AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog

AWS has signed a Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) agreement with the City of Plano, Texas. This is the eighth CJIS security addendum signed by AWS with jurisdictions across the United States.

This signed addendum allows the City of Plano to leverage the benefits of AWS GovCloud (US), which includes the highest levels of information security for state and local law enforcement agencies like encryption and access control features.

“We are excited to announce that the City of Plano and the Plano Police Department have signed a CJIS Security Addendum with Amazon Web Services. This will allow us to leverage the security and scalability of the cloud so our police department and other city agencies can utilize the most innovative technologies. We look forward to being able to share our outcomes as best practices for other cities to follow,” said Bruce Glasscock, City Manager, City of Plano.

Law enforcement agencies around the country are using AWS to meet security and compliance requirements, and to leverage our broad partner ecosystem including body camera providers, digital evidence management systems, computer aided dispatch systems, video redaction software providers, and records management systems.

AWS continues to engage with the law enforcement community through venues like the Major Cities Chiefs Association Conference in Washington, DC this week, where we are a Four Star Sponsor. We look forward to working with the organization to identify and help solve public safety challenges and emerging issues using cloud technology.

To learn more about the AWS’s capabilities and resources to address this community’s unique IT needs, read about Justice and Public Safety with AWS and the growing list of jurisdictions across the United States that are working with AWS to leverage the benefits of the cloud.

A growing number of military customers are adopting AWS’s cloud services to process, store, and transmit Department of Defense (DoD) data. Within the DoD, storage offers an opportunity to reduce costs and drive efficiencies, wherever the mission may take you.

From the battlefield to a military installation to a remote airfield, AWS Snowball Edge can help tactical DoD missions as they collect data and analyze that data in remote locations.

AWS Snowball Edge is our newest 100TB data transfer device, offering highly secure, on-board storage and in-flight compute capabilities with AWS Greengrass. DoD mission owners can use AWS Snowball Edge to move massive amounts of data into and out of the AWS Cloud, use the device as a temporary storage tier for large local datasets, or seamlessly support edge workloads in remote or offline locations.

AWS Snowball Edge connects to your organization’s existing applications and infrastructure using standard storage interfaces, streamlining the data transfer process, minimizing setup and integration, and helping ensure that the applications continue to run, even when they are not able to access the cloud.

Snowball Edge

Benefits for the DoD

1. Cost Savings: In the past, collecting and analyzing data by shipping containers of compute and storage infrastructure to remote airfields could cost up to a half a million dollars. AWS Snowball Edge offers all customers a fast and inexpensive way to transfer large amounts of data both into and out of AWS.
2. Durability: Transporting containers of compute infrastructure also came with the risk of the equipment getting damaged in transit and technical problems plaguing the mission. Snowball Edge is ruggedized to be able to withstand a drop from a five-story building.
3. Scalability and elasticity: You no longer need long-standing clusters. With AWS Snowball Edge, you simply bring up a new storage cluster when you have new missions. Snowball Edge devices can transport multiple terabytes of data and multiple devices can be used in parallel to transfer petabytes of data into or out of AWS.
4. Security: AWS Snowball Edge devices use tamper-resistant enclosures, 256-bit encryption, and industry-standard Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) designed to ensure both security and full chain-of-custody for your data.

Bringing Storage and Compute to Tactical Situations

Often DoD Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms are collecting high volumes of data using highly specialized sensors. Once the data is collected, the platform, like a drone, lands on an air strip. The mission owner immediately wants to start filtering and processing the data at the air field or a nearby operations center, but they want to get the rest of the data back to the cloud for long-term storage and future use. For situations like this, they need to stand up a storage cluster quickly to process and analyze the data locally. With Snowball Edge, storage and compute are brought to these edge locations and mission owners are able to deliver a finished product to be used by military decision makers quickly and efficiently. In parallel, the data stored on the Snowball Edge can be shipped back to an AWS region to be processed by large-scale compute clusters that can quickly spin up and spin down to save costs. The data can also be securely shared with the rest of DoD or other government agencies for correlation and analysis with their own datasets.

How does it work?  

