I met with some CIOs yesterday from the state local government now that has been a super surprising market for me where I'm seeing them actually 2018 was a true change of the year for them massive workloads in the state Medicaid systems that are moving off of legacy systems on AWS justice and public safety systems moving off on AWS so that's where you're seeing news but you know what they shared with me yesterday and my theme as you saw today was removing barriers but they talked about acquisition barriers still that states still don't know how to buy cloud and they were asking for help can you help kind of educate and work with our acquisition officials so it's nice when they're asking us for help in areas that they see their own lockers Cyber Command cannot see today attacks on our country so they're left to try to go after the offense but all the offense has to do is hit over here they're looking at these sets of targets there you don't see the attacks so they wouldn't have seen the attack on Sony they don't see these devastating attacks they don't see the thefts so the real solution to what you bring up is make it visible make it so our nation can defend itself in cyber by seeing the attacks that are hitting us that should help us protect companies and sectors and help us share that information it has to be at speed so we talk about sharing but it's senseless for me to send you for air traffic control a letter that a plane is located at overhead you get it in the mail seven days later you think fighting blindfolded that's right I mean you can't do either and so what it gets you to is we have to create the new norm for visibility in cyberspace this does a whole host of things and you were good to bring out it's also fake news it's also deception it's all these other things that are going on we have to make that visible so what ground station is is it's a service that you can use like any other cloud service just pay for what you use on demand you can scale up you can scale down and we think that we're in the early stages of opening up innovations in this industry where an AWS announced a partnership in October 2016 and it really was the coming together of the best in the public cloud with the best of the private cloud for what we describe as the hybrid cloud opportunity in the past two and a half years coming up on three years pretty soon has been incredibly exciting we started off with some of the key industries that we fell for us public sectors are among our top three industries by financial services telco public sector healthcare manufacturing all the key industries technology we're looking for ways by which they could take their applique into the cloud without having to refactor Andry platform those applications that's a big deal because it's wasted work if you could lift and shift and then innovate and that's the value we brought to the public sector and some of our earliest customers were customers in the public sector like MIT schools about both of the regulated industries in the on-premise world were very strong in almost every civilian military the legislative branch the judicial branch the federal agencies all of them use us millions and millions of workloads the question really is how is they think about modernization and yet they get the best benefits of the public cloud while leveraging their VMware footprint at FINRA we have a very deliberate technology strategy and we constantly keep pace with technology in order to affect our business in the best possible way we always are looking for means to get more efficient and more effective and use our funding for the best possible business value so to that end we are completely in the cloud for a lot of our market regulation operations all the applications are in the cloud we in fact we were one of the early adopters of the cloud from that perspective all of our big data operations were fully operational in the cloud by 2016 itself that was itself a two-year project that we started in 2014 then from 2016 we have been working with machine language and recently over the past six months or so we've been working with neural networks so this was an opportunity for us to share what where we have been where we are coming from where we are going with the intent that whatever we do by way of principles can be adopted by any other enterprise we are looking to share our journey and to encourage others to adopt technology that's really I mean the problems that could be solved with technology now for good will I think will outweigh the technology for hill as Jay Carney calls it so right now when everyone's talking about Facebook and all this nonsense that happened with the elections I think is that's pretty visible that's painful for people to kind of deal with but then the reality is that never should have happened I think you're gonna see a resurgence of people that are going to solve problems and if you look at the software developer persona over the past 10 to 15 years it went from hire some developers build a product ship it market and make some money to developers being the front lines power players in software companies they're on the front lines they're making changes they're moving fast creating value I see that kind of paradigm hitting normal people where they can impact change like a developer would for an application in society I think you're gonna have younger people solving all kinds of crisis around whether it's hopefully crisis healthcare these problems will be solved at a-- will be a big catalyst a great example it would be when you think about all these siloed organizations within our community care you're unable to track any one one record and the record could be an individual or an organization so well what they're doing is they're moving all those disparate data silos into an opportunity to say let's do how many constituents do we have what type of services do they need how do we become proactive so when you take a look at someone who's moved into the community and their health record comes in what are the services that they need because right now they have to go find those services and if the county were to do things more proactively say hey these are the services that you need here's where you can actually go and get them and it's it's those individual personalized engagements that once you pull all that data together through all the different organizations from the beginning of a 911 for whatever reason through their health record to say this is the care that they need they these are the cares that they have and these are the services that they need and oh by the way they might be allergic to something or they might have missed a doctor's appointment let's go ensure that they're getting the health care there's one state that's actually even thinking about their senior care why don't we go put an Alexa in their house to remind them that these are the medications that you need you have a doctor's appointment at 2:00 o'clock do you want me to order a ride for you to get to your doctor's appointment on time that is proactive you walk around the expo floor here the booths are much smaller and I didn't understand that at first and then it quit for me if you want to sell services to government you don't buy a bigger booth you buy a congressperson and it turns out those are less expensive many technologies can be used for for good or for ill we we have a service at AWS a facial recognition service we're certainly not the only company that provides that service to customers thus far since Amazon recognition has been around we've had reports of thousands of positive uses - you know finding missing children breaking up human sex trafficking human trafficking rings assisting law enforcement in positive ways we haven't heard yet any cases of abuse by law enforcement but we certainly understand that that potential exists and we we encourage regulators and lawmakers to look closely at that we've put forth publicly guidelines that we think would be useful as they build a legislative or regulatory framework you

>> Narrator: Live, from Washington DC, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Co-hosting along side John Furrier. We are joined by Jamil Jaffer, he is the VP Strategy and Partnerships at IronNet. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me Rebecca. >> Rebecca: I know you've been watching us for a long time so here you are, soon to be a CUBE alumn. >> I've always wanted to be in theCUBE, it's like being in the octagon but for computer journalists. (laughing) I'm pumped about it. >> I love it. Okay, why don't you start by telling our viewers a little bit about IronNet and about what you do there. >> Sure, so IronNet was started about 4 1/2 years ago, 5 years ago, by General Kieth Alexander, the former director of the NSA and founding commander of US Cyber command. And essentially what we do is, we do network traffic analytics and collective defense. Now I think a lot of people know what network traffic analytics are, you're looking for behavioral anomalies and network traffic, trying to identify the bad from the good. Getting past all the false positives, all the big data. What's really cool about what we do is collective defense. It's this idea that one company standing alone can't defend itself, it's got to work with multiple companies, it's got to work across industry sectors. Potentially even with the governments, and potentially across allied governments, really defending one another. And the way that works, the way we think about that, is we share all the anomalies we see across multiple companies to identify threat trends and correlations amongst that data, so you can find things before they happen to you. And so the really cool idea here is, that something may not happen to you, but it may happen to your colleague, you find about it, you're defended against it. And it takes a real commitment by our partners, our companies that we work with, to do this, but increasingly they're realizing the threat is so large, they have no choice but to work together, and we provide that platform that allows that to happen. >> And the premise is that sharing the data gives more observational space to have insights into that offense, correct? >> That's exactly right. It's as though, it's almost like you think about an air traffic control picture, or a radar picture, right? The idea being that if you want to know what's happening in the air space, you got to see all of it in real time at machine speed, and that allows you to get ahead of the threats rather than being reactive and talking about instant response, we're talking about getting ahead of the problems before they happen so you can stop them and prevent the damage ahead of time. >> So you're an expert, they're lucky to have you. Talk about what you've been doing before this. Obviously a lot of experience in security. Talk about some about some of the things you've done in the past. >> So I have to admit to being a recovering lawyer, but you have to forgive me because I did grow up with computers. I had a Tandy TRS-80 Color computer when I first started. 4K of all more RAM, we upgraded to 16K, it was the talk of the rainbow computer club, what are you doing, 16K of RAM? (laughing) I mean, it was-- >> Basic programming language, >> That's right. (laughing) Stored on cassette tapes. I remember when you used to have to punch a hole in the other side of a 5 1/4 floppy disc to make it double sided. >> Right, right. >> John: Glory days. >> Yeah, yeah. I paid my way through college running a network cable, but I'm a recovering lawyer, and so my job in the government, I worked at the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and then the Bush administration on the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, both the Justice Department and the White House. >> You've seen the arc, you've seen the trajectory, the progress we're making now seems to me slower than it should be, obviously a lot of inertia as Amy Chasity said today about these public sector government agencies, what not. But a real focus has been on it, we've been seeing activity. Where are we with the state of the union around the modernization of cyber and awareness to what's happening? How critical are people taking this threat seriously? >> Well I think I variety of things to say on that front. First, the government itself needs modernize its systems, right? We've seen that talked about in the Obama administration, we've seen President Trump put out an executive order on modernization of federal infrastructure. The need to move to the cloud, the need to move to shared services, make them more defensible, more resilient long-term. That's the right move. We've seen efforts at the Department of Defense and elsewhere. They aren't going as fast as the need to, more needs to happen on that front. IT modernization can really be accelerated by shifting to the cloud, and that's part of why that one of the things that IronNet's done really aggressively is make a move into the cloud space, putting all of our back end in the cloud and AWS. And also, ability, capability to do surveillance and monitoring. When I say surveillance I mean network threat detection not surveillance of the old kind. But network threat detection in the cloud, and in cloud-enabled instances too. So both are important, right? Classic data centers, but also in modern cloud infrastructure. >> Yeah, one of the things people want to know about is what your enemy looks like, and now with the democratization with open source, and democratization of tools, the enemies could be hiding through obscure groups. The states, the bad actors and the state actors can actually run covert activities through other groups, so this is kind of a dynamic that creates confusion. >> No, in fact, it's their actual mode of operating, right? It's exactly what they do, they use proxies, right? So you'll see the Russians operating, looking like a criminal hacker group operating out of the eastern Europe. In part because a lot of those Russian criminal rings, in actuality. You see a lot of patriotic hackers, right? I would tell most people, if you see a patriotic hacker there's probably a government behind that whole operation. And so the question becomes, how do you confront that threat, right? A lot of people say deterrence doesn't work in cyberspace. I don't believe that. I think deterrence can and does work in cyberspace, we just don't practice it. We don't talk about our capabilities, we don't talk our red lines, we don't talk about what'll happen if you cross our red lines, and when we do establish red lines and they're crossed, we don't really enforce them. So it's no surprise that our enemies, or advisories, are hitting us in cyberspace, are testing our boundaries. It's cause we haven't really give them a sense of where those lines are and what we're going to do if they cross them. >> Are we making an progress on doing anything here? What's the state of the market there? >> Well the government appears to have gotten more aggressive, right? We've seen efforts in congress to give the Department of Defense and the US Intelligence Committee more authorities. You can see the stand up of US Cyber Command. And we've seen more of a public discussion of these issues, right? So that's happening. Now, is it working? That's a harder question to know. But the real hard question is, what do you do on private sector defense? Because our tradition has been, in this country, that if it's a nation-state threat, the government defends you against it. We don't expect Target or Walmart or Amazon to have service to air missiles on the roof of your buildings to defend against Russian Bear bombers. We expect the government to do that. But in cyberspace, the idea's flipped on its head. We expect Amazon and every company in America, from a mom and pop shop, all the way up to the big players, to defend themselves against script kiddies, criminal hacker gangs, and nation-states. >> John: And randomware's been taking down cities, Baltimore, recent example, >> Exactly. >> John: multiple times. Hit that well many times. >> That's right, that's right. >> Talk about where the US compares. I mean, here as you said, the US, we are starting to have these conversations, there's more of an awareness of these cyber threats. But modernization has been slow, it does not quite have the momentum. How do we rate with other countries? >> Well I think in a lot of ways we have the best capabilities when it comes to identifying threats, identifying the adversary, the enemy, and taking action to respond, right? If we're not the top one, we're in the top two or three, right? And the question, though, becomes one of, how do you work with industry to help industry become that good? Now our industry is at the top of that game also, but when you're talking about a nation-state, which has virtually unlimited resources, virtually unlimited man-power to throw at a problem, it's not realistic to expect a single company to defend itself, and at the same time, we as a nation are prepared to say, "Oh, the Department of Defense should be sitting on "the boundaries of the US internet." As if you could identify them even, right? And we don't want that. So the question becomes, how does the government empower the private sector to do better defense for itself? What can the government do working with industry, and how can industry work with one another, to defend each other? We really got to do collective defense, not because it makes sense, which it does, but because there is no other option if you're going to confront nation-state or nation-state enabled actors. And that's another threat, we've seen the leakage of nation-state capabilities out to a lot broader of an audience now. That's a problem, even though that may be 2013 called and wants it's hack back, those things still work, right? What we saw in Baltimore was stuff that has been known for a long time. Microsoft has released patches long ago for that, and yet, still vulnerable. >> And the evolution of just cyber essential command, and Cyber Command, seems to be going slow, at least from my frame. Maybe I'm not in the know, but what is the imperative? I mean, there's a lot of problems to solve. How does the public sector, how does the government, solve these problems? Is cloud the answer? What are some of the things that people of this, the top minds, discussing? >> Well and I think cloud is clearly one part of the solution, right? There's no question that when you move to a cloud infrastructure, you have sort of a more bounded perimeter, right? And that provides that ability to also rapidly update, you could update systems in real time, and in mass. There's not going around and bringing your floppy disc and loading software, and it sounds like that's sort of a joke about an older era, but you look at what happened with NotPetya and you read this great Wired article about what happened with NotPetya, and you look at Maersk. And the way that Maersk brought its systems back up, was they had domain controller in Africa that had gone down due to a power surge, where they were able to recover the physical hard drive and re-image all their world-wide domain controls off of that one hard drive. You think about a major company that runs a huge percentage of the world's ports, right? And this is how they recovered, right? So we really are in that, take your disc and go to computers. In a cloud infrastructure you think about how you can do that in real time, or rapidly refresh, rapidly install patches, so there's a lot of that, that's like a huge part of it. It's not a complete solution, but it's an important part. >> Yeah, one of the things we talk about, a lot of tech guys, is that this debate's around complexity, versus simplicity. So if you store your data in one spot, it's easy to audit and better for governing compliance, but yet easier for hackers to penetrate. From an IQ standpoint, the more complex it is, distributed, harder. >> Yeah I think that's right. >> John: But what's the trade off there? How are people thinking about that kind of direction? >> No that's a great question, right? There's a lot of benefits to diversity of systems, there's a lot of benefit to spreading out your crown jewels, the heart of your enterprise. At the same time, there's real resilience in putting it in one place, having it well defended. Particularly when it's a shared responsibility and you have partial responsibility for the defense, but the provider to, I mean, Amazon, and all the other cloud providers, Microsoft and Google, all have it in their own self interest to really defend their cloud really well. Because whether or not you call it shared responsibility, it's your stock price that matters if you get hit, right? And so, instead of you, Amazon, and all the other cloud players have an incentive to do the right thing and do it really well. And so this shared responsibility can work to both side's benefits. That being said, there's an ongoing debate. A lot of folks want to do there stuff on-prem in a lot of ways. You know, a lot of us are old school, right? When you touch it, you feel it, you know it's there. And we're working through that conversation with folks, and I think that at the end of the day, the real efficiency gains and the power of having super computing power at your fingertips for analytics, for consumer purposes and the like. I really think there's no way to avoid moving to a cloud infrastructure in the long run. >> I know you said you were a recovering lawyer, but you are the founding director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia School of Law. How are you thinking about educating the next generation of lawyers who could indeed become policy makers or at least work on these committees, to think about these threats that we don't even know about yet? >> That's a great question. So one of the things we're doing, is we're working through the process with the state commission on establishing a new LLM and cyber intelligence national security law. That'll be a great opportunity for lawyers to actually get an advanced degree in these issues. But we're also training non-lawyers. One of the interesting things is, you know, One of the challenges DC has, is we make a lot of tech policy, a lot of it not great, because it's not informed by technologists, so we've got a great partnership with the Hewlett Foundation where we're bringing technologists from around the country, mid-career folks, anywhere from the age of 24 to 38. We're bringing them to DC and we're educating them on how to talk to policy makers. These are technologists, these are coders, data scientists, all the like, and it's a real opportunity for them to be able to be influential in the process of making laws, and know how to involve themselves and talk that speak. Cause, DC speak is a certain thing, right? (laughing) And it's not typically consistent with tech speak, so we're trying to bridge that gap and the Hewlett Foundation's been a great partner in that effort. >> On that point about this collaboration, Silicon Valley's been taking a lot of heat lately, obviously Zuckerberg and Facebook in the news again today, more issues around irresponsibility, but they were growing a rocket ship, I mean, company's only 15 years old roughly. So the impact's been significant, but tech