Amazon has announced finalists for its ‘City On A Cloud’ innovation challenge. State and local government organizations have submitted cases to be considered for four awards from Amazon Web Services. The winners will be announced during the AWS Public Sector Summit on June 20.
All cities under consideration use AWS cloud services in some way. City officials have used the competition as a means to make their projects bigger and better than they might have otherwise been. Submissions are judged against four areas – best practices, dream big, partners in innovation and we power tech.
The best practices award highlights cities that are doing the work of standardization and best in class service. The dream big category showcases projects that have big goals or big impact within a locality. The partners in innovation award involves projects that have relied on the use of strategic partnerships to carry their projects forward. Finally, the we power tech award looks at projects that will have impacts on specific constituencies within a city.
Projects under consideration for the award vary widely. Some look at uses of technology that help with the mundane aspects of city life like reporting electrical outages or improving city service continuity. Others are a bit more hands-on looking at ways to use data to help make residents healthier, safer, and give them better access to earned benefits.
The full list of finalists is available here.