You can order AWS Snowball Edge with just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console. It arrives with your Amazon S3 buckets, AWS Lambda code, and clustering configuration pre-installed. Once the appliance arrives, connect it to your local network and set the IP address either manually or with DHCP. Finally, you verify the integrity of the Snowball Edge device and unlock it for use. You can encrypt your data prior to storing it on the Snowball Edge. Unencrypted data is never stored on the appliance. After the Snowball Edge data import job is complete, AWS performs an erasure of the Snowball appliance that follows the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guidelines for media sanitization.

Learn more about AWS Snowball Edge and other storage services for the DoD at AFCEA Cyberspace Symposium and AFCEA West in February. We will have AWS technologists on site to answer any of your questions and help to get your mission started in the cloud.

The Data-Driven Justice Initiative (DDJ), originally launched by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and now run by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, estimates that 11 million people move through America’s 3,100 local jails, many on low-level, non-violent misdemeanors, costing local governments approximately $22 billion a year. Of these non-violent offenders, 64% suffer a mental illness, 68% have a substance abuse disorder, and 44% suffer chronic health issues.

With data acquired from the Data-Driven Justice Initiative, first responders are equipped with the knowledge to most effectively resolve these non-violent situations. Once a situation is contained, officials can recommend services without arrest and treat incarceration as a last resort. For example, over the past five years, Miami Dade, Florida, has used data to create mental health de-escalation training for its police officers, resulting in more than 10,000 people being diverted from incarceration to proper medical treatment and a savings of nearly $12 million per year.

DJ Patil at re:Invent

During a keynote address at AWS re:Invent 2016, DJ Patil, former Chief Data Scientist of the United States Office of Science and Technology, said, “This year alone 11.4 million people will go through our 3,100 jails, but 95% will not go to prison. They will stay there an average of 23 days— we are cycling them.” Understanding of the data and social determinants that often lead to recidivism allows officials to employ measures to intervene and prevent citizens from returning to jail.

Patil concluded his address with three major themes:

1. People will always be greater than data. When we look at the edge cases that drive the need for this innovation, we must remember that these are people. Each case has a name, a life that needs saving. Whether it’s connecting cancer research data to find a cure or mental health data to get someone the help they need to live productively in our society, these are people we all know and issues that hit close to home.
2. Data is a force multiplier in every facet of society. The availability of data is a repeatable solution that we can apply to a public issue. The more data that we can connect, the faster we will come to solutions that will improve and save the lives of citizens.
3. The time to act is now. Patel said, “The answer isn’t in a database. The sad reality is that it’s in thousands of databases.” For many of the issues facing the healthcare community, the solution lies in connecting data that already exists in fragmented datasets.

Speaking to the technology community, Patel urged, “We have a duty to responsibly unleash the power of data for the benefit of all Americans…a technology is neither radical nor revolutionary unless it benefits every single person.”

2017 Winter Innovation Summit

As part of our continued commitment to the Data Driven Justice Initiative, AWS sponsored the 2017 Winter Innovation Summit in Salt Lake City, UT, last week. We joined over forty organizations, including city and county government officials, universities, associations, foundations, and technology companies, to continue the important work the DDJ began in 2016. This was also an opportunity for communities to share which data-driven initiatives are working in their jurisdictions.

DDJ members Middlesex County, Massachusetts and the City of Long Beach, California were among those who shared their approaches to data driven justice and related health outcomes in their communities.

“At the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office, we are on the front lines of the mental health and substance use crises plaguing our communities,” said Sheriff Peter J. Koutoujian. “By harnessing the power of data available across systems and jurisdictions, we can not only break the cycle of incarceration, but improve the lives of those afflicted with these disorders and their families. While I am proud of the programs we offer those placed with us by the courts, you shouldn’t have to go to jail to access treatment.”

According to Mayor Robert Garcia, the City of Long Beach’s effort “will bring together data from across criminal justice and health systems to identify the individuals with the highest number of contacts with police, ambulance, emergency departments, and other services, and link them to health, behavioral health, and social services in the community, with a goal of reducing overreliance on emergency healthcare and encounters with the criminal justice system.”

Tracy Colunga, the City’s Innovation Team Director, adds, “We are incredibly excited to bring the human-centered approach to public safety in Long Beach. We are proud to support the amazing men and women of our law enforcement community and work with community members to deploy multiple strategies that improve outcomes, reduce crime and further enhance community-police relations.”

Securely collect, integrate, and share sensitive information

Technology companies play an important role in helping the Data Driven Justice Initiative. At the event, companies had the opportunity to share their solutions built for the DDJ and powered by AWS.

