AWS Government, Education, & Nonprofits Blog

On the topic of resilience—the ability to withstand, respond and adjust to chronic or acute stressors— there are a lot of data sets out there on social ecological systems, human environment, stressors, shocks, natural disasters, and conflict. The challenge is these data sets are often stored in silos or confined to the academic community.

However, if we could analyze existing data to give insights into what kind of investment and intervention countries should make, then more people could become resilient.

Resilience Atlas brings together 60 data sets for governments and scientists: 12TB of data now available

We had the opportunity to talk with Alex Zvoleff, Director of Data Science, and Sandy Andelman, Chief Scientist at Conservation International.

Conservation International, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, released a new online tool, the Resilience Atlas. The Atlas is designed to build understanding of the extent and severity of stresses and disasters affecting rural livelihoods, production systems, and ecosystems and how different types of assets, from natural capital, to financial capital and social networks affect their ability to thrive and even transform in the face of adversity.

For the first time, data from satellites, ground-based biophysical measurements and household surveys – from more than 60 of the best available data sets (including the NASA NEX data set) totaling over 12 terabytes – have been integrated, analyzed and made available in an easy-to-use map interface. By integrating these disparate data sets, the Atlas connects themes and perspectives so that people making important investment, development and security decisions can easily see the full picture.

What is the challenge you are trying to solve with the Resilience Atlas?

Sandy: In order to thrive, societies need to exhibit resilience. Evidence-based decision-making is a huge challenge in areas where data are inaccessible, and the Resilience Atlas hopes to help make essential information available in a digestible form to governments, communities, donors and businesses who are struggling to manage the risks and uncertainties associated with climate change, conflict, population growth, and other stressors.  It can provide them with insights on the magnitude of the challenge and on which kinds of interventions and investments will make a difference. By creating a system, instead of just providing the answers, people can reach their own insights with the publicly provided data.

How was the map created?

Alex: Faced with large amounts of data volume (12 TB) during work on the Atlas, we had to be able to handle the large volume, the intense computation, and be able to access the data on demand. Prior to considering the cloud to host the Atlas, a lot of the data sets were held by individual researchers. Though a few were made available in publications, they were not easy to access, not easy to crop or download, and in general a lot of the data was not publicly available or it needed specialized knowledge to decipher. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) spot instances were used for processing and bringing up a large fleet of servers at one time; 120 servers were used in parallel. Amazon EC2 made it possible to do in only a few days what would have taken over a month. Additionally, we have the ability to automate processes as more data sets covering different trends become of interest to the community. All of this is made possible by the cloud computing infrastructure of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

How does the map impact human life?

Sandy: The hope is that this map provides insights to how extensive and how severe the different kinds of shocks people face are in more than forty countries in the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. For example, with increasing climate variability or financial market shocks, the atlas can give insights into the particular systems and then to try to shift decision making to a more evidence-based approach pulling together the best data to get the complete picture. By mining data, users can understand which kinds of interventions and investments have actual evidence for their effectiveness. Another example is the Journey tool. One focuses on Ethiopian pastoralists, guiding users first to a map showing where they live and then exploring stressors they face, such as changing rainfall patterns that threaten the viability of pastoralism as a livelihood and the lack of investments in human capital, such as literacy and access information, which can hinder them to adapt or transform.

What is the goal of the Atlas in relation to governments, communities, donors and businesses?

Sandy: We can work with governments to use the Atlas as a planning tool. Officials can use the data already in the atlas or they can work with us to put their finer-scale data into the Atlas as a tool to assess resilience and to inform better investment decisions. The open access to this data gives a better understanding of important issues like climate change, flooding, droughts to more people. What was missing before was the integrated picture and more and more in the world we live in today we need a system perspective, because decisions about poverty alleviation are not independent from decisions about conservation and what kind of agriculture to invest in. The Atlas is unique because it pulls together all the different data sets that people might be familiar individually with and puts them together to give the community the full picture to make their important decisions. Determining cause and effect is complex, hence why it requires multiple disciplines and experts to look at problems from multiple angles.

What is the user experience like with the Atlas?