has moved so fast. Tech companies usually hire policy folks in DC to speak the language, educate, a little bit different playbook. But now it's a forcing function between two worlds colliding. You got Washington DC, the Silicon Valley cultures have to blend now. What are some of the top minds thinking about this? What are some of the discussions happening? What's the topic of conversations? >> Well look, I mean, you've see it in the press, it's no surprise you're hearing this talk about breaking up big tech companies. I mean, it's astounding. We used to live in world in which being successful was the American way, right? And now, it seems like at least, without any evidence of anti-trust concerns, that we're talking about breaking up companies that have otherwise hugely successful, wildly innovative. It's sort of interesting to hear that conversation, it's not just one party, you're hearing this in a bipartisan fashion. And so it's a concern, and I think what it reveals to tech companies is, man, we haven't be paying a lot of attention to these guys in DC and they can cause real trouble. We need to get over there and starting talking to these folks and educating them on what we do. >> And the imperative for them is to do the right thing, because, I mean, the United States interest, breaking up, say, Facebook, and Google, and Apple, and Amazon, might look good on paper but China's not breaking up Alibaba anytime soon. >> To the contrary. They're giving them low-interest loans and helping them all to excel. It's crazy. >> Yeah, and they have no R&D by the way, so that's been- >> Jamil: Right, because they stole all of our IP. >> So the US invests in R&D that is easily moving out through theft, that's one issue. You have digital troops on our shores from foreign nations, some will argue, I would say yes. >> Jamil: Inside the border. >> Inside the border, inside the interior, with access to the power grids, our critical infrastructure, this is happening now. So is the government now aware of the bigger picture around what we have as capabilities and criticalities that were needed now for digital military? What is that conversation like? >> Well I think they're having this conversation, right? I think the government knows it's a problem, they know that actually in a lot of ways a partnership with tech is better than an adversary relationship. That doesn't change the fact that, for some reason, in the last three, four years, we really have seen what some people are calling a "techlash", right? A backlash against technology. It kind of strikes me as odd, because of course, the modern economy that we've so benefited from is literally built on the back of the innovations coming out of the Silicon Valley, out of the west coast, and out of the DC metro area, where a lot these tech companies are developing some of the most innovative new ideas. Now they're, frankly, helping government innovate. So Amazon's a key part of that effort, right? Here in the public sector. And so I'm hoping that education will help, I know that the arrival of tech companies here to really have that conversation in an open and sensible way, I hope will sort of waft back some of this. But I worry that for too long the tech and the policies have ignored on another. And now they're starting to intersect as you say, and it has the possibility of going wrong fast, and I'm hoping that doesn't happen. >> You know, one of the things that Rebecca and I were talking about was this talent gap between public sector and private sector. These agencies aren't going to go public anytime soon, so maybe they should get equity deals and get a financial incentive. (laughing) You know what I mean? Shrink down the cost, increase the value. But as you get the collaboration between the two parties, the cloud is attracting smart people, because it gives you an accelerant of value. So people can see some entry points to land, some value out of the gate, verus giving up and abandoning it through red tape, or in other processes. So you starting to see smart people get attracted to cloud as a tool for making change. How is that working? And how is that going to work? Cause this could be coming to the partnership side of it. People might not want to work for the government, but could work with the government. This is a dynamic that we see as real. What's your thoughts? >> I think that's exactly right. Having these cloud infrastructures gives the ability to one, leverage huge amounts of computing power, but also to leverage insights and knowledge from the private sector in ways that you never could have imagined. So I really do think the cloud is an opportunity to bring real benefits from private sector innovation into the public sector very rapidly, right? So, broad-clouded option. And that's part of why John Alexander, my boss, and I have been talking a lot about the need for broad-clouded option. It's not just innovative in technology, it's benefits to the war fighter, Right? I mean, these are real, tangible benefits pushing data in real time, the war fighter, You know John Alexander had one of the biggest innovations in modern war fighting, where he's able to take civil intelligence down from weeks and months, down to minutes and seconds, that the naval and our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan to really take the fight to the enemy. The cloud brings that power scaled up to a huge degree, right? By orders of magnitude. And so the government recognizes this and yet today we don't see them yet moving rapidly in that direction. So I think the EO was a good move, a good first step in that direction, now we got to see it implemented by the various agencies down below. >> Well we'll kep in touch, great to have you on. I know we're wrapping up the day here, they're breaking down, we're going to pull the plug literally. (laughing) We'll keep in touch and we'll keep progress on you. >> Thank you so much, I appreciate it. >> Rebecca: Jamil, you are now a CUBE alumn, >> I love it, thank you. >> Rebecca: So congrats, you've joined the club. >> I love it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier you have been watching theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit. (electronic music)

>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit. She wrote to you by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back to the cubes. Live coverage of the ES W s Public Sector summit here in Washington D. C. At the 10th annual eight of the U. S. Public sector summit. I'm your host Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Farrier. We're joined by Adelaide O'Brien. She is research director. Government digital transformation strategies at I. D. C. Government incites Thanks so much for coming on the show. Adelaide. >> Rebecca for having me. It's I'm pleased to be here today, >> so I want to just start really with just picking your brain about about the topic of this conference, which is about modernization of government. What is the state of play? How Where do you Where do you see things from where you sit? >> Well, as you know, the federal government right now has been under about a 10 year directive to go cloud first. And what we've seen is, you know, a lot of agencies not all but some of them have a struggled with that, Uh, and it hasn't really had the momentum of the velocity that as an analyst, I I'd like to see and s o last year. The current federal seo says that can put out a policy, and it was about actually moving to Cloud Smart. So it wasn't just to do cloud to be more efficient to save some of that money. That about 75,000,000 that's spent on maintaining legacy equipment. But it was actually thinking about using cloud to be very, very agile to help deliver better citizen services. And what's interesting is this. This whole concept of cloud smart is also very supportive. The Modernization Technology Act as well as the report to the president on it. Modernization. So last year we saw both executive and legislative support for agencies to move to cloud. >> So, as you said, it doesn't. But it's still from where you sit. Doesn't analyst. It still doesn't quite have the momentum and the velocity that you'd like to see. What do you see as the biggest obstacles? >> Well, and this was actually identified in Cloud Smart and yesterday and today I heard a lot of agencies talking about thes three aspects, and I think you know, 10 a W s is a great place to help them. So one of the first is security. And we know when agencies, you know, were first Ask Goto the cloud security was, you know, the biggest barrier in their organization to cloud. And and so I think it was the 3rd 8 of US Conference. It was actually in this building, and I know there's been but I wasn't the first to and I could remember is an analyst. I was so pleased that Teresa had Roger Baker, the CEO of Health and Human Services on stage, and they were talking about getting fed Reum certification, and I think it was one of the first. And it was it was thrilling that such a large agency had invested so much time and money about working with eight of us to get February certification. So to me that that was like, you know, an initial pushing a start, so security is just so so important. And now you've got, you know, so many different software providers working with Amazon. Eight of us on security on DH. Even today, at one of the breakout sessions, the senses really talked about because the CIA moved to eight of us, and they put their most sensitive information in the cloud they felt comfortable with putting the personally identifiable information in the cloud. I'II our census data information. >> If it's good enough for that for that kind of information, I can I can put my business >> exactly there, Tio. Exactly >> the question I want to get on the comm on the research side is competition of opportunities. Is Old Wick about old gore Amazon? Always the old guard, The old way of doing things. They're pretty much in the new class. Dev Ops. We've seen that on the enterprise side Certainly start ups, any jazz, these examples like Airbnb. You see those at conferences over the years that we have the example of these cloud Native Cos. How does government now look at suppliers as partners? Because the big debate is you picked the right cloud for the right workload. Work lotion to find cloud architecture. You can't just split clouds up amongst Microsoft, Google, Amazon and oracles of the world. The whole multi vendor equation shifts in this new paradigm. How do you see that playing out? >> Yes, it does. But I also see and what I've heard today over the last two days is, you know, agencies are actually looking for a partner who can grow with them and learn with them. And I heard that over and over again. You know, they want a cloud provider that you know, has skin in the game, and that actually helps them. And we've seen that they also want a cloud provider that's innovative. And, you know, one of my concerns is I learned about how you know, scale. Everything's about scale today, right? And how Amazon now has eight of us has scaled up so fast over the last couple of years and all the innovations that they're able to provide. And so the question is, how can you keep that culture alive? And, you know, it's kind of like that start up culture at eight of us, right? How can you keep that alive? And, you know, I think the answer did today and, you know, I wish I would have thought about the question in the way he talked about it. You know, when you get big, you get conservative right, because you have too much to lose and too much is at stake. and, you know, as an analyst, I'm seeing eight of us. Not only is a growing fantastically, but it's innovating, and I think that's what gives you than this innovation. The you know, you don't have to be a a Silicon Valley software company to innovate, and I think part of it comes from I think Theresa's said that 95% of A W S's roadmap is based upon what they hear from their customers. So you know that that ear to the ground knowing the government business, federal, state, local, is so, so >> important. This trend that's helping them to also is the move to sass with capabilities on digital using suffers a service business model. So again, it's all kind of timed up beautifully for these agencies that were slow to move in the past. This is an analyst, er, >> yeah, so So security is one of the things on Cloud Smart, and I think that was one of the biggest, biggest barriers to momentum. But the others acquisition. So there's three things about clouds smart that agencies are to pay attention to, and I think you know what's really helped in the acquisition is, you know, the standardization and not only the federal up certification. And, you know, eight of us is healthy cloud providers. Software's the service providers get Fed Ram certification. And so, in the end, this is announced at the conference last year of a TIO on a W s. Right, because it's an arduous process. If you don't know what you're doing, it can cost you a lot of money and take a lot of time. So, you know, eight of us is working with his partners, and that's all good for the government sector, right? Because the more vendors that go through certification, the more they trust them and the more they can trust, you know, the integrity of their data in the cloud. So the acquisition is the 2nd 1 But the 3rd 1 is the workforce, and I think you know, And he mentioned it today. You know, a lot of the resistance, and a lot of the inertia of cloud is not just the technology, it's training the workforce, and I, you know, I thought, it's so so important because it's not just an conversation any longer. Going to cloud is part of digital transformation. Is the foundation of it. And so that has to be a conversation with all levels of agency executives. And they have to agree Otherwise, you know, if you're innovating, you've got, you know, islands of innovation and you on the cloud you can start to Yes, you can pilot, but you can start to really get scale there and transform your whole business. And it's all about serving citizens better and innovating to serve them better and automating your processes. You know that's so important as well. >> So how would you describe the work force? I mean, when you think about the private sector, workforce, women, when in terms of cloud computing versus the government, you tend to think one is more bureaucratic. There is obviously more red tape may be slower moving. How What are you seeing? What are you hearing? >> Well, you know, at all levels of the workforce and especially in government, there's a big push now to automate everything. He and you know, the government at all levels. Federal state local realizes they're actually competing with the private sector for work source. And so, you know, historically, government would say, Well, what's the next skill and we better start preparing for that, right? What's what What's coming down the pike and we we need. And now it's like, How do we prepare for people who enter government and move in various different jobs and move in and out of government? And so when you think about that, that's a skill development and technology can help with that. But it's also a mindset of accepting the fact that people join government to serve, and they might leave and come back. And so that's very important, but also the in terms of cloud smart. The workforce has to be able to understand cloud and howto work with vendors, you know, and it's not necessarily, you know, owning your own equipment. But it's it's it's trusting your vendors and trusting them with your business and and how do you, you know, provide these solutions to the line of business folks? And in a way, I actually seen you the IT department become much more responsive to the line of business folks. And my advice, Teo government executives, especially the folks, is always think of yourself as a service right. Think of yourself as a service. You know that as a service to the line of business folks and, you know, help them understand what what they need, how they accomplished their mission. Maybe give them a short list of solutions to help them out, but really start tracking them. You know what they're accomplishing, and that will help fuel. Then you reinvestments help. You know where to spend your money next And really, you know, just fuel this whole mission accomplishment. >> One of the things that we've been talking a lot about on the Cube for for years is the new role of the chief data officer in any organizations. A lot of federal agencies air now, also putting in their own chief date officers. Can you talk a little bit about what you've seen and what and how they're being used? >> Yeah, so they're our chief data officers in the organization's it again. That's one of those skills were you know, government's going to compete with the private sector for them, and there's probably not enough to go around Andi. And so it's a very precious commodity. And, you know, it is especially like in your research organizations. You've got chief data officers there, but in a lot of the other areas. And, you know, especially in the civilian government, you may not be able to have your old, you know, chief Data officer. Right? You certainly have all the data, but you may not have someone like that. And that's where you know some of the things that that I that that I'm advising agencies to look for us who can help you, then give you some of these big data and you know, a I and ML solutions that your line of business folks Khun, start to interface and work with. And maybe you have Chief data officers set up the data fields initially, but that's where you've got to start to democracy eyes, you know, a I and m l. And because you're never gonna have enough Chief data officers in anyone organization to possibly calm through all of that data on DSO, that's again where technology can help. >> Great. Well, Adelaide, thank you so much for coming on the Cube. It's been a pleasure. Having you >> was great being here. Thank you so much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned. We will have more of the cubes. Live coverage of a ws public sector summit

>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit I wrote to you by Amazon Web services. Welcome >> back, everyone. You are watching the Cube and we are here in our nation's capital at the A. W s Public sector summit. I'm your host, Rebecca Night hosting alongside John Furrier. We're joining Cuba LEM Doug Van Dyke, CEO of Inquisitor to our show. Thanks so much for coming back on. >> Well, thank you for having me back. It's good to be here. >> So as I said, You're a Cuba LEM. You're also a nails on alum. And there's a story there, so >> we'll just do a quick rehash of last year. So I started a day ws in 2,012 with the federal business helped the federal business grow started. The eight of US nonprofit Vertical was invited by John and in stew last year to be on the Cube. The video is a great discussion. The video is seen by some of our best partners and inquisitor who happens to be one of the best partners that I had in public sector. We started some discussions and later I was hired to be the CEO. So, John, >> thank you. I didn't know this was >> going to be a career opportunity >> for you. You're the one who's got the jobs. You through the interviews? Well, political, absolutely appreciated community. Great to have you on. Good. Thank you. Thank you for meeting with Theresa. You've known Therese for many, many years. Microsoft Public Sector Game is certainly on fire. You got Andy chassis on the fireside chat. Kind of bring in. You see the frustration like he's got problems and he's never known any for many, many years. For him to be that animated with his opinion means that it's critical more more than ever. Now, where is public sector opportunity right now? Because it seems to be clouds validated, are we? There is just a turning moment for the whole public sector community, >> yet we're so we're absolutely seeing that and inquisitive fact inquisitor. One of the things I like most about inquisitor is it is focused exclusively on the public sector, so our background is in education. If you know, a student is graduating from high school now and applying to one of the many colleges and universities they use the common application We worked with the common app to help build that system that graduating students can apply to multiple universities as opposed to when I was a graduating high school student, had to fill out the form, send in a check, wait for it to come back in the mail. Now that's all done online. You can apply to multiple colleges at the same time. So I look at that as one of the first innovations that happened in the public sector on a ws inquisitor was a part of it. It was one of the things that attracted me to inquisitor, but the innovations that was in two thousand 92 1,010 it was the beginning. We are just hitting that hockey stick that Andy has talked about in public sector, where you know, the federal business. You talked a little bit about the Intel business and how when the agency moved onto a ws, it really validated security. I think we've seen the government go in. I think we've seen education and nonprofits, so I think this is the time that public sector is really going to take off in the clouds >> about the company that you're leading is the chief now, and the product is using common app. You tell what the common app that my high school's graduates had to fill out. Okay, it's send okay. Is that it? >> That's it. That's it. So I >> got some issues with this thing. >> So follow up that was >> definitely on love on different you. Heavy lifting when filling out applications. Automate is great, but it increases the MAWR schools you can apply to, so creates more inbound applications to schools. It does. I'm sure there's some challenges there that's on the horizon with you guys is solving them that creates more. I won't say span because this legit, but a lot of schools are like people throwing in 17 applications now. 20 applications. >> Well, it's automated. I >> mean technology. So, yes, there's more automation, but there's more background. There's more data and these surgeries going on database decision. So sure we'll let me start with inquisitor. You asked about inquisitive 2,000 to quiz it's started and doing application development. It was in two thousand nine that we really saw the light to move Teo a Ws, and it was through the work that we were doing with the common app that we realised the scale of handling all these applications, that the paper based way isn't an easier. In fact, it really restricts the number of colleges that students can apply, and it restricts the number of applicants that colleges get. So with more students applying to more universities and universities receiving more applications, they can be really selective. They have more data sources, more information aboutthe people. They're going to bring on and have a very inclusive and representative university. We have students applying from China and Europe, too, United States University. So we're getting a lot of diversity, and I think you know, there's probably a little bit more volume, but that's what technology >> today is the first digital data. So that's why I appreciate that. But there's gotta be more automation machine learning going