Loom launched and demonstrated a new secure data sharing platform. Loom’s platform allows governments to securely collect, integrate, and share sensitive information, including health and public safety data. APN partner Appriss also showed how health and criminal justice data streams could be integrated to identify “super utilizers” across health and public safety programs in order to quantify costs and proactively allocate preventative resources.

Learn about Health and Human Services solutions on AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/health-and-human-services/

Michael Jackson, AWS Healthcare Strategy Lead (center) reviews Public Health solutions with US mayors: Stephanie Miner (Syracuse, NY), Bryan Barnett (Rochester Hills, MI), Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (Baltimore, MD – former), and Eileen Weir (Independence, MO) at Winter Innovation Summit 2017

This week at SatSummit, DigitalGlobe, Inc. announced a push for open data imagery to solve challenging problems that involve location, mapping, and intelligence. We spoke with Kevin Bullock, Director of Business Development at DigitalGlobe and Cristiano Giovando, Director of Technology of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.

Check out the below Q&A to learn about what they are doing to make imagery open to the public and what impact this can have on the world.

Q: Can you tell us a little about DigitalGlobe and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap?

Kevin: DigitalGlobe focuses on earth imagery and information about our changing planet. We own and operate a constellation of satellites that collect new high-resolution imagery daily. And we have the technology to extract data from that imagery, which gives our customers powerful insights to make decisions with confidence. We work with organizations, companies and governments worldwide to solve challenging problems related to economic, social and environmental changes that occur across the Earth.

Cristiano: The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) applies the principles of open source and open data sharing to humanitarian response and economic development. HOT is a global organization known for its ability to rapidly coordinate volunteers to map places impacted by disasters. Without DigitalGlobe as a key partner providing satellite imagery, there would not be HOT as we know it.

Q: Can you explain to us the purpose of the Open Data Program at DigitalGlobe?

Kevin: After a disaster, our objective is to equip every organization and every person responding or helping with the best geospatial information for the impacted area. This means both the information before the disaster and after. By creating a specific website for the Open Data Program and providing the imagery license, it gives the disaster response community clarity and confidence that DigitalGlobe will be there to support them, no matter what. With all of the chaos and uncertainty after an event, this seems like a simple thing to do where we can remove some of the chaos.

Q: How do you decide what imagery to open up to the public?

Kevin: We actually wrote a protocol that considers many factors of the disaster, including how quickly it happened and its impact, the number of people affected, and the ability of the local authorities to handle and respond to the disaster. We also recognize that each disaster is unique, so we gather as much data and information as possible to make the decision.

Q: Can you give us examples where open access to DigitalGlobe imagery has made an impact?

Cristiano: For over seven years, DigitalGlobe has been enabling HOT to make an impact through crowdsourced humanitarian mapping. Following the Haiti earthquake in January 2010, the OpenStreetMap (OSM) community rallied together for the first time to map a large disaster-affected area. Without commercial satellite imagery providers making high-resolution satellite imagery openly available for anyone to trace, it would not have been possible to map the entire affected area in such a short time. The output data provided critical navigation, damage assessment, and reference information to responders on the ground. Open imagery has also been a critical resource for humanitarian mapping responses after large disasters such as the Ebola outbreak in 2014, the Nepal earthquakes in 2015, and recently Hurricane Matthew in Haiti in 2016. Open imagery has also made a significant impact in ongoing efforts to reduce malaria in places like Mozambique, Zambia, and Swaziland; HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment in Tanzania and Kenya; and improving health commodity supply management in Tanzania.

Kevin: The typhoon that hit the Philippines in 2013 was devastating. Given how remote these islands are and their fragile infrastructure, our imagery made a huge impact. We saw villages that had been wiped away from the storm surge, so we used archive imagery to quantify how many structures had been impacted. I’ll never forget seeing the words “HELP US” spelled out in stones in front of a church.

Q: How do you expect others to build on top of or otherwise use the data you’re making available?

Cristiano: Open imagery leads to more open data. The HOT and OSM communities use that imagery to create a map that is available under an open license. This derivative data is used primarily for disaster response efforts, but other typical applications include navigation, disaster risk modelling, recovery, resilience planning and economic development projects. HOT and its partners also started using DigitalGlobe’s satellite imagery in a mobile phone application called MapSwipe that allows volunteers to rapidly screen large areas and identify specific features of humanitarian interest. This method allows responders to assess an entire region for potential disaster damage and prioritize further detailed mapping.

