. In the Denmark pilot case, EasyPermits reportedly enabled concurrent processing of up to three times as many permit applications through transparency and information management, as well as a 50 percent reduction in administrative workload.

Conclusion

Throughout the day, the event provided opportunities for conversations between members of the innovative and creative public sector community. And as Francesca Duri, chief technology officer of WIPO said, “The true value of good technology unveils beyond the expected benefits.”

For more insights from the AWS Public Sector Symposium Brussels, watch the keynote on demand now.

Want more in-person public sector content? Register now for the AWS Summit in Washington, DC on 26 June 2024.