in because now you have a relationship with a student and a school. What, what's next? What happens next? >> Well, it's so Sky's the limit, and you can do once you've got data. So data reporting is basically limited by the quality of the input data. So you have more students applying with more background information, and you could get really personal. So we helped a large Ivy League university in the Northeast migrate all into a ws. And this was after we worked with common app to build the common application way helped this university migrate all into a ws and we realized that there were benefits and challenges along the way. Some of the challenges we saw were repeatable, so we built a proprietary product called Sky Map. And what sky map does is it helps the full migration. So it integrates with your discovery applications like a risk network. It integrates with a ws cloud endure and we were working with cloud endure before a ws acquired them. So we have a p I's there, it manages the whole migration. And your question was, you get all this information about an organization's infrastructure, what do you do with it? Will use the next up is a M l. So we've used some of the higher level services that a bit Amazon Web services has with artificial intelligence. We were using Lambda Server lis and we could go there because I think that's and you've >> got to hand over their 80 must educate. >> Oh, yeah, >> you know, you're great. Get a common app over there. Any university coming soon >> I would Did he mention that I saw he was >> on the show before? >> And I just think that it was You got a huge inbound educational thing going on. So education seems to be a big part of the whole themes here. >> Well, that's our legacy, and we're working with a lot of universities were seeing. So you asked, Where is the cloud going? And in the future, we're seeing large universities move all in on a WS because of they're going to get more flexibility. The costs are going to go down. They're going to have more information on the students. They're going to be able to provide better learning. >> When you're talking to your client of this this big Ivy league in the Northeast, what are its pain points? Because I mean, college admissions is a controversial topic in the United States, and its been there's been scandal this year. What? When? When you were talking with this company and they said, Well, we want to do this. But what was the problem they were trying to solve? I mean, what what were they? What were their pain points. >> Well, one of the first pain points is they were located in a major city and their data center was in the major city. And this is expensive real estate. And so to use expensive real estate that you for date us, you know, for servers, etcetera for data center instead of using it for education is a cost to the university. So very simply put, moving out of that data center opening that space up for education and moving into a ws cloud saved it gave them more space for education. It helped them with cost avoidance, and way had a bunch of lessons learned along the way. So way at the time could move about five servers a week, which may seem like a good number. But now, with the automation that we get through sky map our product, we're working with the large a group of private universities as well as Wharton University. And with this large group of private universities, we found we could do on average over 20 the best week we had 37 servers migrate, hire >> a housefly. They like to be on the cutting edge, but still there public sector. Where's the modernisation Progress on that? Because now you're you've been on both sides of the table. You were Amazon Web services. Now years leading is the CEO of this company in higher ed. How's that modernization going? What's your perspective? What's your observation around? >> Sure, So you know. First of all, I had the opportunity to go work it with the university that's local here last week. And what I love seeing is with this access to the cloud you've got, everyone in the university now has access to nearly unlimited resource is for education. They were staffing their own help desk with their students. And I love seeing that kind of experience being brought from, You know, someone who used to be an IT professional is now being brought down to a student because of thes new technologies are so readily accessible to everybody. >> So so what's that? Tell us some other things that you're seeing that you're hearing. They're they're exciting innovations to you in the in the sector. >> Yeah, well, another opportunity that were working with is we worked with the Small Business Administration, and that was pretty rewarding. For us is a small business and three of the applications that we worked on their were. So we are a small a day, and it used to take our founder TC Ratna pur e about two months. Oh, and we had to hire an outside consultant to apply for our small business accreditation. So he was doing the paperwork and all the, you know, the old school application certification. After we built this application with the Small Business Administration, it took him several hours. He did it by himself. We applied. Got the accreditation. So thes modernizations air happening both in universities as well as in the federal government. >> So what's your business plan? You're the CEO now. What's the company's plan? Which your goals. >> So there's so many things I could talk about ill talk about one or two. We see in the next 1 2 3 to 5 years in public sector that these organizations are going to migrate all in on the cloud. And so we're building up a group. That's what Sky map is mainly addressing is way. Want to make sure that organizations are able tto orchestrate their move to the cloud and we're using? We're going to start exposing the tool that we use for our own internal resource is we're gonna start exposing that, leaving that with universities in the federal government and anyone else who's willing to use it to help them get all in on the cloud. Then we think there's probably going to be a wave where they're trying. Teo, learn the cloud and howto operate It will help them is a manage service provider. And then where I'm excited is you go to server lists and I mentioned were already using Lambda for our sky map product that we see in the future after the M S P V organisations. They're going to be servant lis and they'll be running into no ops environments. >> The classic example of sometimes you your business evolves areas you don't know based off on the wave You're on you guys, we're very proficient at migrating We are now You got sky map which is you're gonna take that those learnings and pay it forward bringing >> that are bringing them to the market that >> we don't have to do that themselves by build kind of thing. >> Well, and it's a little bit like you're doing here, John. And what a ws >> is the only one I get up. I tell everybody that, like >> a ws did eight of us start is away for Amazon to manage their internal servers. And, you know, eventually they realized everyone else in the market can use thes same innovations that they've got. And, >> well, I think this proves the point that if you assassin based model with open AP eyes, you Khun offer and pretty much anything is a service. If you get the speed and agility equation right, someone might say why she is not a court company. Why should I buy? I'll just use that service. I hope so. It's the sad, small hopes up. >> Yeah, and sorry. >> I was going to say you were on the inside. Now you're on the outside of that. This conference. What are your impressions? What are you What kind of conversations are you having that you are going to take back to inquisitor and say, Hey, I learned this at the summit. Are these people over here working on something cool? We got to get this in >> here. Well, it's been really fun for me is a change of perspective. For the last seven years, I've been helping plan and organize the event. Make sure it >> goes off this time. I'm a guest. You know, e I look a little bit >> more relaxed than last year is because, you know, I'm a guest now, but the takeaways are really You know, the innovation is continuing at A W s. And, you know, as a partner of Amazon Web services, I've got to make sure that my team and I stay up to date with all of the services that are being released and simplify those. And, like John was asking earlier, you know, make sure that there's a strategy for migration support and then continuing to re factor what they're doing. >> Well, congratulations on the new job. Get a great tale. When, with cloud growth adoption just early days, public sector continuing toe astonished with numbers. Next, she'll be 38,000 people. A lawsuit is like reinvent size, only 30,000 people. >> This is huge. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm sure you guys are enjoying it as well. >> Yeah, I know. It's been great, Doug. Thanks so much for returning to the Q B. I your two time >> alone. Thank you. Thank >> you. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. We will have more from the Amazon, Uh, a ws public sector, something coming up in just a little bit.

>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back, everyone to our nation's capital. We are the Cube. We are live at A W s Public Sector summit. I'm your host Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John Farrier. We're joined by Ken Eisner Director Worldwide Educational programs at a WS Thanks so much for coming on the show >> you for having me. >> So tell our viewers a little bit. About what? What you do as the director of educational programs. Sure, I head >> up a program called a Ws Educate a ws educate is Amazon's global initiative to provide students and teachers around the world with the resource is that they need really to propel students into this awesome field of cloud computing. We launched it back in May of 2,015 and we did it to fill this demand. If we look at it today, what kind of right in the midst of this fourth industrial revolution is changing the means of production obviously in the digital on cloud space, But it's also creating this new worker class all around. Yeah, the cloud Advanced services like machine learning I robotics, I ot and so on. And if you looked at the employer demand, um, Cloud computing has been the number one linked in skill for the past four years in a row. We look at cloud computing. We kind of divide into four families. Software development, cloud architecture, the data world, you know, like machine learning I data science, business intelligence and Alex and then the middle school opportunities like technical customer support, age and cybersecurity, which can range all the way from middle school of Ph. D. But yet the timeto hire these people has grown up dramatically. Glass door as study of companies over there platform between two thousand 92 1,050 18 and show that the timeto higher had increased by 80%. Yet just think about that we talk about I mean, this conference is all about innovation. If you don't have builders, if you don't have innovators, how the heck Kenya Kenya innovate? >> Can I gotta ask you, Andy, just to have known him for over eight years and reporting on him and covering it was on when when everyone didn't understand yet what it was. Now everyone kind of does our congratulations and success. But to see him on stage, talk passionately about education. Yeah, mean and knowing Andy means it's kind of boiled up because he's very reserved, very conservative guy, pragmatic. But for him to be overtly projecting, his opinion around education, which was really yeah, pretty critical means something's going on. This is a huge issue not just in politics, riel, state, local areas where education, where >> the root of income inequality it's it's a lot of. >> There's a lot of challenges. People just aren't ready for these new types of jobs that are coming out that >> pay well, by the way. And this is Elliott >> of him out there that are unfilled for the first time, there are more jobs unfilled than there are candidates for them. You're solving this problem. Tell us what's going on in Amazon. Why the fewer what's going on with all this? Why everyone's so jacked up >> a great point. I, Andy, I think, said that education is at a crisis point today and really talked about that racial inequality piece way. Timeto hire people in the software development space Cloud architecture um technical called cloud Support Age. It's incredibly long so that it's just creating excess costs into the system, but were so passionate, like if you look at going to the cloud, Amazon wants to disrupt areas where we do not see that progress happening. Education is an area that's in vast need for disruption. There are people were doing amazing stuff. We've heard from Cal Poly. We've heard from Yeah, Arizona State. Carnegie Mellon. There's Joseph Alan at North Northeastern. >> People are >> doing great stuff. We're looking at you some places that are doing dual enrollment programs between high school and community in college and higher ed. But we're not moving fast enough, but you guys >> are provided with educate your program. This is people can walk in the front door without any kind of going through gatekeepers or any kind of getting college. This is straight up from the front, or they could be dropouts that could be post college re Skilling. Whatever it is, they could walk in the front door and get skilled up through educators that correct, >> we send people the ws educate dot com. All you need is some element of being in school activity, or you won't be going back from Re Skilling perspective and you came free access into resource is whether your student teacher get free access into content. That's map two jobs, because again, would you people warm from the education way? All want enlightenment contributors to sai all important, But >> really they >> want careers and all the stats gallop ransom good stats about both what, yet students and what industry wants. They want them to be aligned to jobs. And we're seeing that there's a man >> my master was specifically If I'm unemployed and I want to work, what can I do? I walk into you, You can go >> right on and we can you sign up, we'll give you access to these online cloud. Career pathways will give you micro credentials so we can bad you credential you against you We belong something on Samarian Robo maker. So individual services and full pathways. >> So this a >> direct door for someone unemployed We're going to get some work and a high paying job, >> right? Right. Absolutely. >> We and we also >> give you free access into a ws because we know that hands on practice doing real world applications is just vital. So we >> will do that end. By the way, at the end of >> this, we have a job board Amazon customer In part of our job, we're all saying >> these air >> jobs are super high in demand. You can apply to get a job as an intern or as a full time. Are you through our job? >> This is what people don't know about Rebecca. The war is not out there, and this is the people. Some of the problems. This is a solution >> exactly, but I actually want to get drilled down a little bit. This initiative is not just for grown ups. It's it's for Kimmie. This is for you. Kid starts in kindergarten, So I'm really interested to hear what you're doing and how you're thinking about really starting with the little kids and particularly underrepresented minorities and women who are not. There were also under representative in the in the cloud industry how you're thinking expansively about getting more of those people into these jacks. And actually, it's still >> Day one within all y'all way started with Way started with 18 and older because we saw that as the Keith the key lever into that audience and start with computer science but we've expanded greatly. Our wee last year reinvent, We introduced pathways for students 14 over and cloud literacy materials such as a cloud inventor, Cloud Explorer and Cloud Builder. Back to really get at those young audiences. We've introduced dual enrollment stuff that happens between high school community college or high school in higher ed, and we're working on partnerships with scratch First Robotics Project lead the way that introduced, whether it's blocked based coding, robotics were finding robotics is such a huge door opener again, not just for technically and >> get into it absolutely, because it's hands on >> stuff is relevant. They weren't relevant stuff that they can touch that. They can feel that they can open their browser, make something happen, build a mobile application. But they also want tohave pathways into the future. They want to see something that they can. Eventually you'll wind up in and a ws the cloud just makes it real, because you, Khun do real worlds stuff from a browser by working with the first robot. Biotics are using scratch toe develop Ai ai extensions in recognition and Lex and Polly and so on. So we've entered into partnerships with him right toe. Open up those doors and create that long term engagement and pipe on into the high demand jobs of tomorrow. >> What do you do in terms of the colleges that you mentioned and you mention Northeastern and Cal Poly Arizona State? What? What are you seeing? Is the most exciting innovations there. >> Yes. So, first of all, we happen to be it. We're in over 24 100 institutions around the world. We actually, by the way, began in the U. S. And was 65% us. Now it's actually 35% US 65% outside. We're in 200 countries and territories around the world. But institutions such as the doing amazing stuff Polo chow at a Georgia Tech. Things that he's doing with visual ization on top of a ws is absolutely amazing. We launched a cloud Ambassador program to reward and recognize the top faculty from around the world. They're truly doing amazing stuff, but even more, we're seeing the output from students. There was a student, Alfredo Cologne. He was lived in Puerto Rico, devastated by Hurricane Maria. So lost his, you know, economic mobility came to Florida and started taking classes at local schools. He found a ws educate and just dove headlong into it. Did eight Pathways and then applied for a job in Dev Ops at Universal Studios and received a job. He is one of my favorite evangelists, but and it's not just that higher ed. We found community college students. We launched a duel enrolment with between Santa Monica College and Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles, focusing again a majority minority students, largely Hispanic, in that community. Um, and Michael Brown, you finish the cloud computing certificate, applied for an internship, a mission clouds so again a partner of ours and became a God. Hey, guys, internship And they start a whole program around. So not only were seeing your excitement out of the institutions, which we are, but we're also seeing Simon. Our students and businesses all want to get involved in this hiring brigade. >> Can I gotta ask. We're learning so much about Amazon would cover him for a long time. You know all the key buzzwords. Yeah, raise the bar all these terms working backwards. So >> tell us about what's your >> working backwards plan? Because you have a great mission and we applaud. I think it's a super critical. I think it's so under promoted. I think we'll do our best to kind of promote. It's really valuable to society and getting people their jobs. Yeah, but it's a great opportunity, you know, itself. But what's your goal? What's your What's your objective? How you gonna get there, What your priorities, What do you what do you what do you need >> to wear? A pure educational workforce? And today our job is to work backwards from employers and this cloud opportunity, >> the thing that we >> care about our customers still remains or student on DH. So we want to give excessive mobility to students into these fields in cloud computing, not just today and tomorrow. That requires a lot that requires machine lurking in the algorithm that you that changed the learning objectives you based on career, so content maps to thes careers, and we're gonna be working with educational institutions on that recruited does. Recruiting doesn't do an effective job at matching students into jobs. >> Are we >> looking at all of just the elite institutions as signals for that? That's a big >> students are your customer and customer, but older in support systems that that support you, right? Like Cal Poly and others to me. >> Luli. We've also got governments. So we were down in Louisiana just some last month, and Governor Bel Edwards said, We're going to state why with a WS educates cloud degree program across all of their community college system across the University of Louisiana State system and into K 12 because we believe in those long term pathways. Never before have governors have ministers of country were being with the Ministry of Education for Singapore in Indonesia, and we're working deep into India. Never had they been more aligned toe workforce development. It creates huge unrest. We've seen this in Spain and Greece we see in the U. S. But it's also this economic imperative, and Andy is right. Education is at a crisis. Education is not solving the needs of all their constituents, but also industries to blame. We haven't been deeply partnered with education. That partnership is such a huge part of >> this structural things of involved in the educational system. It's Lanier's Internets nonlinear got progressions air differently. This is an opportunity because I think if the it's just like competition, Hey, if the U. S Department of Education not get their act together. People aren't going to go to school. I mean, Peter Thiel, another political spectrums, was paying people not to go to college when I was a little different radical view Andy over here saying, Look at it. That's why you >> see the >> data points starting to boil up. I see some of my younger son's friends all saying questioning right what they could get on YouTube. What's accessible now, Thinking Lor, You can learn about anything digitally now. This is totally People are starting to realize that I might not need to be in college or I might not need to be learning this. I can go direct >> and we pay lip >> service to lifelong education if you end. If you terminally end education at X year, well, you know what's what's hap happening with the rest of your life? We need to be lifelong learners. And, yes, we need to have off ramps and the on ramps throughout our education. Thie. Other thing is, it's not just skill, it's the skills are important, and we need to have people were certified in various a ws skills and come but we also need to focus on those competencies. Education does a good job around critical decision making skills and stuff like, um, collaboration. But >> do they really >> do a good job at inventing? Simplified? >> Do they teach kids >> to fam? Are we walking kids to >> social emotional, you know? >> Absolutely. Are we teaching? Were kids have tio think big to move >> fast and have that bias for action? >> I think that I want to have fun doing it way. Alright, well, so fun having you on the show. A great conversation. >> Thank you. I appreciate it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John. For your you are watching the cube. Stay tuned.