Alex: With the “Journeys” feature, the Atlas guides users on how to tell stories with data, enabling users to explore the specific data that are relevant to the questions they want to answer. Instead of telling them the answers, the Atlas helps them to discover the answers for themselves. It has a simple three-step approach:

1. Select geography and system of interest to produce a map of how it is distributed.
2. Identify the stressors and shocks affecting system, and their extent and severity.
3. Explore what kinds of assets (such as natural, human, social, financial, and manufactured capital) might increase resilience.

Users can share their insights by sharing map links via social media or by embedding Atlas data within their own webpages. All of this data is openly available without a fee and the site supports API access for private industries, allowing a broader audience to work with the data to build other tools.

Go ahead and explore the map here.
AWS also provides public data sets, visit www.aws.amazon.com/opendata to learn more.

The year 1776 is celebrated in the United States as the official beginning of the country’s freedom, with the Declaration of Independence issued on July 4.

Taking this year as inspiration for its namesake, 1776 is a global incubator and seed fund helping startups transform industries that impact millions of lives every day— in the areas of education, energy and sustainability, health, transportation, and cities.

To encourage startups to envision innovative ideas, 1776 created the Challenge Cup for the most promising, startups to share their vision on a global stage.

What is the Challenge Cup?

Each year, 1776 hosts a worldwide tournament called the Challenge Cup. Together with partners and over 50 incubator hosts around the world, 1776 will discover the most promising, highly scalable startups that are poised to solve the major challenges of our time.

Startups advance through three rounds: Local, Regional and Global Finals. All of the regional winners and a host of wild cards will be invited to participate in the Challenge Cup Global Finals next June in Washington, D.C. They will compete for over $1 million in prizes, as well as spend time with the investors, customers, media and other key connections that can help them succeed on a global scale.

The power to change the world

From the spark of an idea to the first customer to IPO and beyond, the world’s most progressive startups build and grow their businesses on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

We believe entrepreneurs have the power to change the world, and we are excited to partner with 1776 and support others who are dedicating their entrepreneurial journey to the industries that matter most to our lives — education, energy, health, transportation, food, and more. Throughout the Challenge Cup, we will provide winners of the competitions with AWS credits that can be used on eligible cloud services to help them innovate using cloud technology.

We see major opportunities for tech entrepreneurship, particularly for new businesses that need to be enabled locally, from a technology perspective. At AWS, we are committed to improving tech education around the world and want to continue to fuel talent and trained resources. We need to create the right environment for mentorship, between individuals and between businesses. Together, we can bring the right tools, technology, and training to reinvent the business ecosystem with cloud computing technology that allows for economic growth and world-changing outcomes.

We agree with 1776 that the Challenge Cup is much more than a competition — it’s a movement of startups bringing world-changing ideas to life. By working together, we can unleash the creative power of collaboration and technology.

“Our partners are part of this global convening of entrepreneurs and are an integral part of the Challenge Cup. By making it possible for startups to build solutions with minimal capital costs, Amazon Web Service has been a powerful catalyst to the explosion in startup activity around the world. AWS is committed to supporting startups that are impacting essential human needs and we are thrilled to have them be a part of this year’s tournament as one of our global partners,” Evan Burfield, 1776 co-founder said.

From D.C. to Nairobi to Singapore, we can’t wait to see what ideas these startups from around the world will be bring to the competition. Follow the action at #1776Challenge. Looking to attend an event? Register here.

A few weeks ago, we had the chance to attend the world’s largest gathering of earth scientists at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Earth Sciences Conference.

More and more, research in the areas of climate change, agricultural resilience and space exploration rely on access to computing resources in the cloud. Because the cloud makes it easy to share massive amounts of data and allows them to only pay for the computing resources they need, they can accelerate their pace of research while reducing costs.

Last year at the AGU Conference, we announced Landsat on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a service to make Landsat data available for anyone to access from Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Today, over 250,000 Landsat 8 scenes are freely available from Landsat on AWS. All Landsat 8 scenes from 2015 are available, along with a selection of cloud-free scenes from 2013 and 2014. All new Landsat 8 scenes are made available each day (~680 per day), often within hours of production.

