DELIVERING EFFICIENCY AND INNOVATION FOR CITIZENS WITH 'CLOUD-FIRST' POLICY

Government, education and nonprofit organizations around the world are facing unique challenges to accomplish complex missions with limited resources. Creating a more participatory society--where citizens can engage in greater collaboration with their governments, and where interconnectivity among agencies leads to the delivery of more tangible benefits at the national level--are regarded as important goals among proponents of country-wide public sector cloud adoption.

Public sector leaders, who have engaged in true cloud computing projects, would have experienced the benefits of driving innovations more quickly, achieve scientific breakthroughs, reach broader constituents and put more of their time and resources into their core missions.

The Philippine government is among the countries that have taken on the initiative of creating and facilitating channels to more readily bring the benefits of cloud infrastructure to its departments, and aim to serve its citizens more effectively.

'Cloud-first' approach

In January 2017, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) announced the adoption of “cloud-first" approach for the Philippine government. This Department Circular is being issued to advocate initiatives on reducing the cost (acquisition and operation) of government ICT by eliminating the duplication of hardware and systems, fragmentation of databases and the use of cloud computing technology to achieve cost savings, increase employee productivity and develop excellent citizen online services. Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud technology will be leveraged significantly as part of the “cloud-first” policy.

In this regard, the Philippines is riding the technology trend within the ASEAN region where more government entities are investing in cloud computing to improve public interaction. For example, in Singapore, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) uses AWS to run public facing services, and achieved savings of 60 percent as compared to setting up an internal data center to run applications.

The LTA is responsible for all land transport development, policies and enforcement in Singapore, and they move at least 2.2 million commuters every day. Given the extensive tendering process used by government agencies, AWS has enabled LTA to ramp up and scale at a much faster time frame. For the test of its new transport application, the agency ran a simulation of 100,000 users, and was able to deliver a three-second response time while the auto-scale increment of the backend cloud infrastructure takes place in seven minutes--which is all transparent to the end users. Additionally, AWS has met the agency’s infocomm technology security compliance requirements.

Another public sector's use case in Singapore is OneMap, an intelligent map information system from the Singapore Land Authority (SLA) that helps Singapore government agencies deliver location-based services and information to citizens. They have been using AWS Cloud since late 2012 to store massive map im- ages for reliable real time content delivery. The OneMap information system has served as the foundation for over 30 new services and more than 80 participating government services.

Enhancing the city’s transportation infrastructure

In the US, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYDOT)’s mission is to improve the safety of New Yorkers by enhancing the city’s transportation infrastructure. To support the city’s Vision Zero traffic and pedestrian safety initiative, the NYDOT built web applications Vision Zero View and iRide NYC on the cloud. Vision Zero View uses crowd sourcing to collect traffic safety data, which can be used to re-design streets and traffic patterns with the goal of reducing traffic fatalities to zero in New York City. Vision Zero View, a diagnostic web application that runs on AWS Cloud, works on almost any devices that enables users to identify locations where accidents and fatalities have occurred. Running the app on AWS enables NYDOT to add new features and update data quickly at any time, including enhancements or new services to serve those visually, cognitively and mobility-impaired. Since the launch of Vision Zero View in 2014, the app has garnered nationwide attention as the number of traffic deaths in New York City fell 23 percent in 2016, marking a decrease for the third consecutive year.

At Indonesia, PetaJakarta is an applied research project supported by the University of Wollongong’s Global Challenges Program that brings together mobile mapping and local flood information for the city of Jakarta. The platform lets the 28 million citizens of Jakarta share real-time flood information where it is increasingly affected by flooding. Using AWS enables PetaJakarta to have immediate access to accurate, time-critical flood information and scale during peak demand at emergency situations. They were able to collect social media and flood-gauge data reliably and transmit data securely for mapping. With AWS, PetaJakarta could scale seamlessly and reliably to support 23,000 people accessing the site during the 2015-2016 monsoon, with 3,500 reports of flooding on social media and more than 1.6 million Twitter impressions. Additionally with AWS Cloud, PetaJakarta could manage sensor devices and collect data from deployments in the field in Jakarta, while enabling applications to interact with devices even when they are offline. PetaJakarta is recently replaced by PetaBencana.id, an expanded disaster mapping service currently deployed for Jabodetabek (greater Jakarta), Surabaya and Bandung.

Bringing a wealth of innovation like real-time data analytics, the cloud computing technology is delivering positive impact to improve the quality of life and better serve the general public, as evidenced by the above public sectors’ use cases. With the “cloud-first' policy being rolled out by the national government for digital infrastructure, cloud computing is playing an even more important role to help Philippine government in shaping the future for citizens.

Peter Moore is managing director, AWS Global Public Sector, Asia Pacific and Japan for Amazon Web Services.