>> Voice Over: Live from Washington, D.C. It's the Cube! Covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hello everyone welcome back to the Cube's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington DC. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host John Furrier. We're joined by Kim Majerus. She is the leader, state and local government at AWS. Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you for having me, I'm excited my first time so. >> John: Welcome to the Cube. >> Welcome! >> I'm excited! >> Rebecca: Your first rodeo. I'm sure you'll be a natural. >> Thank you. >> Let's start by telling our viewers a little bit about what you do, and how heading up the state and local is different from the folks who work more with the federal government. >> Sure. So I've been with Amazon a little over a couple of years and having responsibility for state and local government has really opened up my eyes to the transformation that that space is moving to. So when I think about our opportunity, it's not just state and local government, but it's actually the gov tax that are supporting that transformation in traditional environments. Everyone asks that questions, what's the difference between a federal versus a state and local? And I attribute it to this way, programs are very important in a federal space but what I'm focused on is every single city, county, state has aspirations to do things the way they want to do things, of how they need to address their specialized market. What people need in New York City might feel and look a little bit different in a small town in my home state. So when you look at the differences it's exciting to have the opportunity to impact there. >> And one of the things that you inherited in the job is state and local governments also, and we've heard this on the Cube from many guests that have been on, they didn't have the big IT budgets. >> No. >> And so, things to move the needle on R&D and experiment, you know Andy Jassy talks about experimentation and learning through failure, a lot of them don't have the luxury. And this changing landscapes, different diversity environments. >> Yeah absolutely. It's doing more with less, and each state struggles with that. And when you take a look at the budget and where state budget goes, it's predominantly in the health provider instances. So they have the responsibility to serve their constituents and their health, so what's left? You're competing with budgets for teachers, firefighters, first responders of all sorts, so they have to be very frugal with what they do and they have to learn from one another. I think that is one of the nicest things that we see across the states and the cities. >> Tell me about the community aspect of it because one of the things we're seeing on the trend side is the wave that's coming, besides all the normal investments they've got to make, is internet of things and digitization. Whether it's cameras on utility poles, to how to deal with policies just like self-driving cars and Uber. All these things are going on, right? >> Yep. >> Massive change going on, and it's first generation problems. >> Absolutely. >> Net New right? So where's the money going to come from? Where's the solutions going to come from? >> Save to invest right? So they're taking a look at Net New technologies that allows them to actually re-invest those savings into what the community's asking for. People don't want to stand in lines to get their driver's license or a permit. We just had a customer meeting, they were talking about how the challenge between the connected community. If you're in a city, in a county, who do you go and talk to? I need a building permit, do I go to the city, do I go to the county? But I don't want to go. I want to be able to do it in a different way. That's the generational change and we're seeing that, even local to the D.C. area, when you take a look at Arlington county, they have the highest population of millennials. How they want to interact with government is so different than what they've seen in times past. >> So talk to me about what, so what what are the kinds of innovations that Arlington needs to be thinking about according to you, in terms of how to meet these citizens where they are and what they're accustomed to? >> Expectations, I mean take a look at, we walk outside the street you see birds sitting around there and you've got to be able to give them transportation that is accustomed to what they do every single day. They want to buy, they want to communicate and more importantly they want to their services when they look for it. They don't want to have to go to the buildings, they want to have to, they want to be able to actually access the information, find exactly where they need to go to grab that specific service. I mean long is the day that you would stand there are say, well I don't know which office to go to, send me. People want to look and everything's got to be available and accessible. >> I mean this is classic definition of what Andy Jassy and Theresa talk about. Removing all that undifferentiated heavy-lifting. >> Yep, barriers. >> All this red tape, and the lack of budget. All these things kind of create this environment. What are you guys doing to address that? How do you get people over the hump to saying, okay, it's okay to start this journey, here's some successes, is it get a couple wins under your belt first? What's the process? Take us through it and use (mumbles). >> I think this has been probably one of the most refreshing parts for me to be a part of AWS. It's really starting with, what problem are you trying to solve for? What is the biggest issue that you have? And we work backwards from their needs. And it's a very different approach than how others have worked with our customers, our state and local customers, because we're used to selling them this thing for this opportunity, whereas we take three steps backwards and say let's start from the beginning. What issues are you having? What're your constituents having? Was with a group of CIOs on Monday and we went through this whole process of, who are your customers? And they would've thought, well it's an agency here and it's an agency there, and what they soon realized is, those are my stakeholders, those are not my customers. So if we really look at it more of a product versus a project with the state and local executives, it's really changing their perspective on how they could actually have a full cycle of opportunity, not a project-based solution. So when you think about how a constituent wants to work through the government, or access it's services, it will look and feel differently if you're thinking about the full life-cycle of it, not the activity. >> You know one thing I want to ask you that came up in a couple conversations earlier, and then what the key note was. The old days was if you worked for the government, it was slow, why keep the effort if you can't achieve the objective? I'm going to give up, people get indifferent, they abandon their initiatives. Now Andy and you guys are talking about the idea that you can get to the value proposition earlier. >> Yes. >> So, even though you can work backwards, which I appreciate, love the working backwards concept, but even more reality for the customer in public and local and state is like, they now see visibility into light at the end of the tunnel. So there's changing the game on what's gettable, what's attainable, which is aspirational. >> It might feel aspirational for those who have not embraced the art of what's possible, and I think one of the things that we've seen recently in another state. They had a workforce that liked to do what they did, as Andy said, "Touch the tin." And when you think about that whole concept, you never touch the tin. So now let's take a look at your workforce, how do we make being in government the way to, as Andy close it, to make the biggest impact for your local community. So some states are saying, what we've done is we still need the resources we have, but the resources that are moving up the stack and providing more of an engagement of difference, those are the ones that are taking those two pizza team type of opportunities and saying what are we going to do to change the way they interact? >> With real impact. >> With real impact. >> Andy also talked about real problems that could be solved, and he didn't really kind of say federal or any kind of category, he just kind of laid it out there generally. And this is what people care about, that work for state, local and federal. They actually want to solve problems so there are a lot of problems out there. What are you seeing at the state and local level that are on the top problem statements that you're seeing where Cloud is going to help them? >> A great example would be, when you think about all the siloed organizations within our community care. You're unable to track any one record, and a record could be an individual or an organization. So what they're doing is they're moving all those disparate data silos into an opportunity say let's dedupe-- how many constituents do we have? What type of services do they need? How do we become proactive? So when you take a look at someone who's moved into the community and their health record comes in, what're the services that they need? Because right now they have to go find those services and if they county were to do things more proactively, say hey, these are the services that you need, here is where you can actually go and get them. And it's those individual personalized engagements that, once you pull all that data together through all the different organizations, from the beginning of a 911 call for whatever reason, through their health record to say, this is the care that they, these are the cares that they have, and these are the services that they need, and oh by the way they might be allergic to something or they might have missed a doctor's appointment, let's go ensure that they are getting the healthcare. There's one state that's actually even thinking about their senior care. Why don't we go put an Alexa in their house to remind them that these are the medications that you need? You have a doctor's appointment at 2 o'clock, do you want me to order a ride for you to get to your doctor's appointment on time? That is proactive. >> And also the isolation for a lot of old people living by themselves, having another voice who can answer their question is actually incredibly meaningful. >> It is, and whether it's individual care to even some are up and rising drivers. A great application in Utah is they've actually used Alexa and wrote skills around Alexa so that they could pre-test at home before they go take their test are the driver's license facility. So when you think about these young kids coming into the government, how interactive and how exciting for them to say, hey, I'm going to take the time, I have my Alexa, she's going to ask me all the questions that I need to literally the other end of the spectrum to say, hey, I can order you an Uber, I could provide you with a reminder of your doctor's appointments or any health checks requirements that you might need along the way. >> So you're talking about the young people today engaging with government in this way, but what about actually entering the government as a career? Because right now we know that there's just such a poisonous atmosphere in Washington, extreme partisanship and it doesn't seem like a very, the government doesn't seem appealing to a lot of people. And when they are thinking about, even the people who are in Cloud, not necessarily in the public policy, what're you hearing, what're you thinking? What's AWS's position on this? >> This is where I love my brother and in the education space. So in two different areas we have California, Cal State Poly, and then we also have Arizona State University who have put in kicks. They're innovation centers are the university that they're enlisting these college students or maybe project based that are coming in and helping solve for some of the state and local government challenges. I think the important part is, if you could grab those individuals in early through that journey in maybe through their later years of education say, hey, you could write apps, you could help them innovate differently because it's through their lens. That gets them excited and I think it's important for everyone to understand the opportunity and whether it's two years, four years or a lifetime career, you've got to see it from the other side and I think, what we hear from the CIOs today across the states is they want to pull that talent in and they want to show them the opportunity, but more importantly they want to see the impact and hear from them what they need differently. So it's fun. >> There's a whole community vibe going on. >> Yeah. >> And we were riffing on day one on our intro about a new generation of skill, not just private and public sector, both. We have a collective intelligence and this is where open-data, openness, comes in, and that's resource. And I think a lot of people are looking at it differently and I think this is what gets my attention here at this event this year, besides the growth and size, is that Cloud is attracting smart people, it's attracting people who look at solutions that are possibly attainable, and for the first time you're seeing kind of progress. >> It's a blank sheet of paper. >> There's been progress before I don't mean to say there's no progress, there's new kinds of progress. >> I think the best part, and I say this to people who are working with Amazon, when you think about a blank sheet of paper, that's where we're at. And I think that's the legacy that we need to get through, it's like this is the way we've done it, this is the way we've always done it. In state and local government we're dealing with procurement challenges, they know how to do CATPACs, they don't know how to OPECs, so how can you help us change the way they look at assets, and more importantly, break through those barriers so that we could start with a blank sheet of paper and build from the ground-up what's needed, versus just keep on building on what was out there. >> So that mean education's paramount for you. So what're you guys doing with education? Share some notable things that are important that are going on that are on education initiatives that you can help people. >> It's starting at the 101. Again I think it's the partnership with the education, what we have in the community college, and even starting in high school, is get people interested in Cloud. But for state and local customers today, it is about workforce redevelopment and giving them the basic tools so that they could rebuild. And there are going to be people that are going to opt-in, and there's going to be people that say, I'm fine where I'm at thank you very much, and there's a place and, more importantly, there's plenty of opportunity for them there. So we're providing them with AWS Educate, we're providing them with our support locally through my team, but the important part is you get in, show them, put their hands on the keyboards and let them go 'cause once they start they're like, I didn't realize I could do that, I didn't understand the value and the opportunity and the cost savings that I could move through with these applications. >> And there's so many jobs out there, I mean Amazon is just one company that's in Cloud. There's Machine Learning, there's AI, there's all kinds of analytics. All kinds of new job opportunities that there's openings for, it's not like. No one's skilled enough! We need more people. >> I'll give you another. There was a great case study in there, they actually did a session here this week, LA County. They get 800-900 calls a day just within an IT, one of the IT organizations and Benny would say, my customer is those who are working in the county. So they've been able to move to CANACT, and now they have a sentiment scale, they are able to not only intake, transcribe, comprehend, but they're able to see the trends that they're saying. What that's been able to save by ways of time and assets and resources it's really allowing them to focus on what's the next generation service that they could deliver differently, and more importantly, cost-effectively. >> Where in the US, 'cause Andy talked about the middle class shrinking with the whole reference to the mills going out of the business, inferring that digital's coming. Where do you see the trends in the US, outside of the major metros like Silicon Valley, New York, et cetera, Austin, where there's growth in digital mind IQ? Are you seeing, obviously we joke with the Minnesota guys, it's O'Shannon on and we had Troy on earlier, both from Minnesota. But is there areas that you're seeing that's kind of flowering up in terms of, ripe for investment for in-migration, or people staying within their states. Because out-migration has been a big problem with these states in the middle of the country. They want to keep people in the state, have in-migration. What're you areas of success been for digital? >> You know what, look at Kansas City. Great use case, smart connected city, IOT. If you take a look at what their aspirations were, it was to rejuvenate that downtown area. It's all started with a street car and the question was, when people got off that street car did they go right or did they go left? And they weren't going left and the question was why? Well when they looked and they surveyed, well there's nothing there, the coffee shops there. So what they did proactively, because this is about providing affordable opportunity for businesses, but more importantly, students and younger that are moving out of home, they put a coffee shop there. Then they put a convenience store, then they put a sandwich shop down there and they started to build this environment that allowed more people to move in and be in that community. It's not about running to the big city, it's about staying maybe where you're at but in a new way. So Kansas City I think has done a fantastic job. >> And then having jobs to work remotely 'cause you're seeing now remote, virtual-first companies are being born and this is kind of a new generational thing where it's not Cloud first. >> Work is where you're at, it's not where you go. >> And yet we do need >> That's an opportunity. >> Clusters of smart people and these sort of centers of innovation beyond just the coasts. >> I'm out of Chicago. I obviously have headquarters in D.C. for public sector and corporate out of Seattle. I think there is a time and place that is required to be there when we're working on those projects or we require that deep time. But I want to be available to my team, and more importantly to my customers, and when I see my customers, my customers are not all in city buildings or county buildings or state buildings. They're all over. So it's actually refreshing to see the state government and local governments actually promote some of that. It's like well hey I'm not going to the office today, let's go meet in this location so that we could figure out how to get through these challenges. It has to be that way because people want to be a part of their community in a different way, and it doesn't necessarily mean being in an office. >> Exactly. >> Okay Kim, well to check in with you and to find out your progress on the state and local, certainly it's real opportunity for jobs and revitalization crossed with digital. >> Yep, as Andy would put it, when we look at this space, it's a labor of love and it's the biggest impact that I could make in my career. >> And tech for good. >> And tech for good. >> Excellent, well thank you so much Kim. >> Thank you. Goodbye. >> Stay tuned for my of the Cube's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. (outro music)