Available near on-demand IT resources

Landsat on AWS is designed to allow fast access to Landsat data via a RESTful interface, reducing the time required for analysis. The data shared via Amazon S3 can be transferred programmatically and quickly to AWS cloud computing resources, and researchers can analyze data without needing to download it or store it themselves.

Landsat on AWS makes each band of each Landsat scene available as a stand-alone GeoTIFF, and scene metadata are available as text and JSON files. These individual files allow efficient and targeted data access. Landsat on AWS GeoTIFFs have “internal tiling,” which allows users to use HTTP range GET requests to access 512-pixel squares within each scene. This allows highly targeted access to data based on geography.

Half a year, half a billion requests

Within the first 150 days of the launch of Landsat on AWS (19 March 2015 to 16 August 2015), Landsat imagery and metadata were requested over 500 million times, globally.

The most requested WRF PATH/ROW combination is 040/036, which includes the southern California high desert and the location of the 2015 Lake Fire. The scar of the fire is rust colored in the visualization below, which is based on data acquired on 15 July 2015. This false color composite visualization was made in minutes with Snapsat, a web application built on AWS.

AGU attendees who learned about Landsat on AWS were eager to start using it themselves, sharing it with their students, or in using Amazon S3 to share similar data sets.

Learn how to access Landsat on AWS at http://aws.amazon.com/public-data-sets/landsat/

For the final installment of our AWS Military Fellowship Q&A series, we have the interview with Master Sergeant Kelly Butler (KB), U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

KB: I began my journey as a combat engineer and was changed over to a government acquisition specialist in 2009. I have been stationed in Louisiana, Hawaii, and Illinois recently. This specific program has been around for a while and one of my previous supervisors completed this program and recommended it to me. Seeing value in working with industry, I submitted my application and went through the process and was eventually assigned to AWS.

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the Department of Defense (DoD)?

KB: I plan to engage senior AWS management to better understand the Senior Manager level input into strategies for project planning, project execution, and the procurement function throughout all phases. I also intend on learning about corporate culture, policies, and about AWS contracting/procurement processes during my time here.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

KB: Amazon is customer obsessed. And this can be translated to my life within the DoD as being warfighter obsessed. Basically everything we do is for the warfighter to help keep us safe. Specifically in my day-to-day duties within AWS, I am learning about processes to move quickly and efficiently. These processes can be very helpful within the DoD.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

KB: Within the Army we live by leadership, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. As far as being a soldier with my acquisition background, I am able to relate to the Amazon Leadership Principles. I notice that this group operates as a team and practices selfless service.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

KB: I have enjoyed working with outstanding people in the organization. I feel like a member of the team, since everyone is willing to share knowledge and experiences. I am set up for success during my training here, and am able to take initiative on projects that are important to me. And since I am not coming from an IT background, I am enjoying learning about the different services that AWS provides.

Previously we featured our discussions with Lieutenant Colonel Maria Schneider, U.S. Army Acquisition Officer and Captain James Thomas, U.S. Airforce Communications Officer.

We are so thankful for all of the fellows’ insight and for sharing their experiences with us. Looking forward to the great work they will do here at AWS and beyond.

The new world of mobility and being always on has encouraged organizations of all sizes to adopt the scalable, cost-efficient cloud computing infrastructure. Cloud computing allows for greater speed and flexibility than was ever thought possible, ushering in a new era of productivity and innovation in the public sector.

At the forefront of innovation, our customers, including Healthcare.gov and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), are leveraging the cloud to achieve their missions. Whether they are striving to scale a website for millions of users or are working to keep citizens safe, cloud computing helps them to move faster and reduce costs.

As we showcased in a previous post, Sue Gordon, deputy director of the NGA, said her agency has adopted cloud infrastructure technology “and now we’re going to put it to a test.” In government, deployment “is a balance between speed and accuracy…between national security and civil liberty, between unclassified and classified. With the help of partners like AWS, I cannot wait to see what we do.”

To read more about the world-changing successes of our customers, check out The Washington Post article, “Cloud is the new normal: Public agencies upgrade speed, agility and security.” More of these articles will be coming in the next few months, so keep checking back here for the latest Washington Post coverage.

In October, we announced that the real-time feed and full historical archive of original resolution (Level II) NEXRAD data is freely available on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for anyone to use. The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) is a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors.

