>> Announcer: 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 AWS Public Sector here in beautiful Washington D.C. Springtime in D.C., there's no better time to be here. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting along with John Furrier, always so much fun to work with you. >> Great to see you. >> And this is a very exciting event for you in particular 'cause you've been doing a lot of great reporting around the modernization of IT in government. I'd love to have you just start riffing, John. What's on your mind right now coming into this show? What are some of the questions that're burning? >> I mean clearly the most important story that needs to be told and is being talked about here in D.C. in the tech world is, for this show specifically, is the JEDI contract, the Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative. It's a word that's not being kicked around at this show because-- >> Rebecca: Nothing to do with Star Wars. >> It's literally the elephant in the room because the contract's been waiting, Oracle's been dragging it on and Oracle's been part of apparently, my opinion from my reporting, is involved in some dirty under-handed tactics against Amazon. But it's being delayed because they're suing it. And Oracle's out. They have no chance of winning the deal, it's really Microsoft and Amazon are going to get a lion's share of the business. So you have, that's the biggest story in tech in D.C. in a long time, is the role of cloud computing is playing in reshaping how government, public sector operates. Combine that with the fact that a new generation of workers are coming in who have no dogma around IT technology, how it's bought or consumed and purchased, and the overcharging that's been going on for many many years, it's been called the Beltway Bandits for a reason because of the waste and sometimes corruption. So a new generation's upon us and Amazon is the leader in making the change happen. The deal they did with the CIA a few years ago really was the catalyst. And since then, public sector and the government has realized that there's advantages to cloud, not only for operating and serving society and its citizens but also competitiveness on a global scale. So a huge transformation, that's the story we're following. That's the story that we got into from the cloud side of the business here in D.C. and that is just raging and expanding and compounded by other factors like Facebook. Irresponsibility in how they managed the data there. Elections were tied in the balance. You're seeing Brexit in the UK. You're seeing counter-terrorism organizations using the dark web and other cyber security challenges at the United States. Literally digital war is happening so a lot of people, smart people, have recognized this and it's now for the first time coming out. >> Right, and I think the other thing that we're also starting to talk much more about is the regulation. I know that you're friendly with Kara Swisher and she bangs on about this all the time. But then she said in a column the other day the problem is is that they're now guns ablazing but do they really understand it? And also, is it too feeble, too little too late? >> I mean, Kara Swisher nailed her story in the New York Times and opinion piece. And I've had similar opinions. Look it. She's been around for a long time, I've been around for a long time. I remember when Bill Clinton was president, that's when the internet was upon us, the Department of Commerce did a good job with the domain name system, they shepherded the technology and they brought it out in a way that was responsible and let government and industry have a nice balancing act with each other and the government really didn't meddle too much. But there was responsibility back then and it wasn't moving as fast. So now you look at what's happening now, the government can't just not ignore the fact that YouTube is, in essence, its own state. And it's acting irresponsibly with how they're handling their situation. You got Facebook run by a 30-something-year-old, which essentially could be as large as a government. So there's no ethics, there's no thinking behind some of the consequences that they've become. So this begs the question, as a technology hock myself, I love tech, never seen tech I didn't like. I mean I love tech. But there's a point where you got to get in there and start shaping impact on ethics and society and we're seeing real examples of how this can wildfire out of control, how tech has just become uncontrollable in a way. >> Yes, no absolutely. And so who is going to be the one to do that? I know that on the show later you're going to be talking to Jay Carney who was obviously in the Obama administration, now here at AWS. It's a well-worn path from the public sector to technology. Susan Molinari, a couple of other, David Plouffe. That is the thing though, that these people really need to get it. Before they can lay down regulations and laws. >> Again, back to why we're here and stories we're trying to tell and uncover and extract is I think the big story that's emerging from this whole world is not just the impact of cloud, we talked about that, we're going to continue to cover that. It's the societal impact and this real there there, there's the intersection of public policy and technology and science where you don't have to be a programmer, you can be an architect of change and know how it works. Then being a coder and trying to codify a government or society. I think you're going to see a new kind of skillset emerge where there's some real critical thinking into how technology can be used for good. You're seeing the trends, Hackathon For Good here, you're seeing a lot of different events where you have inclusion and diversity, bringing more perspectives in. So you got the perfect storm right now for a sea change where it won't be led by the nerds, so to speak, but geeky digital generations will change it. I think that's going to be a big story. Not just workforce changeover but real disciplines around using machine-learning for ethics, societal impact. These are the storylines. I think this is going to be a big long 10-year, 20-year changeover. >> But what will it take though? For the best and the brightest of the nerds to want to go into public service rather than go work for the tech behemoths that are making these changes? I mean that's the thing, it's a war for talent and as we know and we've discussed a lot on theCUBE, there's a big skills gap. >> I