>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C. It's the Cube, covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone, to the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nations capitol. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my cohost John Furrier. We have Allison Robinson joining us, she is the AVP IT operations at Cal Poly University. Thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >> Thank you for having me. >> So, talk about your big announcement yesterday in terms of ground station. This is one of John's favorite topics, so tell us more about what you announced. >> So yesterday there was an announcement that Cal Poly through our digital transformation hub, and that hub exists to do innovated things with the greater good through the public sector and helping with challenges that they're trying to learn more about and solve problems. And so, through that group, we announced the initiative to do cube satellite in connection with ground station at AWS, to be able to help people that use these satellites be able to test these satellites and collect data and share it ultimately, with others. 'Cause there's a problem, they're not expensive satellites but that means you don't have a lot of money to work with. And so to be able to test and make sure your communications are good and the infrastructure is there, is kind of missing in the whole environment. And now, that's going to be solved. >> And you're able to get many more shots and pay as you go, not necessarily have to, as you said, put up your own satellite yourself. >> Exactly, you can put the satellite up. The problem was the infrastructure to communicate back with it. So, the ground station, those antenna are approximately located to AWS regions. So you can now bring the data, process it, store it, analyze it, and then ultimately share it. That, again, being for the public good, we want to make sure the date we're collecting is in the AWS registry, data set registry. So that people can access that information, that's important. >> Allison, talk about the relationship with AWS, how did it get started? I mean your involved with these cool projects like ground station, which I'm a big fan of. 'Cause I think the impact to IOT, just forest fires in California could be a real... >> Allison: Right. >> Saver right there. Just using data, back hauling data for whatever is going to be a great thing. But you got a relationship with AWS, that goes beyond, not just ground station, there's other things going on. Take a minute to explain the relationship with AWS. >> So, the vice president of IT at Cal Poly, Bill Britton, began his position with Cal Poly about two years ago. And took a look at the data center and had to ask the question, do we invest here on prem or do we have to look for something else? And that began the conversation of, we need to do something about our data center, it looks like Amazon has the tools we need to modernize our technical environment. Both in how we work, how people work, our processes and our technical infrastructure. And so, that began the work of, we announced two years ago, I didn't work for Cal Poly yet. They announced there, the President and Bill announced that we were all in. The data center was going to AWS. I happened to be presenting on a different topic, and we connected there, and a year later, we made a connection and I have been at Cal Poly now for a year to help them get to the AWS data center. >> Lot of smart people Cal Poly, I know, I looked at the university. Great computer science, great everything. You guys got a lot of smart people, so what was it like to actually, as this starts to evolve, the progression of the modernization. Take us through where you guys are on progress, what are some of the cool things going on. What's the result of this shift? What are some of the notable highlights? >> It's really exciting, because we really did take an approach of we've got to look at, not just as AWS and a new tool. Which you have to work so differently, in dev ops and agily. We said okay, then we've got to figure out our processes to be able to work that way. We have to change as an organization. So we were more structured around those technical silos. And we became a service management group for like, who do we serve and what are they trying to accomplish? And that's the focus of everything we do. So from idea to service we have a process to handle to that. And AWS, we're all in on their tools too.6 So they completely facilitate that process6. >> You have a lot of stake holders, so you have impact at the student body level, faculty, institution overall.6 >> Right. >> What are some of the game changers that you see? Obviously the ground station, you got great R and D coming in with Amazon. What's the impact? >> The digital transformation hub is part of the IT organization as well. And our community outreach and giving students actual hands on experience to work with the public sector, whether it be law enforcement, or maybe a city trying to deal with a homeless situation. They actually are engaged with professionals and learning about problems and solutions. And in ten weeks, we work on quarters, and our quarters are ten weeks, which align perfectly to exactly how long it takes an engagement with the digital hub to find what's possible in terms of solutions to problems. >> So talk about the students of today. I mean, we hear a lot about them. And I want to hear you, you're teaching them, you're helping to educate this new generation of people who we hope will make huge, great waves in industry, private industry, as well as state, local, and the federal government. >> Allison: Right. >> What do you see as their strengths, their weaknesses, and what are they looking at in terms of building careers? >> You know, they, I really do love working with the students. They are incredible. It makes me wonder sometimes, I don't think I'd get into college now, times have changed. And they really care, they care, that's why the public, being able to work through these to serve the greater good of the public and share that data after actually means so much more to them. Than if it were just a class project, because they want to make a difference. They care about social justice and making sure that we're green and efficient with how we use our earth resources. And so this maps around a lot of the challenges. The homelessness that I mentioned before, and how we've worked with that. Or making sure that we can make cities safer. They care about that deeply. And they have access to a lot of resources. This past fall's incoming class was born in the year 2000. They've never not known a time with computers. They do math homework, they're not reading, they're actually doing homework on their phones. Their very mobilely engaged, very digitally engaged. And we're going to see wonderful things from them, because they think so differently about these things. >> It sounds as though the education that you're providing is very practical, in the sense that you're having your students work with the state and local governments on these issues like homelessness and climate change. Can you talk about some of the projects that their doing? >> So our mantra is learn by doing. And you come in and you are admitted to a major. And you begin working in that major right away. Every student finishes their last quarter with a senior project. And you actually produce an outcome and have something you can talk about, both as the product and the process to get there. I was recently invited to the senior projects showcase for the graphic arts department. And, in common, they all had technology. And some where, one of the students we had just contracted for some software, and thank you so much you helped make the difference with that. So that's neat, when you get to see to make that difference. But even though it's graphic arts, in every way technology was key to what they do. And they have, really, you know students come from some great backgrounds too, where they've had some great access to information and technology and really think differently about it. Engineering students are winning awards and doing really great things. So it's fun to see and be a part of. Great energy. >> What about the culture within your department itself? I mean, you're not only educating the next generation but you're also doing research yourself. Can you talk about, particularly, as a partner, as working so closely with AWS, which has such a famous culture of innovation and of taking risks and tolerating failure, because the more failures you'll have, you'll ultimately get there someday. So can you talk a little bit about the culture within Cal Poly? >> It's hard, because IT people are usually very analytical and there's a right and a wrong. So that sense of it's okay to get it wrong, isn't popular generally. So, that starts with me, I had to get up and say we may not get it right, but rarely do we get it wrong. We might get parts of it wrong, we adjust. It's okay to get it wrong. We've got to figure things out, all of this is new. And as I've been there longer and really work with people through different things, they believe that from me now. There's not judgment. I once worked at a place where it'd go on your permanent record. Well, try and get somebody to try something innovated if you have a problem and it goes on your permanent record. So I don't have that now. >> Rebecca: It'd be a career ender. >> Yeah. >> Bill: Yeah. >> I have a lot of people getting it, and we're trying it. And you can work so fast in the AWS environment, that if it isn't right, blow it away and start over again. >> In some organization you were a renegade if you tried something new. You know, oh my God, don't touch that third rail. >> Allison: Yeah. >> Here, you guys are doing, it's progressive in the sense that you're trying new things. >> Learn by doing is a call to action, but it also gives you that space to try. >> Bill: Yeah, be creative. >> It's learning. >> What's your impression of the show here in DC? Obviously, it's our fourth year covering public sector. I've been following them a couple years earlier, but the first four years covering live broadcasting, reporting. But, besides the growth, what's your takeaway? >> I need to be cloned. (laughter) >> There are so many things happening here. >> You need a digital twin. >> There you go. >> You can solve that, Allison. >> There's going to be a lot of people that say, no don't clone her, don't do it. But there's so much information and the innovation that AWS does. Sometimes it's like exciting to hear, and it's like oh where was that a month ago when we were working on that? So we just have to stay on our toes and we have to keep engaged with AWS and what they're doing and what we can use from them to make our environment better. And move even faster. >> You got to keep, keeping pace is also a hard thing. Because they're introducing so many new things. At amazon. We're very fortunate again in our partnership, actually that does translate into the IT operations organization. That we've been working with them on some services that they do. We can tell them, hey this isn't quite working, and they honestly listen to us. And deliver what they ask on a road map, sometimes sooner than later too. So it's been a great partnership. >> That's interesting, a company that actually delivers on what you ask for. >> Exactly, exactly. And we have scaled, you know it's a small town there's 24,000 students, you have your faculty and staff. So when we try something with them, we have the opportunity for big impacts right away. >> That's awesome, well, congratulations, great work >> Thank you. >> On the DX hubs fascinating ground station. Great projects, students and you guys to play around and help that grow. Because that's going to be a great service. >> Yes, we're excited. We can't wait to get going. >> Rebecca: Thanks for coming the Cube Allison. >> Thank you. >> We will have more of the Cubes live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington DC. Stay tuned. (upbeat beat music)

>> [Introduction Narrator] Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone, to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington D.C. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier. We are welcoming to the program Shannon Kellogg. He is the V.P. Public Policy Americas at AWS. Thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thanks for having me. It's great to be back on theCUBE. >> Yes, I know. A CUBE veteran. >> Yeah, I feel like a CUBE alumni at this point. >> You are indeed, Shannon. >> Well, this is your show, I mean this is a policies front and center, here at AWS. You got Andy Jassy's Fireside Chat. >> Indeed. >> Kind of his first foray into revealing some of his political thoughts and his mission around what Amazon could do to change it. Pretty interesting time. >> Yeah, it was. I thought it was a really interesting Fireside Chat today with Andy and Teresa. You know, Andy talked about, of course, a lot of what's going on at AWS and some of the big picture challenges that our country faces, so it was great to hear him. >> Well, so that's what I want to get into right now, is that we are having this Summit with the backdrop of an emerging tech backlash, where not only are the regulators sharpening their focus on big tech, and a lot of political candidates saying they we want to break up these companies, the public becoming increasingly wary of big tech's power over us. Give us a little bit of a peek into your mindset and how AWS is thinking about all of these issues. >> Sure, well so I've been at Amazon for about seven years, and so I've seen the growth and evolution of the company firsthand. I've focused during that time frame mostly on working with our Amazon web services business, or AWS, which of course is all around us today. And you know we really, when I started working seven years ago here in Washington, D.C., a lot of people didn't even understand what cloud computing was. I remember one of my first conversations was going into a very senior policy maker on the Hill, and explaining to him what cloud was, and it was very hard to kind of understand during those days this transformation that had already begun if you're a policy maker. And there were a lot of questions back then around security and sort of how the cloud computing would fit within the security discussion. And there was even during that time frame a lot of national discussions around cyber security. And now that conversation has completely changed. More people know what cloud computing is, and now policy makers more and more are seeing cloud computing as part of the answer to help organizations and even governments strengthen their cyber security posture. And Andy talked a little bit about that today at the Fireside Chat. So the conversation has changed in areas like that, even though there are these broader, macro conversations going on as well. >> Well, Shannon, I want to get your thoughts, because you have a history in public policy and policy with tech, which is good. More than ever now, one of the things that we heard from Andy was the acceleration of change happening now. The ability to solve big problems now. New kinds of conversations and approaches are being invented to existing ways. So I got to ask you the question of how policy's modernizing with this modernization cloud trend and where it's remaining the same, so in some cases, the game is still the same, just kind of same wine, new bottle kind of thing, or is there areas that got to be changed. So, for instance, is there an approach that can still be evergreen today that's historically been working for government and private enterprises over the years, and where is it different where it needs to really change. >> Yeah. >> You've got to tease us and walk us through where that policy game is evolving to. >> Well when I started Amazon seven years ago, and started having conversations with customers and policy makers, like I was saying, there were still a lot of people even at the agency level who were experimenting very early on with cloud, and trying to figure out how they were going to use commercial cloud computing, right? And I would classify them as first movers. And so the conversation with them back then was really understanding what they were trying to do by moving a few applications to cloud. What kind of services they were trying to offer and new innovations that they were trying to offer. And so, the policy work that we did around that was much different than what we're doing today, because now you have so many organizations that are moving to cloud and you see this big push, not just in the U.S. but around the world toward IT modernization as an example. And if you're going to modernize your systems within government, then you actually ultimately have to do many different kinds of policy changes, unlike seven or eight years ago, right? And some of those include modernizing or updating your procurement policies and acquisition policies. Some of those include how you're budgeting and funding those initiatives, because there's a shift from capital expenditure into operational expenditure. Some of those policy conversations also involve updating your cyber security policies and your data protection policies. And so all of that is happening today, and we're seeing the federal government, Congress here wanting- >> Net new changes. Net new changes. >> Yeah, net new changes, and adapting, those policies and frameworks to how organizations are moving faster and faster to commercial cloud. >> Inside the policy beltway and even Silicon Valley, you've seen a lot of things that has worked and hasn't worked in the past. What do you think works for policy? If you look back histories, we've seen in the short history of technology and computer industries it's not that old, it's still young. We still have the internet, rise of the web, mobile computing, obviously spectrum and all these connectivity issues. What has worked that you think is relevant today that we should double down on and what should be taken away and reinvented? >> Well first of all, I think it's really important for, not just our company, and me as a leader at Amazon on public policy, but quite frankly, the entire industry, all of my peers, we all need to listen to what customers are trying to do to achieve their missions. And so when you think about whether it's NASA and the new initiatives that they have, to not only go back to the moon, but beyond to Mars, or you talk to health and human services or the Veterans Administration or some of our National Security agencies, they all have really, really important missions, so understanding what they are and how you can be supportive is very important. >> Well I mean, but there's all, I get that, that the customer's always right, listen to the customer, that's Andy's line, Amazon's line. But there's some potentially conflicting things, I'll just throw an example out there. Open government, open data creates more observability of data, hence more creativity, that's a theme that's getting a lot of traction in circles. And then customers want security and privacy. >> Right, so lots of unintended consequences to make all that. >> So as this new ground for a real, first-generational problem needs to be solved, you can't just pick one old way. Like you open it up, you're going to expose the data. >> Right. But I'm glad you mentioned open data, because it's actually one of the areas over the last few years that we've actually gotten some really important things done. There was federal legislation here in the U.S. that passed just, I think it was about 18 months ago, the first open data, comprehensive open data legislation. And we're seeing also other governments internationally kind of move in this direction as well. And I was part of those conversations, and other colleagues in my company were part of those conversations, took a lot of education. And took a lot of outreach to policy makers to get them to understand the benefits of open data and how technology could enable those benefits, which by the way, include getting more data sets so people can actually innovate on those data sets and build new businesses, which is a benefit and so- >> Keith Alexander's business, for instance, is all about visibility into threats, as one example. >> Right. But back to your question, what I found that was very helpful to policy makers is to give them a very baseline explanation of what open data was and how technology like cloud computing was enabling more access to that data or protections would need to be in place, but also how organizations and individuals and entrepreneurs were going to use that data, so having that conversation and educating. And I would say, John, that's sort of the new way of lobbying, the new conversations is to actually go in and try to understand, not only what's on a customer's mind, but what is on a policy maker's mind in terms of what do they really care about, and what are they trying to do to support whatever mission or to support whatever big initiative that matters to their district. >> So education is really the blocking and tackling tenet. You keep on pounding the education. Doing things in the open is interesting. You mentioned open data. We're in a world now in digital where everything's out in the open. You can't hide in the shadows. And so I wrote a story about Jedi, which through my sources, I essentially was referring to Oracle having this smear campaign against Amazon, which was supported by many sources. No one wanted to go on the record, so no other journalists reported it. But this is happening out in the open. These are old tactics of lobbying. >> They're old tactics, yeah. >> There's a sea change going on where open, turning the lights on, is more reality for policy lobbyists than ever before. Can you comment on your reaction to that? >> Sure. All anyone has to do, to look at some of the tactics that are being used by companies like Oracle, and we generally look at them as the legacy players, the legacy IT companies that are trying to protect their particular business model and their margins and the way that they're doing business, versus doing what I said earlier, which was listen to your customers, listen where they want to go, and try to align to that, right? Oracle is doing the exact opposite. It doesn't appear that they are listening to their customers at all. But putting Oracle aside as the only company doing this, there are other companies that are doing it as well, and if you look at the history of lobbying over the last 20 years, and you look at companies like Oracle or IBM, some of those players, they have done these kind of things previously, right? I mean, look at the original anti-trust case against Microsoft, or look at what Oracle was doing with Google and the EU on Fair Search. I mean, these are the same old tactics that these companies have used again and again and again, >> Beck and I were talking with the general Keith Alexander on this one point, where misinformation is so elevated now, and with machine learning and AI and openness, you can't do that anymore. There's no place to hide, so the transparency become a big part of processes. >> Right. >> Your reaction to how that's going to change, how policy is shaped, the participants and the actors involved, and potentially accelerated outcomes. Your thoughts on that. >> In terms of what the Department of Defense is trying to do, I think there's been a lot of transparency in that process, and there's been a lot of media coverage and light shown on what's going on there, so I don't probably need to go into those details. You know, I think it's really important for policy makers to always go out and get several perspectives. There are a lot of organizations out there that like policy makers and our general experience are trying to support the mission of these agencies that are trying to transform. And so if you looked at what the Department of Defense is trying to do or if you looked at what the intelligence community has already undergone several years of transformation with commercial cloud and emerging technologies, these are really important missions that policy makers want to support. >> John Furrier: And public policy- >> And you see that again and again and again. And other organizations. National Security think tanks, third party organizations and associations. They want to support that, too. So I would look to those voices versus listening to some of the same old tired IT legacy voices of the past. >> How do I know which entities are tainted or not tainted, because as someone who's not a big D.C. guy or tech guy, we got in through the cloud, and we're seeing all this stuff that's kind of, you see bad behavior and it's out in the open. Wow, I can't believe they're doing that. So the transparency is good, I get that, but how do I know- >> Transparency and learning from history. Look back and read about some of the tactics that have been used previously. I mean this is reported. >> So is there an organization out there that's like we're a think tank for the greater good of society. How do I know that they're not funded by someone? I mean, is there ways to detect- >> Various >> someone's reputation? Is there a working- >> Well there are organizations that are set up just to basically attack either other companies or another audience, and so those are generally known as astroturfing like organizations. >> I've seen those Google fair search, like they're really not a fair search, they're trying- >> And you can usually, if you look under the hood a little bit, you can usually figure out who those are. Not just those of us in the industry who have seen this playbook used again and again and again, by companies like Oracle and IBM, but also policy makers, if they just go out and talk to people they hear different perspectives, they're