Early adopters have used the data to cut their product development time and ask new questions about weather-related phenomena. Today, we’re excited to share two new tools that make it even easier for you to analyze NEXRAD data and incorporate it into your workflows.

WeatherPipe for archive analysis

Before NEXRAD on AWS, it was impossible to access the full NEXRAD Level II archive on demand. This limited the types of analysis that researchers could perform with the data. Dr. Michael Baldwin, an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University, recalls his difficulties with obtaining funding for NEXRAD-related research because it was deemed “technically impossible” to get enough data to perform the analysis.

He said, “As soon as I heard about NEXRAD on AWS, I got very excited about the impact for science. Having the archive available on demand on AWS opens a new world of possibilities. I’m excited to dust off that proposal and incorporate NEXRAD into my research.”

Baldwin turned to his colleague Stephen Harrell to help make it easier for students and researchers to analyze the NEXRAD data. This led to the development of WeatherPipe, an open source java tool that streamlines the process of running a MapReduce job with NEXRAD data on AWS.

WeatherPipe marshals the NEXRAD data into usable data structures and runs the job in Amazon Elastic MapReduce (EMR). The output is a NetCDF file that you can display in Unidata’s Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) and other visualization tools.

Harrell, who works in Purdue’s research computing office and is completing a degree in the Computer Science department, worked with three classmates (Lala Vaishno De, Hanqi Du, and Xiaoyang Lin) to develop the WeatherPipe prototype in a matter of weeks. They’ve open sourced it to allow anyone to use the tool and contribute to the code.

Currently, the tool produces average radar reflectivity over time. Next, Harrell and Baldwin plan to use the tool to run more advanced and specific analyses, such as storm identification and classification. Ultimately, Baldwin wants to create a predictive model for high-impact weather events, such as tornadoes.

Notifications for event-based processing

For many NEXRAD users, it’s important to get new data as soon as it’s available. This is true for both the “volume scan” archive files (the data collected by the Doppler radar site as it scans the atmosphere) and the “chunks” data (smaller packages of data that are quickly transmitted as a real-time feed).

One of the top requests from early users was for an easier way to incorporate the NEXRAD data into event-driven workflows. Today, we’re excited to announce that notifications are now available for both types of data.

We have set up public Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) topics for the “chunks” and archive data that create a notification for every new object added to the Amazon S3 buckets. To start, you can subscribe to these notifications using Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) and AWS Lambda. This means you can automatically add new real-time and near-real-time NEXRAD data into a queue or trigger event-based processing if the data meets certain criteria, such as geographic location.

Visit our NEXRAD on AWS page for information on subscribing to these SNS topics and incorporating them into workflows. We’re excited to see what you do with this new capability!

Getting started with NEXRAD on AWS

In addition to these new tools, you can find tutorials from Unidata, The Climate Corporation, and CartoDB on our NEXRAD on AWS page to help you get started using NEXRAD on AWS. Unidata has also made the NEXRAD Level II archive data available via their THREDDS Data Server and you can also browse the archive contents via the AWS JavaScript S3 Explorer.

Educators, researchers, and students can also apply for free AWS credits to take advantage of the utility computing platform offered by AWS, along with public data sets such as NEXRAD on AWS. If you have a research project that could take advantage of NEXRAD on AWS, you can apply for an AWS Grant.

We’d love to feature more tools and stories. Tell us how you’re using the data via the NEXRAD on AWS page!

With a drastically changing technology landscape, Sue Gordon, Deputy Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), explained during the customer spotlight at AWS’s re:Invent conference how we must all adapt to execute our missions. In recent issues of this blog, we have heard from a nonprofit (Quorum), government-funded not-for-profit corporation in Canada (MPAC), and NGA rounds out the federal government customer segment from this event.

NGA delivers world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, warfighters, intelligence professionals and first responders. Sue Gordon’s perspective is that NGA “provides the content and context so the nation can know the truth, see beyond the horizon, and be able to act before events dictate.”

Is she speaking of spy satellites? Sure. But if NGA is going to fulfill its mandate to know the earth, show the way, and understand the world now and in the future, Gordon believes they are going to have to bring a lot more. NGA is in its 20th year and the mission is as vital as ever.