think it's been talked about a lot on the web, the millennials want to work for a company that's mission-based. What more mission-based can you look for than so unto our public service right now? John F. Kennedy's famous line, "Ask not what your country can do for you, "what you can do for you country." That might have that appeal for the younger generation because we need it! So the evidence is there and you look at what's going on with our government. There's so many inefficiencies from healthcare to tax reform to policies. There's a huge opportunity to take that waste, and this is what cloud computing and AI and machine-learning can do, is create new capabilities and address those critical waste areas and again, healthcare is just one of many many many others in government where you can really reduce that slack with tech. So it's a great opportunity. >> And where would you say, and I know you've been reporting on this for a long time, where is the government in terms of all of this? I remember not very long ago when healthcare.gov was rolled out and it was revealed that many agencies were still using floppy disks. The government is, first of all is not this monolithic thing, it's many different agencies all with their own tech agendas and with their own processes and policies. So where do you place the government in terms of its modernization right now? >> On the elected officials side, it's weak. They're really not that smart when it comes to tech. Most of the people that are involved in the elected side of the Hill are either lawyers or some sort of major that's not technical. So you can see that with Sundar Pichai from Google and Mark Zuckerberg's testimony when the basic kind of questions they're asking, it's almost a joke. So I think one, the elected officials have to become more tech-savvy. You can't regulate and govern what you don't understand. I think that something that's pretty obvious to most digital natives. And then on the kind of working class, the Defense Department and these other agencies, there's real people in there that have a passion for change and I think there's change agents, Amazon's done really well there. I think that is a piece where you're going to see a movement, where you're going to see this digital native movement where people going to be like, "There's no excuse not to do this right." And I think there's new ways to do it, I think that's going to change. So that's that. On the business side, to how the government procures technology is literally like the '80s, it's like that movie "Hot Tub Time Machine" where you get thrown back. Everything is based on 1980s procurement, 1990s procurement. I mean, shipping manuals. So all these things have to change. How do you procure cloud? If you got to go through a six-month procurement process just to spit up some servers, that's not agility. So procurement's got to change. Competitiveness, what does that mean? This Oracle deal with JEDI highlights a lot of flaws in the government. Which is Oracle's using these rules around procurement to try to stall Amazon, it's kind of like a technicality but it's so irrelevant to the reality of the situation. So procurement has to change. >> Well one of the things you said about how there's a lot of pressure to get it right. And that is absolutely true because we are dealing with national security issues, people's lives, health, these really important topics. And yet the private sector doesn't always get it right the first time either. So how would you describe the government, the federal approach to how they start to implement these new technologies and experiment with other kinds of tools and techniques? >> Well I think there's obviously some agencies that have sensitive things. CIA's a poster child in my opinion of how to do it right. The JEDI, Department of Defense is emulating that and that's a good thing. The Department of Defense is also going multicloud as they put out in their statement. Amazon for the JEDI piece which is for troops in the field. I think that every agency's going to have its own workload and those workloads should decide which cloud to use based upon the architecture of the workload. 'Cause the data needs to be in the cloud, it needs to be real time. And to take the military example, you can't have lag in military, it's not a video game, it's real life, people die. Lag can literally kill people in the field. So technology can be a betterment there but technology to avoid fighting is another one. So you have all these things going on, I think the government's got to really design everything around the workload, their mission, their applications, rather than designing around here's your infrastructure, then decide. >> One of the things we talk about all the time, almost ad nauseam, on theCUBE is digital transformation. And so how do you think about those two, private sector versus public sector? What are the big differences in terms of these institutions on their own journeys of digital transformation? >> I think the government's slower. That's an easy one to talk about. I think there's a lot of moving parts involved, you mentioned some of the procurement things, so a lot of processes. It's the same kind of equation. People process technology, except the people that process is much more complicated on the public sector side than private sector, unless it's a big company. So imagine the biggest company in the private sector side, multiply that times a hundred, that's the government. So in each agency there's a lot of things going on there. But it's getting better. I think cloud has shown that you can actually do that, the people side of things going to be addressed by this new migration of new generation of people coming in saying, "I don't really care how you did it before, "this is how we're going to do it today." The processes are going to be optimized so there's some innovation around process improvement that's going to end on the wayside and the technology everyday is coming faster and faster. Recognition, facial recognition software. Look at that. AI. These are things that are just undeniable now, they have to be dealt with. What do you do to privacy? So again, back to process. So people process technology. >> AWS is a behemoth in cloud computing. What do you want to be hearing here at this conference? They're so far ahead of Google and Microsoft but we cannot count those two companies out, of course not. But what are you looking for for key messaging at this show? >> Well