going to be able to figure out pretty quickly what is an astroturfing organization. Because they use the same old tactics that they've used for many years. >> I want to pick up on something that Andy Jassy was talking about during his Fireside Chat, and then he's talking about the culture of Amazon, which is the culture that tolerates failure, that allows people to go out and pursue these high-risk ideas which could be career-ending in other organizations. I want to hear what your thoughts are about the public sector, and I know the public sector is vast and not monolithic, but how would you describe the culture that you're seeing, the agencies you're working with, also the state and locals, the educational institutions, what are you seeing? >> Yeah, you bet. Well I think it's actually a really critical point in question, because we're seeing, at really every level of government that we work at, we're seeing people who are trying to be creative and innovate and offer new ways of services to citizens or to other constituencies that they serve, but we're also seeing cultural challenges, where you may have this particular group that is trying to come up with a new way to meet the mission, but then you have this other group over here, and they've always managed the data center, they've always been able to hug their box, their iron box, and see the blinking lights and get close to that, and it's hard sometimes for people who have done something for a certain amount of time in a certain way to necessarily embrace a new way of doing things. >> Rebecca Knight: Change is hard. >> For a couple of reasons. Change is hard, but also sometimes because of the, the fact is, if you look at really any level of government, there are always going to be IT failures, right? And there have been some doozies in the past, here at the federal level, as well as at the state and local level. And I would say consistently we've heard from government leaders who are trying to be first movers who are trying to be transformers, that sometimes they are tepid because of the failures of the past. And so then it gets them to step back and maybe go over to this group and do things the way they've always done them, versus take that risk. And what we need to do as citizens and as in our case, industry, and as a company like Amazon that is so customer-focused, we need to go out there and help them be creative, innovative, and have a voice. And that goes back to John's question about how policy has changed. That's the work I want to do. How do you help people who are really change agents who are trying to do the right thing for their constituents, do the right thing for their citizens, do the right thing for the National Security mission of the United States. Do the right thing for the war fighter who is out there executing the mission of the day. How do you help them achieve their goals and to be able to move forward and transform what they're doing. >> Well you got tail winds with the cloud, Andy pointed it out, we've been talking about it, but I think one thing that's key is, as you guys get the policy gurus together, as you lead the younger generation to shape these new territories, it's a - >> [ Shannon Kellogg] Thank you for calling me younger, John. >> Yeah, you're looking good, by the way. But you've been around the block, you've seen a few waves, and you've seen what works and what doesn't work, and when more than ever, younger majors are going to come in, whether they're from science, or different disciplines are going to be, you have to come and bring that interdisciplinary skill to really solve some of these world problems, I mean Andy's laid out a few. >> That's right. That's right. >> It's a critical... These are opportunities now that can be solved. >> Yeah, and by the way, that trend that you're pointing to is something that we're seeing not just domestically here in the U.S., but internationally. And we're seeing a lot of governments set up some kind of innovation units within government, so they bring in younger generation, but also entrepreneurs, folks that have been out in industry, creating and failing, and creating again and innovating, and bringing them in, and really trying to help them transform their missions. We're seeing that in so many different places now. >> Well, we're going to... you need to keep in touch, and check in on your progress and track the accountability of the industry. We've been really passionate about that, so thanks for sharing your vision and perspective. >> You bet. Thanks for having me on theCUBE again. It's really great to be back and to talk to you as always. >> Rebecca Knight: It's been a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit. Stay tuned. (upbeat music)

>> live from Washington D. C. It's the Cube covering aws public sector summit DC brought to you by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back, everyone to the cubes Live >> coverage of a ws public sector summit here in Washington D. C. I'm your >> host Rebecca Night, along with my co host, John >> Furrier. We're here with Cory Quinn, Cloud Economist The Duck Billed group and a cube host at large. Welcome. Welcome to our show. A medium >> at best, most days. But we'll see what happens when ever expanding. Someday I'll be a 10 x engineer, but not today. >> Right? Right. Exactly. >> Next host. Exactly. >> There we go, >> Cloud. Stand up on the side. We need to mention that >> Yes, generally more cloud improv. But no one believes that. It's off the cuff. So we smile, we nod, we roll with Tio. Yeah, no one wants to hear me sing in any form. >> I promise. Strapping So, Cory, you have been here. You are on the ground having great conversations with people here. 18,000 people at this summit Give us give our viewers a low down on the vibe. The energy What? What do you hear? Very different >> feeling in the commercial summits you're seeing. People are focusing on different parts of the story, and one thing I find amusing is talking to people who work in the public sector. Show up in their first response is, Oh, I'm so behind and then you go to the commercial summit. You talk to people who are doing bleeding edge things, and their response is, Oh, I'm so behind and everyone thinks that they're falling behind the curve and I'm >> not sure how >> much of that is a part of people just watching a technology. Events outpace them versus the ever increasing feature velocity. If they show on slide year over year over year, consistent growth and people feel like they're being left in the dust, it's it's overwhelming. It's drinking from a fire hose. And I don't think that that gets any easier when you're talking to someone in public sector where things generally move in longer planning cycles because they definitional have to, and I'd argue should, >> but you should help them, make them feel better and say, Don't worry. The private sector feels the same way. Not just everyone >> has these problems. That's that's the poor little challenge of this is everyone believes that if you go to the one magic company, their environment is going to be wonderful. They're adopting everything. It doesn't exist. I've gone into all of the typical tech companies you would expect and talk to people. And everyone wants you for three or four drinks into them, gets very honest and starts crying. What would its higher fire their own environment is? It says a lot of conference. We're going around. Here's how we built this amazing thing as a proof of concept is what the part they don't say or for this one small, constrained application. People are trying to solve business problems, not build perfect architecture. And that's okay. >> Yeah, process. They're not. They're not businesses, their agencies. As you said, they're like, slow as molasses when it comes to moving speed. And you could even see Andy Jazzy during his fireside Shep. He's already studying, laying the groundwork. Well, >> once you're in the >> cloud, here's how you know the adoption level so you can see that it's land not landing expand like the enterprise, which is still slow. It's land, get the adoption and then expand, So the public sector clearly has a lot of red tape. I mean, no doubt about it. >> That means anyone who'd argue that point >> chairman's like 1985. It's like, you know, hot tub time machine, you know, nightmare. But Andy Jazz, he also says on differently to heavy lifting is what they want to automate away. That's the dream. That's the That's the goal. Absolute. It's hard. This is the real challenge. Is getting the public sector adopted getting the adoption, your thoughts when what you're hearing people are they jumping in? They put a toe in the water, kicking the tires. As Andy said, >> all of the above and more. I think it's a very broad spectrum and they mentioned there. I think they were 28,000 or 12,000 non profit organizations that they wind up working with as customers and they all tend to have different velocities across the board as they go down that path. I think that the idea that there's one speed or you can even draw a quick to line summary of all the public sector is a bit of a Basile explanation. I see customers are sometimes constrained by planning cycles. There's always the policies and political aspects of things where if you wind up trying to speed things up, you're talking to some people who will not have a job. If you remove the undifferentiated heavy lifting because that's been their entire career, we're going to help you cut waste out of your budget. Well, that's a hard sell to someone who is incentivized based upon the size of the budget that they control it. You wind up with misaligned incentives, and it's a strange environment. But the same thing that I'm seeing across the corporate space is also happening in public sector. We're seeing people who are relatively concerned about where they're going to hire people from what those people look like, how they're going to transform their own organizations. Digital transformations, attired term. >> And it's like you have rosy colored glasses on too much. You're gonna miss the big picture. You gotta have a little bit of skepticism. I think to me governments always had that problem where I'm just gonna give up. I'm telling different. I can't get the outcome I want, because why even try? Right? I think now, with cloud what I hear Jazzy and Amazon saying is. Hey, at least you get some clear visibility on the first position of value, so there's some hope there, right? So I think that's why I'm seeing this adoption focus, because it's like they're getting the customers. For instance, like I'm a university. I could be a professor, but my credit card down my university customer, I got a couple instances of PC to so ding and another one to the 28,000 >> exactly number of customers is always a strange >> skeptical there. But now, for the first time, you, Khun got should go to a team saying, Hey, you know all that B s about not get the job done, you can get it with clouds. So it's gettable. Now it's attainable. It's not just aspirations. >> Movers really will make the difference. In the end, with the university customer's question, the people who were in that swing >> the tide can that be a generational shift, a deb ops mindset in government? That's a big question. >> Well, they have some advantages. For example, we took a look at all the Gulf cloud announcements and the keynote yesterday, and that must have been a super easy keynote to put together because they're just using the traditional Kino slides and reinvent 2014 because it takes time to get things certified as they moved through the entire pipeline process. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But the services that are going into come cloud or things that are tried and tested in a lot of other environments. There's an entire community out there. There's an established body of knowledge. So a lot of the path that government is walking down has already been from a technical perspective paid for them. >> I want to riff on an idea on to make a proposal with you here in real time. You're I think what we should do is make a proposal to the U. S. Government that we basically take equity in the agencies and then take them public. >> That's not a bad idea, absolutely not about commercialized. >> The entities create a stock option program, Cory, because listen, if I'm if I'm a talent, why would I gotta work for an agency when I could make three times Mohr get public and be rich, and that's the problem with talent. You walk around the expo for here. The booths are much smaller, and I didn't understand that at first, and then it clicked for me. If you want to sell services to government, you don't buy a bigger booth. You buy a Congress person and it turns out those air less expensive. That's how acquisitions tend to work in this space. So folks walking around or not, generally going to be the customers that buy things. People walking around in many cases are the talent and looking for more talent. And it does become extremely compelling to have those people leave public sector and go into private sector. In some cases where we'll pay you three times more and added bonus most days, this is America. After all, no one's shooting at you, so that does your >> cloud. Economists were kind of joking about your title, but if you think about it, there are economics involved. It's lower cost, faster, time to value. But what we're getting at is an incentive system. So you think fiscal monetary policy of incentives. So you know, Rebecca, this this This is the challenge that the policy guys gotta figure because the mechanisms to get stuff done is by the politicians or do this or do that. We're getting at something, really, to the heart of human beings, that mission of the mission of the agency or objective they're doing for the labor of love or money? Yes, Reed, why not create an incentive system that compensate? >> You think That's incentive system for taxpayers, though, too, in the sense of >> if I can see the trillions of dollars on the >> budget, a lot of what >> governments do shouldn't necessarily be for sale. I think the idea of citizen versus customer tends to be a very wide divergence, and I generally pushback on issues to attempt, I guess, convinced those into the same thing. It's you wind up with a very striated, almost an aristocracy Socratic society. >> I don't think that tends >> to lead anywhere. Good way. Everyone is getting political today for some reason. >> Well, I >> mean fireside chat to digital >> transformations. People process technology. You can superimpose that onto any environment where those public policy or whatever or national governments, the people, his issues there, processes, issues, technologies is each of one of them have their own challenge. Your thoughts on public sectors challenges opportunities. Four people process technology. >> You have to be mission driven for starters in order to get the people involved. As far as the processes go, there are inherently going to be limitations sometimes and easily observable in the form of different regulatory regimes that apply to these different workloads. And when we talk about the technology well, we're already seeing that that is becoming less of a gap over time. What used to be that o on ly we can secure a data center well enough from a physical security standpoint, there's a quote from the CIA that said on its worst day that cloud was cloud. Security was better than any on premises environment that they could build. And there's something to be said for that. Their economies of scale of like by >> the tech gaps going away. Almost zero yes. So if that OK, text, good check training fault of the people side. Absolute awareness competency processes a red tape automation opportunity. That could be. >> But this is also not to assume that the commercial world has unlock either. Where does the next generation come from? You talk to most senior cloud folks these days and most of us tend to have come up from working help desks being grumpy, you nexus in men's or you nexus movement because it's not like there's a second kind of those and we go up through a certain progression. Well, those jobs aren't there anymore. They've been automated away. The road that we walked is largely closed. Where does the next generation come from? I don't have a great answer. >> Talent question is a huge one. This is going to be the difference. Rebecca. We were riffing on this on our opening. >> It's the only one. >> Your thoughts. I mean, were you even hearing all this stuff and you've been researching this? What? Your thoughts. >> I think that we need to think more. I think tech companies need to think more broadly about where they're going to get this next generation of people, and they don't need to necessarily be people who have studied CS in school. Although, of course we need those people too. >> But the people with the bright, the creative, the expansive world views who are thinking about these problems and can learn >> the tech, I mean the tough guy, you know why >> block change you into a nice CEO and everyone gets >> rich, but I think when Jessie was saying today during his fireside, in the sense of we need to make sure that we're building tools, that >> you don't need to be a machine learning expert to deploy, you know we need to make simpler, more intuitive tools, and then that's really important here. >> Amazon does well in that environment about incentives. >> I think that >> one thing that the public sector offers that you don't often see in the venture start of world or corporate America or corporate anywhere, for that matter, is the ability to move beyond next quarter, planning the ability to look at long term projects like What >> does >> it take to wind up causing significant change across the world? Where is it take to build international space Station? You're not gonna be able to ship those things 180 days, no matter how efficiently you build things. And I think that the incentives and as you build them, have to start aligning with that. Otherwise you wind up with government trying to compete on compensation with the private sector. I don't think that works. I think you may have an opportunity to structure alignments around sentence in a very different life. >> It's an open item on the compensation. Until they agree, we'll watch. It was ideas. We'll see what tracks. But to me, in my opinion, what I think's gonna be killer for game game one here. This of this revolution is the people that come out of the woodwork because cloud attracts attract smart people and smart people are leaning into the government with cloud. It was the other way around before the cloud people, I don't want to get involved in government, and that was a big ding on government attracting qualified people. So I think Cloud is going to attract some smart people that want to help for the purpose and mission of whatever the outcome of that political or agency or government initiative with a cyber security there. People will care about this stuff who want the social equity not so much, >> Yeah, I think that's >> going to be a wild card. I think we're going to see like a new might in migration of talented people coming into quote assist government. That's a work for government to figure out how to be better at whatever the competition is and that is going to be I think the first lever of you start to see new names emerge. This person who just changed the organization over here become a hero Dev Ops mindset being applied to new environments. >> And we've seen that to some extent with the U. S. Digital service with 18 half where you have industry leaders from the commercial side moving into public sector and working in government for a time and then matriculating back into the public sector and the private sector, I think that there winds up being a lot of opportunity for more programs like that of scaling this stuff out >> and career change and career passer tissue. And there is this more fluid iti. As you're saying, >> I think that money isn't everything. You know. There's a lot of research that shows up to a certain threshold of income. You >> don't get that much happier. I don't know if Jeff >> basis is that much happier than us. I mean, >> we live in a little more bank and say, you know, >> you see the other side of it, too, is you build all these things together where you have okay. What? >> What is it >> that moves people? What do they care about. It's not just money, and I think that the old styled the old are very strict hierarchy within organizations where things are decided by tenure. Service is a bit of a problem if you have someone who works for. The EPA has been doing a deep dive cloud work for 10 years. There's nothing specific to the EPA about what that person has mastered. They shouldn't be able to laterally transition into the FDA, for example, >> Jackson Fireside Chat, Those interesting point about the fire phone that they talked about. And this is the transfer ability of skill sets and you getting at the thing that I will notice is that with Cloud attracts this interdisciplinary skill sets so you don't have to be just a coder. You khun, note how code works and be an architect, or you could be a change agent some somewhere else in an organization. So that's >> going to >> be interesting. That's not necessarily what how governments have always been siloed right? So can can these silos can these old ways of doing things. This is the question. This is why it's fun to cover this market. >> We're already >> seeing that in the public sector were being able to write code is rapidly transitioning into a very being very similar to I can speak French. Great. That's not a career in and of itself. That's a skill sad that unlocks of different right. A different career paths forward, but it doesn't wind up saving anything. It doesn't want a preserving its own modern aristocracy path forward or >> use the building an example. I don't have to learn how to pour concrete organ, right? The blueprints. Yes. So as we start getting into these systems conversations, you're going to start to see these different skill sets involved. Huge opportunity. If >> you're in >> school today and you're studying computer science, great learned something else, too, because the intersection between that and other spaces are where the knish opportunities are. That's the skill set of the future. That's where you're going to start seeing opportunities. Do not just succeed personally, but start to change the world. >> But Cory Great. Thanks for coming on and make an appearance and sharing what you found on the hallways. Good to see you. Coop con in Europe. Thanks for holding down the fort there. >> Of course I appreciate it. It was an absolute Bonner. >> Excellent. Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank >> you. I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned. You are watching the Cube.

