Tag: Amazon Rekognition

Since 2003, the US federal government has made approximately $1.7 trillion in improper payments, with an estimated $206 billion made in FY 2020 alone. Improper payments are now anticipated to increase proportionally to new levels of federal spending. How can agencies fight improper payments at this scale? And what tools can agencies use to address fraud, erroneous data submission and other causes of this problem? Agencies can use AWS to solve the multi-sided issues of payment integrity.

In the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, cell towers, power lines, and telephone and internet cable are often damaged or destroyed, limiting the ability for responders to share data and access the internet. The AWS Disaster Response team conducted a field testing operation designed to replicate a common disaster response scenario, to show how to establish an ad-hoc network at field sites with limited connectivity and create a link to an office headquarters to provide access to cloud-based resources and data to responders in the field.

Our global network of Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs) powered by AWS and in collaboration with our CIC sponsors, who host and run the centers, aim to empower public sector organizations to quickly create and test new ideas using Amazon’s innovation methodology and cloud technology. Check out some stories of digital prototypes the CICs have published over the last few months that focus on improving public safety, adapting to the pandemic, and innovating through voice and video technology.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions that operated on in-person model shifted many of their traditionally in-person operations and activities—including grading, assessments and testing, and admissions—to a virtual format, where many had never been before. Educational technology (EdTech) companies around the world used the cloud to help quickly create and scale to meet the needs of these academic institutions while maintaining a consistent and smooth student experience.

Around the world, exams are administered to help students and adults further their education and advance their careers. In the US, approximately eight million high school students took a single standardized college entrance exam in 2019. As the pandemic shifted life to virtual work and learning, it also interrupted high stakes exams typically administered in person. For years, EdTechs like ExamSoft, Sumadi (part of Laureate Education), and ProctorFree have been developing remote proctoring and digital assessment solutions using the cloud.

AWS EdStart Members and founders Long Qin of Singsound and Elnaz Sarraf of ROYBI are using artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize early language learning. Long, based out of Beijing, China, is dedicated to providing accessible and quality English education to every family throughout China. Elnaz, based out of San Francisco, CA, United States, is dedicated to changing the one-size-fits-all approach of our global education system.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Bahrain hosted its first artificial intelligence (AI) two-week hackathon, culminating at the AWS Summit in Bahrain. Twenty-six students in eight teams from the University of Bahrain (UoB) went deep into innovation, fun, and development. Bahrain has a national focus on developing digital skills for its citizens.

In June 2017, 56 years after the founding of the organization, the White House Historical Association collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to digitize nearly 20,000 White House photographs, many of which have been in storage for decades and never published until now. The goal was to memorialize their place in history and make educational materials more accessible to the public through the power of the AWS Cloud.

Federation for Internet Alerts (FIA), the nonprofit whose mission is to get crucial alerts in front of the right people at the right time and place, recently received multiple Creative Media Awards for its life-saving technology. It’s also the second consecutive year that FIA has won the Shorty Social Good Award for Technology. And this is just the start.

Fifty-one Las Vegas area students attended re:Invent to learn about cloud computing and how they can get involved with technology beginning with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) educational path – and ultimately leading to a cloud computing career.