Kevin: The beauty of open data is the fact that it is open. So we often see developers, tech companies and creative citizens coming up with innovations using open data in a disaster response and humanitarian situation; something that they normally would not have access to or even know about!

Q: These imagery files can be quite large, and there can be a lot of them. How has AWS helped you make these files available to anyone in the world?

Cristiano: Following the Nepal earthquake, DigitalGlobe made crisis response imagery available for download via Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The scalability and high availability of AWS’s storage service provides an unparalleled advantage over traditional single-server download endpoints. HOT has been able to download and publish imagery for volunteers to start mapping within hours of it being posted on S3. In previous years, data transfer has often been the bottleneck in many humanitarian response mapping projects. On several occasions, physical hard drives had to be shipped or hand delivered to those who needed access to imagery. But now, through S3, it is replicated across regions within minutes and can be accessed by anyone.

Q: What is the best way for people who are looking for the imagery to access it?

Kevin: All the open imagery and associated vector data will be available on DigitalGlobe’s Open Data Program website. You can either download individual images or do one bulk download for an event, and all previous open data events are available as well. Also, if you want to sign up for email alerts for new activations or your organization is interested in becoming an official program partner, you can contact us through the site. We’re looking to get these data into the hands of people who need it during these crises, so any partner organizations that can help us further disseminate the data are welcome to join.

Thank you to Kevin and Cristiano for sharing their perspective on the importance of open data imagery. Learn more here.

At AWS, we often refer to the migration from on-premises infrastructure to the AWS Cloud to a “journey.”  Many of our customers follow a common path to the cloud, leveraging a robust offering of tools, products, and AWS support services to make the migration as simple as possible for everyone involved. Cities like the City of Chicago, City of McKinney, and City of Asheville serve as great examples of how moving to the AWS Cloud can help meet the changing needs of citizens. But how did they get started?

Starting the Journey

In a recent post, we discussed the similarities between startups and small cities and how to take a startup approach to your city. Whether you need help defining your organization’s roadmap to cloud computing, transforming application development, or deploying mission-critical workloads at scale, AWS offers guidance throughout your journey.

And while every organization’s journey is unique, they all begin in the same place: determining understanding of and appetite for cloud. Some of the key questions we encourage organizations to ask include: Do you have limited knowledge of the cloud? Do you have security and compliance concerns? Do you need to develop an efficient migration strategy? Or do you need to focus on cost optimization?

Based on the knowledge and resources available, your agency will fall into one of four categories of organizational maturity:

1. Project
2. Foundation
3. Migration
4. Optimization

Drawing your Map

Once you know the stage you are in, you can move through the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF). The CAF acts like a roadmap for organizations migrating to the cloud. It provides organizations and agencies with structured help to develop an efficient and effective plan for their cloud adoption journey. The AWS CAF breaks down the complicated process of migration planning into manageable areas of focus.

Just like a startup, government agencies of all sizes use the CAF to determine their roadmap and start their journey toward cost savings and operational efficiencies.

After a roadmap is developed, AWS establishes governance models that leverage IT decision makers within the agency and then builds out a framework that adheres to the policies, principles, and guidelines that drive consistent IT decision making.

To learn more about how your city, county, or local government can realize the benefits of the cloud, visit https://aws.amazon.com/stateandlocal/.

From minor regulatory adjustments to landmark reforms, state and local Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies are constantly adapting to changing requirements to provide vital benefits for the citizens they serve.

Policy changes or initiatives to improve social and clinical outcomes often require a modernization of systems to manage eligibility determination, benefits enrollment, claims adjudication, and other mission-critical processes. Building these systems in the cloud affords organizations increased speed, agility, flexibility, and cost savings that frees up budget to support innovation.

So while perspectives on the best path to an optimized healthcare system may vary, there are important trends to consider as agencies continue to work to deliver a more personalized and digital experience for their citizens.

Important healthcare solutions may lie in disparate datasets.