>> Announcer: Live from Washington D.C. it's The Cube covering AWS Public Sector Summit, brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to The Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector summit here in our nation's capitol, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. Co-hosting alongside analyst John Furrier. We are welcoming today Troy Bertram. He is the GM Public Business Development Worldwide Public Sector at AWS. Thanks so much for coming on The Cube, Troy >> Thanks for having me Rebecca >> Rebecca: A first timer. >> It is the first time. >> Rebecca: Welcome. >> Yes, thank you John, thank you Rebecca. >> Let's talk about your partner organization. Why don't you let our viewers know how it's structured, what its mission is, how it works. >> Yes, certainly. Our public sector partner teams work with our partners around the world that really support the mission requirements of government, education, and non-profits. Our partners are part of the large Amazon partner network, so 35,000 plus partners, but really our customers choose, Whether it's technology partners that have really focused their SaaS, PaaS, ISV solutions on government customers and worked through accreditations and certifications, or it's the consulting partners that go to market and own the prime contract vehicles. Contracts are how our customers buy in public sector. What we've done is really focused our teams from start-ups, and venture capitalists, and incubators, through technology, ISVs, PaaS and SaaS partners to our large consulting partners; global consulting partners, but also really helping curate those consulting partners that meet socioeconomic requirements. Often times governments have laws, regulations to buy small woman owned 8(a), service disabled veteran, as veteran, one of my near and dear partner subset to me, and we work with them to help navigate through and develop programs to work through the APN, and often times it's a partner to partner activity of a consulting partner working with a specialized ISV technology solution that can meet a customer's mission requirements. >> What's interesting about the cloud, we've been talking about our intro this morning is the agility and government's now seeing it benefits, and it's not just and aha moment anymore cloud is really, it's driving a lot of change. That's been lifting up a lot of your partner profiles. You have start-ups to large entities all playing together because the requirements my change based upon either the agency or the public sector entity. >> Yes. >> Have unique needs, so you have a broad range of partners. How do you guys nurture that? That's good diversity. You have nice solution set from tech to business. How do you guys nurture that? What's some of the challenges and opportunities you guys are seeing with the growth. >> Cloud is really allowed a reset for many of our partners. Whether you are born in the cloud company, that doesn't necessarily have a long legacy, and haven't built an entire infrastructure, and you don't have an infrastructure of people, but also don't have technology debt that you've been burdened with because of your prior operating models. It's nurturing that born in the cloud company that maybe a services oriented migration partner that's focused on moving our customers applications and workloads, or it's nurturing the technology and helping them build, or it's a refactor and a legacy on premise solution or those solution providers that have traditionally operated in an on-prem environment. Helping them train, certify, and really build a new practice. >> And it's exciting too. You got the ecosystem kind of approach where, you know a thousand flowers can bloom. I've got to ask you, what do you see sprouting up? What's growing most? What is some of the trends that you see in the partner ecosystem? What's growing fast? What's the demand? What's the hot area? >> The real demand is for people with skill sets. In our business, skill sets also often include security clearances, and a knowledge of the working environment that they're migrating from. We're spending an inordinate amount training and educating. Also, our partner selling community of understanding the dynamics of how to go to market, and the contract vehicles, and how to navigate. The opportunities are really immense. It's nurturing those thousand flowers, and it is a challenge for many of us. How do we nurture those thousand flowers simultaneously? >> Are you finding the right people? A big theme on The Cube here is the skills gap. I just saw a Deloitte survey. 60% of executives, and these are executives, they're not in the public sector, said a skills gap hindered their AI initiatives and hindering their cloud computing initiatives. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from the people you're talking to? >> There's a thirst for both knowledge and training, but there's also, from the executive side, we have a need to fill. There's an abundance of roles, and all of us working together. One of our initiatives is even the job boards that we're working with our educate team and Ken Eisner a peer that leads that is, we're helping our partners promote their open roles. Allowing our partners to look for and curate the same talent that Amazon is helping train and develop because when our partners can find amazing talent, our customers win. It benefits AWS and the partner ecosystem. >> Education's huge. You got to have the ongoing digital course ware. Is that a top priority for you? What are some of your top goals for this year in your plan? >> When it comes to education, top goal is training many of our new partners through our emerging partner team. Many of the new partners have a commercial practice. We're also looking at those partners and actively recruiting those partners that have built a commercial practice that are looking to enter government. Whether it's our distributors or our resellers that own the prime contract vehicles, we're doing partner to partner activities. We call it partner speed dating. It's contract vehicles that exist across state and local government, US federal, or in the international community for those ISVs that want to enter new market regions is pairing with those existing local companies that have contract vehicles and then helping train and educate on the nuances of public sector. >> We were talking with General Keith Alexander and retired General Yesthidae came on and I asked them directly, if you could a magic wand, I think I said, something along the lines of if you had a magic wand, what would you do to change the government? It could go faster. He said the technology check we're doing very well, it's moving along great, it's the procurement process. It's just too long. He mentioned contracts. This is really the key point we keep hearing. The red tape. What's the update there? I'm sure partners aren't wanting more red tape. They want to cut through it, to your point. >> No. It's really an education process. When I started at Amazon over six and a half years ago, my first role was to stand up, and it still is the core of my role, I have individuals in 22 different countries around the world, and we're helping governments and VR partners through the procurement process. We did this past week in my home state of Minnesota, our 10,000th RFX, so we consider an FRP, FRI, an RFQ a tender, I need to buy, I want to buy something. We responded to 10,000 of those in six years and two months. That's an abundance of contract that ultimately, many of them are task orders and IDIQs and GWAX. There's an abundance of pathways as General Alexander stated for customers to buy the technology. Now it's educating the contracting officers, the COs, the KOs, around the world on the existing pathways and how to leverage them. We still see old procurement methodologies being applied to the cloud, and it does slow down the end customer's mission requirements. >> And the path to value. >> Yes, the path to value. Exactly. They want to move and move fast and contracts is how we buy, but it's also what slows us down. >> You know, you're with Amazon six years plus, so you know this, so the speeds of value's been the key thing for the cloud. As you look at success now with Amazon public sector, not only in the US, but abroad and internationally, you got massive tailwinds on the success. The growth is phenomenal. How does that feel? What's some observations? What's some learnings that you can take away from the past few years and where's it going? >> It feels like it's day one. It does feel like it's day one. There are tailwinds, but there's still an abundance of customer requirements, and they're evolving, and they're more complex. I personally really like my career's been public sector. Solving the mission requirements, whether it's helping a forward deployed airman, soldier, really keeping them at the cutting edge of technology, and out of harms way, or our first responders; some of the new product demonstrations that we've seen of evolving technology that's helping a firefighter see from an aerial drone vehicle. What does it look like on the other side of this building, and how can I now communicate across different agencies? Is phenomenal. In my home state, where Army Futures Command, I live in Austin, Texas. Army Futures Command is working with the state of Texas as well as the University of Texas to really collaborate as we've never seen before. The barriers of emerging technology to legacy government, to ministries, and health defenses around the world, ministries of defense, and health agencies around the world. >> The data, the scale of Amazon cloud is going to to make that possible. Ground Station's a great example of how that's growing like a weed. The DOD has got a great charter around using agility and AI. >> Collaboration, which is so critical too, as you said. >> It is, and our VM Ware partnership with VM Ware on AWS can really help, and that's a partner play. That's partners helping migrate using the co-developed technology to really move and move faster. Use those existing apps and vacate those data centers. >> Well, thanks for coming on The Cube. Got to be a quick plug, plug the organization, share with the audience, what you're looking for, and update on the partner network. Give a quick plug for your group. >> What we're really looking for is, we've got 105 different competency partners that have really invested in their government, their education, their non-profit competency, and we want to help. I personally want to help them promote their business, and what the opportunity is to connect to either other partners or to government mission requirements. Really welcome the opportunity, John, to come on and look forward to seeing my partners on The Cube in the future. Thank you. >> Well, Troy Bertram, you are now a Cube alum, >> A Cube alum >> Thank you. (panel laughing) >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier, you are watching The Cube, stay tuned for more AWS Public Sector Summit.

>> live from Washington, D. C. It's the Cube covering a ws public sector summit by Amazon Web services. >> Welcome back, everyone. You are watching the Cuban. We're kicking off our day two of our live coverage a ws public sector summit here in our nation's capital. I'm Rebecca Knight co hosting with John Fer Yer John. It's great to be here. 18,000 people having important conversations around around governments and cloud computing. Let's extract the signal from the noise. Let's do with the Cube. Does best, >> Yeah, I mean, this is to me a really exciting event because it's got the confluence of what we love tech and cloud computing and all the awesomeness of that and that enables. But even in Washington, D. C. With the backdrop against tech clash on this, you know, narrative run tech for illah tech for bad, bad check whatever you want to call it. Anti trust is a lot of narratives around that there's a huge story around check for good. So I think there's an interesting balance there around the conversations, but this is world of heavy hitters are this week You've got senior people at the government level here, you have senior tech people hear all kind of meddling and trying to figure out howto let the tail winds of cloud computing Dr Change within government against this backdrop of tech for ill as Jay Carney, whose the global marketing policy guy for Amazon on reports to Jeff Bezos, former Obama press secretary. He's super savvy on policy, super savvy on tech. But this is a really big point in time where the future's gonna be determined by some key people and some key decisions around the role of technology for society, for the citizens, United States, for nation states as people start to figure out the role of data and all the impact of this so super exciting at that level, but also dangerous and people are telling a little bit. But I also want to run hard. That's pretty much the big story. >> So let's let's let's get into this tech backlash because you're absolutely right. Through the public, sentiment about technology and the tech behemoths has really soured. The regulators are sharpening their blades and really paying much more attention, uh, particularly because so many people say, Hey, wait a minute, why? How does Google and Facebook know all this stuff about me, but what do you think? What are we hearing on the ground in terms of where regulation is going? Before, before the cameras were rolling, you were talking about this idea of regulators working closely with the innovators, observing but not meddling. I mean, do you think that that's that's That's these dollars underwears We're going in? >> Well, not really. I think that that's where people wanted to go in. I think right now the the surprise attack of tech taking over, if you will in the minds of people and or without Israel or not, it's happened, right? So I was talking yesterday around how the Internet, when Bill Clinton was president, really grew a little bit slower than the pace of this today. But they did a good job of managing that they had private sectors take over the domain name system. We saw that grow that created in the open Web and the Web was open. Today it's different. It's faster in terms of technology innovation, and it's not as open. You have Facebook, LinkedIn and these companies that have silos of data, and they're not sharing it with cyber security General Keith Alexander, former head of the NSA and the first commander of cyber command in the U. S. The United States under Obama. He pointed out that visibility into the cyber attacks aren't there because there's no sharing of data. We heard about open data and knishes from a think tank. The role of data and information is going to be a critical conversation, and I don't think the government officials are smart enough and educated enough yet to understand that So regulatory groups want to regulate they don't know how to. They're reaching out the Amazons, Google's and the Facebook to try to figure out what's going on. And then from there they might get a path. But they're still in the early stages. Amazon feels like they're not harming anyone there. Lower prices, fast delivery, more options. They're creating an enablement environment for tons of startups, so they feel like they're not harming anyone. You're the antitrust, but if they're going to being monopolizing the market place, that's another issue. But I still think Amazon still an enabling mode, and I think you know, they're just running so hard. It's going so fast, I think there's gonna be a big challenge. And if industry doesn't step up and partner with government, it's going to be a real mess. And I think it's just moving too fast. It's very complicated. Digital is nuanced. Now. You get the role of data all this place into into into effect there. >> Well, you're absolutely right that it's going fast. Teresa Carlson on the other day talking about eight of US growth, UH, 41% year over year and she said, Cloud is the new normal. The cloud cloud is here more and more governments on state and local, really recognizing and obviously international countries to recognize that this, this is they're adopting these cloud first approach is, >> yeah, I mean, I think the first approach is validated 100%. There's no debate. I think it's not an ah ha moment. Cloud Israel. Amazon has absolutely proven since the CIA deal in 2013 that this is a viable strategy for government to get to value fast, and that is the whole speed of cloud game. It's all about time to value with agility. Eccentric center. We've been talking about that with Dev Ops for a long, long time. The real thing that I think's happening that's going on. That's kind of, you know, to read the tea leaves and we'll hear from Corey Quinn. Our host at large will go on later. This is a new generation of talent coming on board and this new generation. It feels like a counterculture mindset. These are Dev ops, mindset, people not necessarily Dev ops like in the Cloud Computing Way. They're younger, they're thinking differently, and they think like Amazon not because they love Amazon, because that's their nature. Their got their getting content in a digital way, their digital natives. They're born into that kind of cultural mindset. Of what is all this nonsense red tape? What's the bottlenecked in solving these problems? There's really not a good answer anymore, because with cloud computing and machine learning an A I, you can solve things faster. So if you expose the data, smart people go well. That's a problem that could be song. Let's solve it. So I think there's going to be a resurgence is going to be a renaissance of of younger people, kind of in a counter culture way that's going to move fast and an impact society and I think it's gonna happen pretty quickly over the next 10 years. >> Well, that's one of the things that's so inspiring about being at a conference like this one a ws public sector summit, Because we are hearing getting back to what you just said. We're solving problems and these air problems about not just selling more widgets. This's actually about saving lives, helping people, delivery of healthcare, finding Mr Missing Persons and POWs who are missing in action. >> I mean, the problems could be solved with technology now for goodwill, I think will outweigh the technology for Ayla's Jay Carney calls it. So right now, unfortunately, was talking about Facebook and all this nonsense that happened with the elections. I think that's pretty visible. That's painful for people to kind of deal with. But in the reality that never should have happened, I think you're going to see a resurgence of people that's going to solve problems. And if you look at the software developer persona over the past 10 to 15 years, it went from hire. Some developers build a product ship it market. It makes some money to developers being the frontlines. Power players in software companies there on the front lines. They're making changes. They're moving fast, creating value. I see that kind of paradigm hitting normal people where they can impact change like a developer would foran application in society. I think you're gonna have younger people solving all kinds of crisis around. Whether it's open opioid crisis, healthcare, these problems will be solved. I think cloud computing with a I and machine learning and the role of data will be a big catalyst. >> But money, the money, the money is the thing we're going to have Cory Quinn on later talking about this this talent gap because there are people who are, As you said, they're young people who are motivated to solve these problems, and they want to work for mission driving institutions. What better mission, then helping the United States government >> just heard in the hallway? This has been the I've heard this multiple times here. This show I just heard someone saying Yeah, but that person's great. I can't keep them. What's happening is with the talent is the people that they need for cloud computing. Khun, get a job that pays three times Mohr orm or at the private sector. So, you know, Governor doesn't have stock options, >> right? All right, all right. If >> you're, ah, machine learning, >> people call girls in the lounge. >> Eso all kinds of different diners. But I think this mission driven culture of working for society for good might be that currency. That will be the equivalent stock option that I think is something that we were watching. Not haven't seen anything yet, But maybe that will happen. >> Paid in good feelings way. We've got a lot of great guests. Wave already teed up. We've got your E. Quinn. Bill Britain from Cal Poly to talk more about ground station. We have alien Gemma Smith of YSL Itics, uh, and Jameel Jaffer. >> Think ground station. But the biggest surprise for me and the show so far has been ground station that that product has got so much traction. That's ridiculous. I thought it would be kind of cool. Spacey. I like it, but it's turning into a critical need for a I ot I mean, I was just talking with you. Came on about the airplane having WiFi on the plane. We all like Wow, we expected now, but you go back years ago is like, Oh, my God. I got WiFi on the plane. That's a ground station, like dynamic people going. Oh, my God. I can provision satellite and get data back, all for io ti anywhere in the world. So that is pretty killer. >> Excellently. I'm looking forward to digging in with you with many guests today. >> Good. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. For John. For your stay tuned, you are watching the Cube.

>> Narrator: Live from Washington D.C. it's the Cube covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in our nation's capital, I'm your host Rebecca Knight. We are joined by Aileen Gemma Smith, the CEO and co-founder of Vizalytics Technology. Thank you so much for coming on the cube. >> Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. >> Let's start by telling our viewers a little bit about Vizalytics, there's a story there about how you founded it. >> Thank you, the mission of Vizalytics is enabling change with data and we saw tremendous opportunity in open and public available data to say, let's make a difference for communities and the whole reason why we started was in 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit my home town of Staten Island and I saw firsthand digital divide, people need access to information, it's not put together in a format that they can use, but it actually is there, so I said, we've got to do something to make a difference. Our first product was a mobile app for shopkeepers. We had thousands of users throughout New York City and then that led on to out first enterprise client being the City of New York. >> The mobile app for shopkeepers could do what? What did it do? >> It let you know everything that was going on outside and around your business that could make a difference to your bottom line, so imagine all you had to do is business name, business address, I'm going to tell you here's your risk for fines, here's when there's going to be public works, here's when someone's filed for a different permit, et cetera, and shopkeepers loved it because we didn't have to do anything to get that information, you told me exactly what I needed to know and you made it really easy to share. >> And now you are a woman founder, a female founder with a she builds t-shirt on and an AWS Hero medallion. Tell me more about this. >> Absolutely, it is a distinct privilege to be an AWS Community Hero. Community Heroes are evangelists for the community where we're talking about how can we build and create more diverse and inclusive communities. I'm privileged and honored to be the only female hero in the Australia and New Zealand region, so I'm determined to say, how can we support more women, how can we support more underestimated founders and tech developers? We have this whole series called She Builds on AWS. We've got events in Sydney, Melbourne, soon to be in Perth, et cetera and that's how we're doing more for our community and as a Community Hero how can I find more voices who aren't me, give them a platform to say, we need to hear what you're building and what you're doing and how can we all support one another as we want to build on on AWS. >> What is it to be like at event like this, where as you said you're the only female Community Hero here, how often are you getting together, collaborating, learning, and how are best practices emerging and what are those best practices? >> First off I want to mention that we have the first ever developer's lounge here in the main hall which is great because we need to see that here in public sector and having those opportunities to meet and greet and talk with folks, hey, you're working on this as well? Tell me more about what you're doing, let me surface out what kind of solutions you're doing, that's where all of the energy and the excitement happens because then you start to discover, oh, I didn't know. Folks are working on this and this, hey we've got the same problem and especially in public sector where folks so often have the challenge of different siloes. I didn't know what I didn't know, how can we bring them all together, so seeing that here in public sector where we can champion, you've got all of these different folks who are working together, it's just a wonderful opportunity. >> And what are you hearing? The big theme here is about IT modernization in the public sector, the public sector, for better or for worse has a reputation of being a little slow or a little more antiquated, there's certain divisions of the government in particular and educational institutions that are incredibly innovative. >> Absolutely. >> Rebecca: Where do you think things stand right now? >> There's absolutely positive change and I like to celebrate here are the leaders and here are the folks that are doing more, yes, public sector does, for good reasons in some cases take a long time to say, how do we want to change, do we feel safe for this change, et cetera, but then you see pockets of excellence. I'm currently based in Sydney, Australia. Transport for New South Wales is one of our clients and I am honored and excited by all that they're doing where at the executive level you have buy-in and you have support. You have support for saying we need organizational change. You have support for saying, let's do proof of concept, let's do these explorations, let's actually have a startup accelerator hub so we as public sector can interact with startups and early-stage founders or university students to make that kind of a difference. When you see that, that's part of why, okay great, we're in Australia now because there's this energy and action and a willingness to move so that's where I think look to those centers of excellence and say, how can we do that within our organization and what can we do better. >> But not saying that we're not seeing quite that energy in the US or how did you think about the