There is absolutely nothing about the mission that is not still valid today, but the conditions in which NGA must execute its mission have changed.

From the beginning

For most of their history, intelligence agencies have been a sturdy, strong (somewhat isolated) house on the prairie. They collected data and stored it in stovepipes. They dealt with issues that were essentially constant. Their customers were a fairly specific set, and although they communicated with each other, it was point-to-point in a very secure manner. But at the time of the attacks of September 11th, the world changed.

Everything was different; it was complex, and chaotic. Data was exploding around the world. And it came at a time where the intelligence community needed to know so much more.

The nature of NGA’s customers and their needs changed.  In order for NGA to be successful, it would require adaptation to the new landscape and movement away from the isolated model of years past.

For example, even the most fundamental element of NGA’s craft—geography—requires new thinking. Borders may look the same as they did in the atlases studied in school, but there is much more going on beyond that. Cultures, relationships, and networks are also vital to truly understanding geography. These microtrends help put what can be seen into the context of what people need to know.

Simply put, what got us here won’t get us there.

Using data

In late 2014 and early 2015, NGA played a behind-the-scenes role in addressing the Ebola crisis. NGA gave the world access to important geospatial data, which was leveraged by medics and international workers to help solve the problem. Since then, this type of information, which has expanded to include data focused on the Nepal earthquake among other data sets impacting the world, is now more routinely made available to the public. With source code and applications, you can use the NGA’s data as well as your own to make important discoveries.

NGA uses AWS and partners, by way of the cloud, to fill in knowledge gaps to fulfill its mission, which is often less secretive than that of other intelligence agencies. “It is key to what we must do, because we must succeed in the open,” Gordon said.

NGA needs a public-private partnership to make the most of the technology available. Industry brought them the cloud infrastructure, but NGA was able to test the technology and use it in innovative ways.

“Being in the government, we can’t pursue things blindly. We have to be sure,” Gordon said, “It is a matter of balance between speed and accuracy, crowdsource and pedigree, national security and civil liberties, classified and unclassified.”

NGA has a compelling mission, a sure need, insurmountable obstacles, and an incredible opportunity.

Learn how NGA adapted to fulfill its mission in this video.

As part of our commitment to our military, we had the opportunity to sit down with our three AWS Military fellows during their first few months at AWS (learn more about this program in our post here). Last week you read our Q&A blog with Lieutenant Colonel Maria Schneider, U.S. Army Acquisition Officer, as she talked about her experience within the Department of Defense (DoD), her goals for her time at AWS, and what she has learned so far.

Our next interview is with Captain James Thomas (JT), U.S. Airforce Communications Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

JT: My career field within the Air Force led me to look into the slots available within the IT portion of the program that would place me with AWS. Coming from a career in the military, I was interested in how innovation happened on the commercial side of the fence. My goal was to take this experience with industry and bring it back to the DoD. I applied in May, found out in December, and in the summer I packed my bags in England and moved here to start with Amazon in September as my new duty station. I hope to capitalize on this experience and use it at my next assignment to shape DoD’s adoption of commercial cloud services. The DoD is going through an education time with cloud and small pockets have adopted. With my interest and knowledge gained, I hope to help alleviate roadblocks wherever my next assignment takes me.

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the DoD?

JT: During my time here, I am focusing on entire aspects of the AWS Cloud and how to operate and deploy. I am working to learn the exact security policies that are behind it, key concerns, and compliance and acquisition requirements. Mainly, I want to understand what is happening on this side so that when I go back on the other side of the fence, I am able to help realize the benefits of the cloud for the DoD.  Before I arrived at AWS, I dealt with data center management and different network enclaves in the DoD network, which connected over into cloud. Now I am learning the specific tools needed for the secure operations of a commercial cloud.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

JT:  I am amazed by the pace of innovation, and that can’t be copied. Everyone thinks they can do some innovative things, but not everyone can at the speed and pace that is done here. This pace of innovation coupled with the management framework, leads to success. This is similar to the military construct I am used to, but there is a lack of micromanagement here, which breeds innovation.  We are given the freedom to get the work done. And looking at Amazon’s Leadership Principle of “Think Big,” I plan to bring this mentality back with me.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

JT: The Air Force core values are integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. These values ensure we deliver results, which is a key Leadership Principle at AWS. I hope to copy and paste this mentality, and continue to deliver results as best and as fast as we can.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

JT: I enjoy learning about the technical set up and services, but my general excitement about working for AWS is that I am a part of something big, and I have the opportunity to contribute to something big. I see the benefits of this technology in the military every day, and I love being a part of it. I am inspired to do better work each day.