At the core of these health-policy initiatives is data pulled from countless systems and organizations. Agencies that are able to unlock this data to share within and across organizations realize the most efficient use of resources. Big data and analytics allow HHS agencies to become increasingly collaborative and to generate insights that will identify trends in utilization, quality metrics, and incidents of redundancy. For example, American Heart Association’s Precision Medicine Platform will include a vast array of curated datasets that are centrally stored, easily searched and accessible, and managed on the AWS Cloud. The platform enables researchers and clinicians to aggregate and analyze a rich breadth and depth of data and, in turn, allow researchers to uncover critical cardiovascular disease insights that translate into medical innovations and positively impact millions of lives.

One size does not fit all.

From prenatal disease screening to targeted cancer treatments, precision medicine has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by changing the roles of providers, patients, and payers. Rather than focusing primarily on treating chronic diseases, the unique genetic makeup of each individual will allow for personalized medicine.

Americans are getting older.

The size of our senior population is growing at a faster rate than ever before. Every day, ten thousand Americans celebrate their 65th birthday, and most of them are managing multiple chronic health conditions. While this pace is expected to continue into 2019 and beyond, the pool of healthcare providers is not expanding nearly as quickly. The role of technology will continue to increase as it is leveraged to facilitate care remotely, mitigate impacts of the healthcare provider shortage, and empower our older citizens to live independently in their homes and communities. Once again, agencies who are able to access and analyze datasets in the cloud gather invaluable intelligence on where their resources are most effectively applied.

To be prepared for the uncertainty of changing healthcare laws and regulations, health and human services programs at every level of government will continue to need modern and adaptable technologies to deliver effective services to citizens.

The AWS Cloud works with HHS agencies to provide the flexibility and agility to remain futureproof. Learn more about AWS for Health and Human Services here.

As we all try to keep focused on our New Year’s Resolutions, here’s some inspiration from some of the nonprofits who use the AWS Cloud for social good. These organizations focus their efforts year-round for the betterment of people around the world.

Whether they fight for the environment, work to achieve medical breakthroughs, preserve the arts, or focus on building social good, AWS can help organizations pay for only the technology they use, freeing up IT spend to grow their capabilities for the long term. When an IT burden is lifted through AWS, the nonprofit organization is able to put their time and effort to make the world a better place.

The four mission-driven organizations highlighted in this first entry in a series focus on helping global citizens, while we focus on supporting their IT.

Thorn – Digital Defenders of Children Dedicated to Driving Technology Innovation

Thorn’s mission is to drive technology innovation to fight human trafficking. They work to provide law enforcement with intelligence and leads about suspected human trafficking networks and individuals, with the ultimate goal of identifying victims and connecting them with resources. Spotlight, powered by Thorn and Digital Reasoning, processes and analyzes the data from 150,000 ads per day based on risk profiles provided by law enforcement. Since October 2014, they have analyzed 65 million ads and 400 million images in Spotlight. Over 3,200 law enforcement officers use Spotlight in all 50 states. They have also gone mobile. Daily Spotlight users report a 60% time savings in human trafficking investigations.

“AWS has been critical to our ability to deliver a world-class investigations tool that has helped officers across the country identify thousands of trafficking victims faster than ever before. We are grateful for this support that allows us to not worry about stability and storage – but instead focus our energy on constant improvement and innovation that helps stop trafficking and abuse,” said Julie Cordua, CEO, Thorn.

Check out the video and SlideShare presentation from Thorn’s session at re:Invent 2016.

Federation for Internet Alerts (FIA) – Leveraging the Internet to maximize the effectiveness of emergency alerts

FIA is a nonprofit organization that began in 2013 to distribute official child abduction alerts and tornado warnings across devices throughout the United States to those in the alerting area. FIA launched a working “Alert Hub” on the AWS Cloud in late 2015 in an effort to further standardize this practice and expand the availability of these alerts.  The reliability, speed, and reach of the Alert Hub is transforming the way vital information is spread through local communities.  The Alert Hub transmits free, life-critical emergency hazard information in under 200 milliseconds across the world to subscribers who can then use this data to disseminate emergency information to any affected area through use of Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). This free public service is always on, and has securely ingested, validated and distributed 720,000 official CAP alerts to subscribers.

“AWS is vital to FIA, providing cloud computing technology that aids in the transmission of official life-critical alerts,” says Jason Bier, FIA’s President.  “With the AWS Cloud, we are able to offer free subscriber access to the Alert Hub. We are encouraged by how many for-profit businesses and individual innovators are incorporating the Alert Hub into new and existing technologies to help save lives.”