differences? >> Again, it depends district by district. Different municipalities have different challenges, different size, et cetera. When you look at this, for example, in San Francisco where you have the Startup in Residence program, started off small, cohort, five or six companies, great, now how can we scale that program and make it national where they had something like 700 applications for maybe a cohort of 50 or 60 companies that are working. That's where you start to see there's an energy that's flowing through, so I think the opportunity for change comes in that kind of cross collaboration and if you have an event like this where you've got public sector folks from all over the world saying, really interesting, you feel my pain, how can we work together on this, what's your team doing, how can I learn from that, how can I take that back to my teams or where can we think about some of the harder problems of organizational change and what do we do if we don't have that executive champion, how can we start to get there? I think that's the kind of energy and opportunity of all the things we're seeing here at Public Sector Summit. >> But as you said, it's also looking for the rest of us, looking at these centers of excellence, see what they're doing, see how they're experimenting, getting those proofs of concept and then saying, hey, we've got something there, let's see if we can replicate this. >> Absolutely, and within public sector, when you have that opportunity to say, and look at how we're doing this in London, look at how we're doing this in Toronto, look at how we're doing this in Sydney and how we're doing this in Melbourne then you can suddenly go back to New York and say, okay great, we do have these other examples, it is being done so we can use that as a guide for what we wanted to do as we continue to innovate. >> What are some of the most exciting things that you're seeing here, some new public sector initiatives, technology, services that you think are really going to be game changers. >> How much time do we have? (laughing) First off, the energy to we want to collaborate, we want to be more agile, we want to make a difference. The sense that this event has grown from just a small cohort to 1,000, couple of thousand, now I believe there's something like 15,000 attendees. >> 18,000 according to Theresa Carlson. >> Think about the fact that we're all willing to be here together, that's a line in the sand that we need to be able to do more, so it's not about a particular technology per se, but willingness to say, we need to be here, we need to face these problems. We've got this challenge of should we bring these legacy systems over, should we think about how we want to work together in public product partnerships that we can all come together and start to work at this and also think about, we've got Public Sector Summits throughout the world, please join us at Canberra Summit that's going to be going on in late August. We've got Tokyo Summit going on right now, so it's not just all here in D.C., you're starting to see these clusters move out and that's really wonderful and exciting for us. >> It's wonderful and exciting on the one hand and yet this summit is taking place against a backdrop where we're seeing a real backlash against technology. The public sentiment has really soured, regulators and lawmakers are sharpening their blades and saying, hey, maybe we should pay attention more to what these technology companies are doing and just how powerful they've become in all of our daily lives. What's the sentiment that you're hearing on the ground, particularly as the founder yourself. >> I think that's where knowledge can be powerful. Can we empathize with some of the challenges? I hope that all companies choose to act with integrity, not necessarily that they do, but there are a lot of folks saying, we need to be able to do more. From a policy perspective, how can tech companies partner with policymakers who may not understand how all of these technologies work and what they're capable of or not capable of, we need more clarity on that because I think that's where it becomes a black box of conflict and if you can change it to say, this is challenges that you have with facial recognition or sentiment analysis or what have you, let's really think about do the systems today do, what are the guard rails that we need to put in and how can we work as partners with policymakers so it's not just driven by lobbyists but there's actually an understanding of, this is the implication of these systems. >> Here are the unintended consequences. >> Absolutely and if I can come back to New York for a second, New York City has one of the strongest open data logs in the nation. Part of that is because Gale Brewer, the Borough President of Manhattan said we need to formalize this. How do we put this together? She didn't come from a tech background, but she saw a problem that needed to be solved and she said, how do we put this together and how do we get the right folks to the table to think about doing this in a really scalable, meaningful way, so the more that we see those opportunities in that backdrop of tensions and concerns, that's how we move forward, facing those hard questions. It's not Rome was built in a day, it's not. It's going to take us a lot of time and there's a lot of unanswered ethical questions as well that we have to start really thinking deeply about. >> But it starts, as you said, with making the data visible and then getting more voices who-- >> Making it visible and also understanding what's not included in the data. Coming back to when I started my company, there was a lot of, but this isn't being counted and what happens when you're saying, I'm making a bias based on this particular dataset that leaves out this whole community over here. Can we think about what's not included in that data or how the data collection itself or the organization itself is changing things, so that's why, coming back to, you need more female founders, you need more underrepresented populations to have those voices of have you considered this, have you given representation to this particular group, to this population. Without doing that, then you're just reinforcing the same siloes and the same biases and we have an obligation to our community and to one another to change that. >> I know you have a keen interest in diversity issues and, as you're talking about, bringing in more women and more underrepresented minorities to lend their perspective to these very important issues that are shaping our lives. How do we solve this problem? Technology has such a bro culture and we're seeing the problems with that. >> First off, from a founder's point of view, you have to know when not to listen, you have to know when not to let someone shut you down because they'll say-- >> The noise. >> Oh my goodness, the noise of, we've got ageism, we've got sexism, we've got racism, we've got elitism. I went to Brooklyn College, I'm very proud of that fact. I had venture capitalists say, I don't want to invest in you, you're too old and you didn't go to a pedigree school, well guess what, my company's still here, some of the folks you've invested in, they folded a long time ago, so part of it is a willingness to drive forward but it's also building networks of support. Coming back to being the community hero, how can I elevate these voices and say, we need to give them an opportunity to be here, we need to change this, so part of it is we want more seats at the table, but if that table's not going to welcome me, I'm creating a whole 'nother table over here where we can start to have that cluster effect and that's where the dedication, the tenacity and you see things like we power tech, where we're really looking to elevate those voices. That change can't happen unless we keep doing that and unless the folks who are like, but this is how we've always done it, are willing to say, actually, shortcoming here, let's think about changing this and broadening the conversation. >> Is that changing though? >> We were talking a lot about how there's a new generation of workers coming up who do think differently and they do grow up with this stuff and they say, we don't need this red tape, why is this taking so long? They're impatient and maybe a more willingness to listen to other voices, are you seeing a difference? >> Absolutely, I'm seeing a difference for sure. That doesn't mean sexism, ageism, elitism has gone away. It has not, but you're starting to see, again, clusters of excellence and I think if you really want to make change you focus on where that traction is, use that as your foothold to build and scale and then start to be able to do more because that's the only way. We've got some barriers that for other founders I empathize with how insurmountable it can be, but if you've got that dedication, if you refuse to be defined by what someone else says you are or what your company is capable of being and then you find those great partners to say, let's do this together, the whole conversation changes. >> Aileen Gemma Smith those are great words to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the Cube. >> Absolute pleasure, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, we will have much more of the Cube's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington D.C. coming up in just a bit. (techno music)

>> Live from Washington, DC, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit, here in our nation's capital. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with John Furrier. We have two guests for this segment, we have George Gagne, he is the Chief Information Officer at Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, George. And we have Christopher McDermott, who is the CDO of the POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Welcome, Chris. >> Thank you. >> Thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you. >> So, I want to start with you George, why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about the POW/MIA Accounting Agency. >> Sure, so the mission has been around for decades actually. In 2015, Secretary of Defense, Hagel, looked at the accounting community as a whole and for efficiency gains made decision to consolidate some of the accounting community into a single organization. And they took the former JPAC, which was a direct reporting unit to PACOM out of Hawaii, which was the operational arm of the accounting community, responsible for research, investigation, recovery and identification. They took that organization, they looked at the policy portion of the organization, which is here in Crystal City, DPMO and then they took another part of the organization, our Life Sciences Support Equipment laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, and consolidated that to make the defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Under the Office of Secretary Defense for Policy. So that was step one. Our mission is the fullest possible accounting of missing U.S. personnel to their families and to our nation. That's our mission, we have approximately 82,000 Americans missing from our past conflicts, our service members from World War II, Korea War, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War. When you look at the demographics of that, we have approximately 1,600 still missing from the Vietnam conflict. We have just over a 100 still missing from the Cold War conflict. We have approximately 7,700 still missing from the Korean War and the remainder of are from World War II. So, you know, one of the challenges when our organization was first formed, was we had three different organizations all had different reporting chains, they had their own cultures, disparate cultures, disparate systems, disparate processes, and step one of that was to get everybody on the same backbone and the same network. Step two to that, was to look at all those on-prem legacy systems that we had across our environment and look at the consolidation of that. And because our organization is so geographically dispersed, I just mentioned three, we also have a laboratory in Offutt, Nebraska. We have detachments in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and we have a detachment in Germany. And we're highly mobile. We conduct about, this year we're planned to do 84 missions around the world, 34 countries. And those missions last 30 to 45 day increments. So highly mobile, very globally diverse organization. So when we looked at that environment obviously we knew the first step after we got everybody on one network was to look to cloud architectures and models in order to be able to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate, so we developed a case management system that consist of a business intelligence software along with some enterprise content software coupled with some forensics software for our laboratory staff that make up what we call our case management system that cloud hosted. >> So business challenges, the consolidation, the reset or set-up for the mission, but then the data types, it's a different kind of data problem to work, to achieve the outcomes you're looking for. Christopher, talk about that dynamic because, >> Sure. >> You know, there are historical different types of data. >> That's right. And a lot of our data started as IBM punchcards or it started from, you know, paper files. When I started the work, we were still looking things up on microfiche and microfilm, so we've been working on an aggressive program to get all that kind of data digitized, but then we have to make it accessible. And we had, you know as George was saying, multiple different organizations doing similar work. So you had a lot of duplication of the same information, but kept in different structures, searchable in different pathways. So we have to bring all of that together and make and make it accessible, so that the government can all be on the same page. Because again, as George said, there's a large number of cases that we potentially can work on, but we have to be able to triage that down to the ones that have the best opportunity for us to use our current methods to solve. So rather than look for all 82,000 at once, we want to be able to navigate through that data and find the cases that have the most likelihood of success. >> So where do you even begin? What's the data that you're looking at? What have you seen has had the best indicators for success, of finding those people who are prisoners of war or missing in action? >> Well, you know, for some degrees as George was saying, our missions has been going on for decades. So, you know, a lot of the files that we're working from today were created at the time of the incidents. For the Vietnam cases, we have a lot of continuity. So we're still working on the leads that the strongest out of that set. And we still send multiple teams a year into Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia. And that's where, you know, you try to build upon the previous investigations, but that's also where if those investigations were done in the '70s or the '80s we have to then surface what's actionable out of that information, which pathways have we trod that didn't pay off. So a lot of it is, What can we reanalyze today? What new techniques can we bring? Can we bring in, you know, remote sensing data? Can we bring GIS applications to analyze where's the best scenario for resolving these cases after all this time? >> I mean, it's interesting one of the things we hear from the Amazon, we've done so many interviews with Amazon executives, we've kind of know their messaging. So here's one of them, "Eliminate the undifferentiated heavy lifting." You hear that a lot right. So there might be a lot of that here and then Teresa had a slide up today talking about COBOL and mainframe, talk about punch cards >> Absolutely. >> So you have a lot of data that's different types older data. So it's a true digitization project that you got to enable as well as other complexity. >> Absolutely, when the agency was formed in 2015 we really begin the process of an information modernization effort across the organization. Because like I said, these were legacy on-prem systems that were their systems' of record that had specific ways and didn't really have the ability to share the data, collaborate, coordinate, and communicate. So, it was a heavy lift across the board getting everyone on one backbone. But then going through an agency information modernization evolution, if you will, that we're still working our way through, because we're so mobilely diversified as well, our field communications capability and reach back and into the cloud and being able to access that data from geographical locations around the world, whether it's in the Himalayas, whether it's in Vietnam, whether it's in Papua New Guinea, wherever we may be. Not just our fixed locations. >> George and Christopher, if you each could comment for our audience, I would love to get this on record as you guys are really doing a great modernization project. Talk about, if you each could talk about key learnings and it could be from scar tissue. It could be from pain and suffering to an epiphany or some breakthrough. What was some of the key learnings as you when through the modernization? Could you share some from a CIO perspective and from a CDO perspective? >> Well, I'll give you a couple takeaways of what I thought I think we did well and some areas I thought that we could have done better. And for us as we looked at building our case management system, I think step one of defining our problem statement, it was years in planning before we actually took steps to actually start building out our infrastructure in the Amazon Cloud, or our applications. But building and defining that problem statement, we took some time to really take a look at that, because of the different in cultures from the disparate organizations and our processes and so on and so forth. Defining that problem statement was critical to our success and moving forward. I'd say one of the areas that I say that we could have done better is probably associated with communication and stakeholder buy-in. Because we are so geographically dispersed and highly mobile, getting the word out to everybody and all those geographically locations and all those time zones with our workforce that's out in the field a lot at 30 to 45 days at a time, three or four missions a year, sometimes more. It certainly made it difficult to get part of that get that messaging out with some of that stakeholder buy-in. And I think probably moving forward and we still deal regarding challenges is data hygiene. And that's for us, something else we did really well was we established this CDO role within our organization, because it's no longer about the systems that are used to process and store the data. It's really about the data. And who better to know the data but our data owners, not custodians and our chief data officer and our data governance council that was established. >> Christopher you're learnings, takeaways? >> What we're trying to build upon is, you define your problem statement, but the pathway there is you have to get results in front of the end users. You have get them to the people who are doing the work, so you can keep guiding it toward the solution actually meets all the needs, as well as build something that can innovate continuously over time. Because the technology space is changing so quickly and dynamically that the more we can surface our problem set, the more help we can to help find ways to navigate through that. >> So one of the things you said is that you're using data to look at the past. Whereas, so many of the guests we're talking today and so many of the people here at this summit are talking about using data to predict the future. Are you able to look your data sets from the past and then also sort of say, And then this is how we can prevent more POW. Are you using, are you thinking at all, are you looking at the future at all with you data? >> I mean, certainly especially from our laboratory science perspective, we have have probably the most advanced human identification capability in the world. >> Right. >> And recovery. And so all of those lessons really go a long ways to what what information needs to be accessible and actionable for us to be able to, recover individuals in those circumstances and make those identifications as quickly as possible. At the same time the cases that we're working on are the hardest ones. >> Right. >> The ones that are still left. But each success that we have teaches us something that can then be applied going forward. >> What is the human side of your job? Because here you are, these two wonky data number crunchers and yet, you are these are people who died fighting for their country. How do you manage those two, really two important parts of your job and how do you think about that? >> Yeah, I will say that it does amp up the emotional quotient of our agency and everybody really feels passionately about all the work that they do. About 10 times a year our agency meets with family members of the missing at different locations around the country. And those are really powerful reminders of why we're doing this. And you do get a lot of gratitude, but at the same time each case that's waiting still that's the one that matters to them. And you see that in the passion our agency brings to the data questions and quickly they want us to progress. It's never fast enough. There's always another case to pursue. So that definitely adds a lot to it, but it is very meaningful when we can help tell that story. And even for a case where we may never have the answers, being able to say, "This is what the government knows about your case and these are efforts that have been undertaken to this point." >> The fact there's an effort going on is really a wonderful thing for everybody involved. Good outcomes coming out from that. But interesting angle as a techy, IT, former IT techy back in the day in the '80s, '90s, I can't help but marvel at your perspective on your project because you're historians in a way too. You've got type punch cards, you know you got, I never used punch cards. >> Put them in a museum. >> I was the first generation post punch cards, but you have a historical view of IT state of the art at the time of the data you're working with. You have to make that data actionable in an outcome scenario workload work-stream for today. >> Yeah, another example we have is we're reclaiming chest X-rays that they did for induction when guys were which would screen for tuberculosis when they came into service. We're able to use those X-rays now for comparison with the remains that are recovered from the field. >> So you guys are really digging into history of IT. >> Yeah. >> So I'd love to get your perspective. To me, I marvel and I've always been critical of Washington's slowness with respect to cloud, but seeing you catch up now with the tailwinds here with cloud and Amazon and now Microsoft coming in with AI. You kind of see the visibility that leads to value. As you look back at the industry of federal, state, and local governments in public over the years, what's your view of the current state of union of modernization, because it seems to be a renaissance? >> Yeah, I would say the analogy I would give you it's same as that of the industrial revolutions went through in the early 20th century, but it's more about the technology revolution that we're going through now. That's how I'd probably characterize it. If I were to look back and tell my children's children about, hey, the advent of technology and that progression of where we're at. Cloud architecture certainly take down geographical barriers that before were problems for us. Now we're able to overcome those. We can't overcome the timezone barriers, but certainly the geographical barriers of separation of an organization with cloud computing has certainly changed. >> Do you see your peers within the government sector, other agencies, kind of catching wind of this going, Wow, I could really change the game. And will it be a step function into your kind of mind as you kind of have to project kind of forward where we are. Is it going to a small improvement, a step function? What do you guys see? What's the sentiment around town? >> I'm from Hawaii, so Chris probably has a better perspective of that with some of our sister organizations here in town. But, I would say there's more and more organizations that are adopting cloud architectures. It's my understanding very few organizations now are co-located in one facility and one location, right. Take a look at telework today, cost of doing business, remote accessibility regardless of where you're at. So, I'd say it's a force multiplier by far for any line of business, whether it's public sector, federal government or whatever. It's certainly enhanced our capabilities and it's a force multiplier for us. >> And I think that's where the expectation increasingly is that the data should be available and I should be able to act on it wherever I am whenever the the opportunity arises. And that's where the more we can democratize our ability to get that data out to our partners to our teams in the field, the faster those answers can come through. And the faster we can make decisions based upon the information we have, not just the process that we follow. >> And it feeds the creativity and the work product of the actors involved. Getting the data out there versus hoarding it, wall guarding it, asylumming it. >> Right, yeah. You know, becoming the lone expert on this sack of paper in the filing cabinet, doesn't have as much power as getting that data accessible to a much broader squad and everyone can contribute. >> We're doing our part. >> That's right, it's open sourcing it right here. >> To your point, death by PowerPoint. I'm sure you've heard that before. Well business intelligence software now by the click of a button reduces the level of effort for man-power and resources to put together slide decks. Where in business intelligence software can reach out to those structured data platforms and pull out the data that you want at the click of a button and build those presentations for you on the fly. Think about, I mean, if that's our force multiplier in advances in technology of. I think the biggest thing is we understand as humans how to exploit and leverage the technologies and the capabilities. Because I still don't think we fully grasp the potential of technology and how it can be leveraged to empower us. >> That's great insight and really respect what you guys do. Love your mission. Thanks for sharing. >> Yeah, thanks so much for coming on the show. >> Thank you for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Ferrer. We will have much more coming up tomorrow on the AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, DC. (upbeat music)