We are very appreciative for the fellows’ insights and for the time they took to share their experiences. Stay tuned for our third and final interview with Master Sergeant Kelly Butler, U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer, and more information about how to apply to become an AWS Military Fellow.

The dramatic shift in resources available to students in today’s modern classrooms brings more possibilities in teaching styles. What kind of computer classes did you take while in school? From old-school typing classes to cloud-based learning, students now have access to tools to keep up with the changing technology landscape. To be job ready after graduation, the entrepreneurs, workforce, and researchers of tomorrow are now empowered with access to cloud-related learning endeavors while at school.

One example of bringing the cloud to the classroom is in the teaching style of Zach Ives, professor in the Department of Computer & Information Science at UPenn, in collaboration with Professor Andreas Haeberlen.

UPenn students access cloud resources with help from AWS Educate

The Computer and Information Science department at UPenn offers a wide range of IT courses to undergraduate and graduate students. The school took advantage of resources provided through AWS Educate to give its students access to high-performance computing resources for classes, such as web systems, mobile-game creation, and cloud computing. By accessing AWS services, the students can experience building and deploying large, sophisticated cloud systems, giving them the experience for real-world jobs.

Watch the video here.

For UPenn, AWS Educate has been transformative because it changed the ability to offer assignments and projects that have a large component. Instead of being limited to only one machine per student, Professor Ives was able to take advantage of 100 machines at every student’s disposal to build large-scale courses with substantial projects, such as going from theories like web crawling and distributed systems to implementation. The web service capabilities that AWS offers are powerful, scalable, and cost-efficient. It also allows different students to be isolated from one another, so one student cannot crash all of the services that the other student is using.

Professor Ives built a course around the concept of having students build their own Facebook (for the school) from scratch. Through giving students real-life cloud tools it empowers them to think beyond the textbook and become builders and inventors, using technology that only the world’s biggest companies once had access to. It’s all about re-thinking how schools teach, so that assignments are inspiring and boost student confidence, while getting students job ready.

“Giving my students access to technology is critical to deepening their understanding of cloud computing. To get them to really understand how to do tasks like spin up and down a virtual machine is imperative to giving them the ability and confidence to succeed in their future careers. I’m happy to share my coursework with the AWS Educate educator community, and look forward to learning from fellow computer science professors,” said Zach Ives.

AWS Educate exposes cloud services to academia and also provides a portal for academics to share materials and benefit from others to build more challenging, inspiring, and different course curriculum. With these offerings, students are better prepared for tasks and intellectual challenges that they may face in their life outside of the classroom. The AWS Cloud allows students to take theoretical concepts like complexity, scale, unreliability, and failures and actually study the concepts and deal with these complexities for real. This leads to a sense of pride and understanding on how things really work.

Access cloud content, training, collaboration tools, and AWS technology at no cost by joining AWS Educate today. Find out about other offerings and how students, educators, and institutions are taking advantage of AWS Educate by following #AWSEducate and @AWS_Edu.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is committed to offering opportunities to servicemen and women. As part of this commitment, we created the AWS Military Fellowship exchange program as part of the larger program across the Department of Defense (DoD), designed to expose active duty military to AWS’s technology and Amazon’s leadership principles. The programs build a unique cadre of officers who understand not only the profession of arms, but also the nature of the strategic problems facing the DoD, and the organizational and operational opportunities made possible by revolutionary changes in information and other technologies. These officers will be at the forefront of transforming defense strategy, military forces, and the supporting infrastructure.

About the fellowship

For up to one year, our current three active duty military fellows are able to live day in and day out as employees of AWS. During their time at AWS, they are tasked with finding areas of specific interest to them and their military specialties.  They focus on these innovative areas of interest and at times, will reach out to their respective services during their tour with AWS— putting the uniform back on to explain to their community what they are seeing and doing within the commercial technology space to provide value to the DoD.