Learn more here.

The World Bank Group – Working for a World Free of Poverty

The World Bank Group has set two goals for the world to achieve by 2030: end extreme poverty by decreasing the percentage of people living on less than $1.90 a day to no more than 3% and promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40% for every country.

In their work to eradicate extreme poverty, the World Bank Group needed modern technology and technology fit for purpose. They now use the AWS Cloud to disseminate information to their staff anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

“We have spent the last three and a half years executing on that plan. We have ripped out and upgraded almost every single application and platform in the Bank. We have completely changed the technology landscape,” said Stephanie von Friedeburg, Group Chief Information Officer and Vice President, Information and Technology Solutions, The World Bank Group.

Watch this video of Stephanie von Friedeburg talk about the organization’s cloud-first strategy and their transition to the cloud.

UNICEF – Imagine

UNICEF’s Imagine project brings together content from around the world as people upload videos of themselves singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” At our AWS Symposium in 2015, David Ohana, Chief of Brand, UNICEF, talked about running workloads in the cloud and enabling better services for UNICEF.

“To make sure that the world we imagine for children is heard loud and clear by key decision makers, the UNICEF Imagine team is hugely grateful to the AWS team for their continued support of this project. We chose AWS for the scalability, availability, and global reach. And as a result, we now we have some peace of mind that this idea may work,” said David.

Watch this video where David shares how UNICEF is reaching a global audience in a more agile and cost effective way.

Inspiring work from our nonprofits showing the intersection of technology and social good! Check back in with our upcoming posts where we will share more about how our customers use the cloud to achieve their missions, from saving the environment to achieving medical breakthroughs. And visit our “Nonprofits and NGOs in the Cloud” page here.

The AWS Research Initiative (ARI) brings Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) together to spur innovation in Big Data research. Under the program on Critical Techniques, Technologies and Methodologies for Advancing Foundations and Applications of Big Data Sciences and Engineering (BIGDATA) a total of $26.5 million will be funded by NSF and the Office of Financial Research (OFR) in addition to $3 million in AWS promotional credits for a period of 3-4 years.

The program seeks novel approaches in computer science, statistics, computational science, and mathematics, along with innovative applications in domain science, including social and behavioral sciences, education, biology, engineering, and the physical sciences that lead to the further development of interdisciplinary data science.

Under the ARI program, AWS and NSF will respectively support and collaborate on groundbreaking research from all qualified scientists, engineers, and educators. Now techniques and technologies like cloud-based Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data analytics, and High Performance Computing (HPC) will help researchers maximize the value of their NSF grants to accelerate the pace of innovation.

“BIGDATA research provides a paradigm shift by putting smart in everything we do today including smart home, smart city, smart cars, smart health, and more. We are excited to collaborate with the NSF to foster innovations in the field,” said Sanjay Padhi, Ph.D, AWS Representative to the NSF.

There are two categories of proposals:

• Foundations (F): those developing or studying fundamental theories, techniques, methodologies, and technologies of broad applicability to big data problems, motivated by specific data challenges and requirements.
• Innovative Applications (IA): those engaged in translational activities that employ new big data techniques, methodologies, and technologies to address and solve problems in specific application domains. Projects in this category must be collaborative, involving researchers from domain disciplines and one or more methodological disciplines (computer science, statistics, mathematics, simulation and modeling, and more).

The AWS Research Initiative with NSF provides up to $3M in AWS promotional credits over a period of up to four years, or for the duration of the initiative. AWS will offer many services through ARI grants, including compute and data services. NSF will be responsible for selecting grant awardees.

“In today’s era of data-driven science and engineering, we are pleased to work with the AWS Research Initiative via the NSF BIGDATA program to provide cloud resources for our Nation’s researchers to foster and accelerate discovery and innovation,”  said Dr. Jim Kurose, Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE).

To get started on your application, here are some cloud resources and tools for grant applicants:

• Big Data on AWS
• Artificial Intelligence on AWS
• Machine Learning on AWS
• Amazon Deep Learning (MXNET)
• High Performance Computing on AWS
• AWS Cloud Credits for Research
• AWS Research & Technical Computing Tools

To see how to apply, who qualifies, and more, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/research-and-technical-computing/nsf-aribd/

Learn more about the program here.

