Category: Enterprise Strategy

Cloud technology is transforming the way organizations use data to make decisions, provide services to communities, and collaborate across departments and business processes. However, some public sector organizations are challenged by procurement. To help demystify the cloud procurement process, here are answers to three questions public sector procurement officials frequently ask about buying cloud.

The Poudre River Library District is a public library system in Larimer County, Colorado that serves approximately 177,000 patrons. When their integrated library system (ILS) vendor notified the Library District that the system could no longer run on their aging on-premises hardware, they were at a crossroads. After pricing out multiple options, the Library District opted to manage their own ILS migration to AWS. With an IT staff of four, the Library District completed a successful migration in six months with help from their AWS account team.

In June 2022, AWS Partner Coursera launched the annual Global Skills Report, an in-depth look at the state of skills globally. The Global Skills Report draws data from 100 million learners in more than 100 countries who have used Coursera, a global online learning platform, to develop a new skill during the past year. Building on the findings from the Global Skills Report, the following are four skills trends that workforce development leaders, like those in state and local government and education, should keep in mind as they strive to build an inclusive and competitive workforce.

The Busan Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) teamed up with the World Food Programme (WFP), the Busan IT Promotion Agency, and technology startup Nuvilab to use cloud technology to address food waste in South Korea. Using HAQM’s “Working Backwards” approach with artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data lake solutions on AWS, the team developed Zero Waste Zero Hunger (ZWZH), a program that uses artificial intelligence AI to provide data about food consumption.

How can public sector organizations help address the cloud skills gap? To discuss this, AWS recently hosted a webinar with a panel of government officials and workforce planning experts. These experts shared their success stories and offered best practices to state and local agencies looking to develop their own workforce strategies to build a robust pipeline of cloud talent. Read on for the top takeaways from the webinar.

HAQM’s Working Backwards process puts the customer at the center of discussions about designing a solution based on their needs. The City of Bellevue, Washington recently benefited from this practice through a workshop facilitated by the Arizona State University (ASU) Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC), powered by AWS. The CIC workshop provided clarity on Bellevue’s local road safety needs and how to best align its projects with national investment priorities.

SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), a statutory board under the Ministry of Education (MOE), aims to promote a culture of lifelong learning in Singapore and strengthen the country’s ecosystem of industry-relevant training and adult education. SSG provides access to high quality, industry-relevant training, and jobs and skills insights. To power their digital training portal and make sure every Singaporean has access to training resources, education opportunities, and more, SSG uses AWS.

US state and local government and education customers can get in-person no-cost training, hands-on help, and more at the AWS State and Local Learning Days. AWS will offer one-on-one support and more at two AWS State and Local Learning Days events. Built for a range of government and education customers, from mission owners to cloud technical experts to IT managers, the AWS State and Local Learning Days can help you improve your cloud knowledge and learn new ways to achieve your mission outcomes.

A common driver of public sector transformation is the potential for efficiency. This is certainly one of the benefits of digitalization. However, I want to share a story that shows why we need to balance this focus on efficiency with an understanding of how people will use our services to achieve the best results for our efforts. I walk through how agencies can approach human-centered design to create better and more effective citizen services.

Governments across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) are taking bold steps to accelerate and simplify the process for public sector agencies to migrate to the cloud and leverage its benefits. Many are prioritizing digital transformation, putting in place cloud-first policies directing government agencies to use commercial cloud services, or defining national roadmaps to enable modernization of their IT services and systems.