Value to industry and military

This program pays dividends to both the DoD and to industry. The DoD, as an institution, will be more capable of meeting future challenges because the officers coming from this program are familiar with innovation and transformation issues. And AWS is able to work alongside our military fellows to learn from them how we can better help the different branches of the military save money, innovate faster, and deliver capabilities that help achieve their mission.

This year’s AWS fellows include:

• Lieutenant Colonel (Promote-able) Maria Schneider (MS), U.S. Army Acquisition Officer
• Captain James Thomas (JT), U.S. Airforce Communications Officer
• Master Sergeant Kelly Butler (KB), U.S Army Acquisition Non-Commissioned Officer

We had the opportunity to sit down with these fellows during their first few months at AWS to talk about their experience within the DoD, how they got involved with this program, and what they plan to get out of their time at AWS.

Our first interview is with Lieutenant Colonel (Promote-able) Maria Schneider (MS), U.S. Army Acquisition Officer.

How did you get involved in this program? What attracted you to the AWS Military Fellowship?

MS: I was honored with being selected from this competitive board to participate in the Senior Service College (SSC) program. The SSC program offers a unique opportunity for members of the Army Acquisition Corps (AAC), military and civilians to gain advanced leadership training and experience specifically designed for senior leadership positions. As an Army Acquisition Officer, I selected the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellowship Program (SDCFP) as my top choice, in order to gain a better appreciation of how industry deals with change management and insertion of new innovation. I was looking for a company that supports the DoD mission, where I could identify the acquisition related challenges. Amazon was my top choice of the 14 participating civilian corporations. I have been intrigued with getting to look “behind the commercial curtain” to determine how Amazon fosters such an innovative culture, develops corporate strategies, develops/implements metrics that matter, institutionalizes the leadership principles into daily operations, and meets customer’s demands (more specifically DoD).

What are your focus areas here at AWS? What are your focus areas within the DoD?

MS: While at AWS, I am primarily focused on rotating through various teams in search of opportunities to gather innovative ideas and best practices that can translate over to the DoD. I also provide insight for the DoD sales team on acquisition processes, procedures, and programs that can continue to foster the business relationships between DoD and Amazon. Within the DoD, one of my duties is to serve as an independent observer for DoD Senior Executives focused on providing an unbiased viewpoint of acquisition-related challenges associated with the adoption of commercial cloud computing goods and services.

What are some lessons learned at AWS that you are able to bring back to your role in the DoD?

MS: Some lessons learned at AWS that I’ll be able to bring back to my role in the DoD as an Army Acquisition professional are: rethink the way we do business, reform the ways DoD communicates mission requirements with industry, remove the barriers to enable people to work collectively to develop innovative solutions, and restructure antiquated acquisition models.

What military values are you able to transfer to industry?

MS: It is my desire to demonstrate the Army’s seven core values (leadership, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage) in all of my engagements and interactions with industry, in order to ensure that continued support is provided to the program and peers alike in the future.  This program is instrumental to the success of the Secretary of Defense Honorable Ashton Carter’s “Force of the Future” initiative and National Security, since representing the values in all daily actions is key to mission success.

Give an example of what has been your favorite part about your time at AWS?

MS: Functioning as an integrated member of the AWS discussions with government on acquisition related challenges certainly provided a unique perspective on the challenges faced by industry in meeting DoD’s mission requirements and forced me to re-evaluate business processes followed previously.  I’m confident that these engagements and broadened perspective will make me a better acquisition professional and leader, which will translate to the delivery of improved goods and services to the supported Army units that will fall under my area of responsibility. On a personal note, one of my favorite memories will be the challenges faced daily during my morning routine—wondering what to wear, and how to take care of my long hair— that became at times a significant dilemma.   For 26 + years, this challenge was handled by the United States Army.  I definitely realized, I have some room for personal growth in this area, hence, my recent subscription to some fashion magazines.

We are so thankful for the fellows’ expertise and for the time they took to share their experiences. Stay tuned for more interviews from the other AWS Military Fellows.