AWS was proud to help sponsor the 2016 Girls Who Code (GWC) Summer Immersion Programs for 1,500 high-school aged girls. To enable their work, AWS built a custom curriculum for the Girls Who Code teams to learn and build their projects in the cloud. At the conclusion of the seven-week program, students formed small teams and built web-based projects using the skills they gained during the summer.

A team of AWS experts reviewed the projects of the student teams who incorporated AWS into their projects. Two project teams were then selected to come to AWS re:Invent 2016 in Las Vegas. This provided students a chance to learn more about cloud computing, experience a large-scale tech conference, and share with other cloud enthusiasts their AWS-powered projects and passion for programming. The two selected projects were:

• The Mercer of Durham, Seattle Girls Who Code Summer Camp (2 students): The Mercer of Durham is a “choose-your-own-adventure” game played on the Amazon Echo through the cloud-based Alexa voice service. The purpose of the game is to play an adventure game through the power of your voice, similar to role playing. It was inspired by the text-based “choose-your-own-adventure-game” that the group created in class on Python.
• Kokua, Boston Girls Who Code Summer Camp (5 students): Kokua is a website that is used as a “cold caller” to select random students and as a random group generator to allow students the opportunity to work with different peers. In addition, the team created a bar graph displaying the statistics of how many times a student’s name was called. Kokua differs from traditional cold-calling devices because it organizes multiple functions into one tool that is easy for teachers to use. Coded using JavaScript, HTML, PHP, and CSS, Kokua saves teachers from worrying about who to call on next or keeping track of who is not participating.

“Attending AWS re:Invent gave us the opportunity to interact with world-class programmers and engineers and a chance to share our final project from Girls Who Code. Thank you AWS and GWC for sponsoring us!” shared the team from Kokua.

AWS is committed to helping build the pipeline of women and underrepresented communities in tech. As a part of this effort, we held a Diversify Tech panel at re:Invent. In the panel, experts in the field of diversity, equality, equity, inclusion, and innovation discussed actionable steps we can take, both individually and as companies, to improve diversity in tech. The Girls Who Code teams also presented their projects at the end of this panel, and received an opportunity to get to know Girls Who Code VP of Strategy and Innovation, Leah Gilliam, who moderated the discussion. You can watch the full panel here:

Amazon Web Services has a strong commitment to the needs of our customers across sectors in the UK. That’s the driving reason why we recently launched a new Region in the London area. Learn more about the new Region here.

Cities like London are quickly embracing innovation and developing new ways for engaging and serving citizens. From transportation to planning to utilities, cities are using cloud computing to transform the way they interact with citizens and think about their future. Both government and commercial organizations are using the cloud to provide information and deliver services to their customers and citizens. Learn more about the organizations you know that are already working to bring you smarter, more flexible services in and around London. Read more public sector case studies here.

AWS works with organisations around London to serve citizens more effectively and reach broader constituents. Learn more below:

• Helping Londoners heat their homes from anywhere – Hive (which runs on AWS) gives Londoners more control on how they heat their homes.
• Life in the cloud is always sunny – The Met Office looked to AWS when they wanted to deploy their weather and climate forecasting systems in the cloud, safely and efficiently.
• Keeping London moving takes more than trains and buses –  AWS and Transport for London work together to help Londoners better manage the daily commute.
• Helping Londoners on their path to university – Working together, UCAS and AWS are improving the university application experience.
• Introducing your smartphone to an even smarter bank – Monzo is building a new kind of bank, designed for your smartphone.
• If you are running a GIS on a CMS, AWS can help – Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency and AWS are finding novel ways to rapidly develop and deploy new services

Register now to get started on your digital journey to future government

When it comes to digital government projects, where do you get started? How do you train your staff and align your technology strategy with the ever-increasing pace of citizen requirements?

To answer these questions (and learn even more), join us the week of January 23rd  and week of March 6th, 2017 at the Urban Innovation Center, where AWS and Future Cities Catapult will offer discussions, roundtables, and workshops as part of the London Innovation Series. Customize your own itinerary and learn how to build citizen services in a new and fresh way. Learn more and register now.

Continue to learn about how AWS is helping Londoners every day here and check out the “Webminster” station in the photos below.

Also in London, AWS launched AWS re:Start, a training and job placement program for the UK to educate young adults as well as those leaving the Armed Forces, Reservists, Veterans, and their spouses on the latest software development and cloud computing technologies. Learn more here.