Category: Thought Leadership

In the past two years, many of us in Latin America have seen civil society, governments, academia, and the private sector unite to accelerate our ability to respond to the economic and human challenges of COVID-19. Public sector organizations innovated with the cloud to address a variety of dynamic needs: expanding financial inclusion, supporting wider access to education and healthcare, providing transparency in electoral processes, and more. In this blog post, we spotlight four organizations in Latin America that are using AWS to transform the public sector.

Today marks World Health Day, and this year’s theme is “Our planet, our health.” The World Health Organization (WHO) is using this day to drive global attention to the urgent actions needed to protect our planet and prioritize well-being in societies, and supporting these efforts is core to our principles and values at AWS. We’re proud to support our customers and partners who are solving some of society’s biggest problems with the cloud to make these ideas and changes a reality. Here are just a few examples of how our customers are leveraging AWS technology to innovate for our planet and our health.

On March 16, I had the honor of kicking off the Build(Her) Conference in Washington, DC, a co-hosted Halcyon and AWS event, along with Kate Goodall, Halcyon co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO). First launched in 2020, the Build(Her) Conference brings together women leaders and entrepreneurs from both the public and private sectors to share ideas, network, and hear from speakers on topics like government innovation, fundraising and growing companies, resilience, and more.

At AWS, we know these are challenging times and we remain committed to supporting nonprofits. This blog post outlines a sampling of programs and resources for nonprofits, including grants and credits, open data access, cloud training, educational events, and more, designed to enable organizations of all sizes to overcome barriers to technology adoption, while enhancing the scale, performance, and capabilities of mission operations.

Governments are increasingly adopting digital ID systems to improve inclusion and accessibility to public services. Based on the experiences shared by governments and by AWS experts who have worked to implement digital ID around the world, six lessons emerge about how to create the right strategic mindset for digital ID creation and implementation.

The higher education we knew before the pandemic will not be the one that emerges post-pandemic. Leaders must meet this moment by redefining the constructs of higher education. The “Top 10 IT Issues, 2022: The Higher Education We Deserve” report released by EDUCAUSE groups the top 10 priorities into three imperatives: 1) shared vision, shared strategy; 2) student success as institutional success; and 3) sustainable business models.

As governments around the world digitize services, individuals are required not only to prove their identities, but to do so on digital channels. This is a challenge not only for people without legal ID, but also for individuals with ID documents that are hard to use digitally. Cloud-based digital ID systems can be a solution to this challenge. Plus, digital ID creates a robust scope of benefits — and cloud-based approaches to implementing these systems provide the speed, scale, and security needed for digital ID to succeed.

Whether you are a local employer, a dean at a higher education institution, or a government entity, finding and training your workforce is top of mind. As we continue to find solutions to skill, reskill, or upskill our workforce, the answer will not be found by working in silos but rather through public-private collaboration. Recently, a number of education and government leaders from across the country participated in a panel to discuss the challenges facing local state leaders and education institutions around workforce. Five key suggestions emerged as ways to improve the workforce of tomorrow.

At AWS, we see cloud computing as enabling accelerated innovation on the path to net zero carbon. That is why we recently hosted our first public webinar on Meeting Sustainability and Climate Goals with the Cloud in APAC, bringing together industry, government, and other key stakeholders, and featuring experts from 451 Research, Environment Resource Management, Intel, Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and AWS customers DBS Bank and Canva. Here are four overarching lessons for APAC policymakers.

The 2021 IMAGINE Education conference brought together education leaders and executives from across the country and around the world in an all-day event to discuss the future of education. It was my honor to deliver the keynote address to highlight some of the ways that the education community in the public sector are transforming the very essence of learning with the cloud. I was joined by Kathryn Finney, the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Genius Guild and General Partner of the Greenhouse Fund, who expressed how educators are driving innovation for their students and making the impossible, possible.