I'm looking forward to seeing Andy Jassy's Fireside Chat with Teresa Carlson tomorrow. I'm interested in some of the use cases coming out of Teresa Carlson's top customers in public sector, again it's global public sector so it's not just in North America here in the United States. I'm interested in also understanding what's real and what's not real around the fear, uncertainty and doubt that a lot of people have been putting on Amazon. Because I see Amazon posturing in a way that's saying go faster, make change and it's not so much that they want to monopolize the entire thing, they're just moving faster. And I think Andy Jassy yesterday saying that they welcome regulation is something that they're trying to push the regulators on. So I think they welcome change. So I want to understand if Amazon really wants to go faster or is there an agenda there. (laughs) What's going on? >> I know, methinks these tech titans are asking for a little too much regulation right now. I mean obviously Mark Zuckerberg has also said, "Please regulate us, I can't do this alone." And here we have Andy Jassy yesterday saying those same things. >> Andy Jassy said on stage yesterday with Kara Swisher, "We can't arrest people." So if their tech goes bad, they're only beholden to the consequences as a private entity. They're not the law so this is where again, back to top story here is that, what is the role of government? This change is here. It's not going away, it's only going to get faster. So the sooner the elected officials and all the agencies get out in front of the digital transformation, the sooner the better. Otherwise it's going to be a wrecking ball. >> Well I cannot wait to dig into more of this over the next two days with you, here at AWS Public Sector. >> All right. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier, you are watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Live, from Washington DC, it's theCube, covering the AWS Public Sector Summit 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, and its ecosystem partners. (techno music) >> Welcome back everyone it's theCube's exclusive coverage here, day two of the Amazon Web Sources public sector summit. This is the public sector across the globe. This is their reinvent, this is their big event. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, and also David Vellante's been here doing interviews. Our next guest is, we got Doug Van Dyke, he's the director of U.S. Federal Civilian and Non Profit Sectors of the group, welcome to theCube, good to see you. >> John, thank you very much for having me. >> So you've been in the federal, kind of game, and public sector for a while. You've known, worked with Theresa, at Microsoft before she came to Reinvent. >> 15 years now. >> How is she doing? >> She's doing great, we saw her on main stage yesterday. Force of nature, love working with her, love working for her. This is, like you were saying, this is our re-invent here in D.C. and 14,000 plus, 15,000 registrations, she's on the top of her game. >> What I'm really impressed with her and your team as well, is the focus on growth, but innovation, right? it's not just about, knock down the numbers and compete. Certainly you're competing against people who are playing all kinds of tricks. You got Oracle out there, you got IBM, we've beaten at the CIA. It's a street battle out there in this area in D.C. You guys are innovative, in that you're doing stuff with non-profits, you got mission driven, you're doing the educate stuff, so it's not just a one trick pony here. Take us through some of the where you guys heads are at now, because you're successful, everyone's watching you, you're not small anymore. What's the story? >> So, I think the differentiator for us is our focus on the customers. You know, we've got a great innovation story at the Department of Veterans Affairs with vets.gov. So five years ago if a veteran went out to get the services that the government was going to provide them, they've have to pick from 200 websites. It just wasn't to navigate through 200 websites. So, the innovation group at Veteran's Affairs, the digital services team, figured out, let's pull this all together under a single portal with vets.gov. It's running on AWS, and now veterans have a single interface into all the services they want. >> Doug, one of the things I've been impressed, my first year coming to this. I've been to many other AWS shows, but you've got all these kind of overlapping communities. Of course, the federal government, plus state and local, education. You've got this civilian agencies, so give us a little bit of flavor about that experience here at the show. What trends your hearing from those customers. >> So what's great for me is I've been here almost six and a half years, and I've seen the evolution. And you know, there were the early customers who were just the pioneers like Tom Soderstrom, from JPL, who was on main stage. And then we saw the next wave where there were programs that needed a course correction, like Center for Medicare Medicaid with Healthcare.gov. Where Amazon Web Services came in, took over, helped them with the MarketPlace, you know, get that going. And now we're doing some great innovative things at CMS, aggregating data from all 50 states, about 75 terabytes, so they can do research on fraud, waste, and abuse that they couldn't do before. So we're helping our customers innovate on the cloud, and in the cloud, and it's been a great opportunity. >> Oh my God, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tom Soderstrom two years ago. >> Okay. >> Everybody gets real excited when you talk about space. It's easy to talk about innovation there, but you know, talk about innovation throughout the customers, because some people will look at it, and be like, oh come on, government and their bureaucracy, and they're behind. What kind of innovation are you hearing from your customers? >> So there's an exciting with Department of Energy. They, you know there's a limited amount of resources that you have on premise. Well, they're doing research on the large Hadron Collider in Cern, Switzerland. And they needed to double the amount of capacity that they had on premise. So, went to the AWS cloud, fired up 50,000 cores, brought the data down, and they could do research on it. And so, we're making things possible that couldn't be done previously. >> What are some of the examples that government entities and organizations are doing to create innovation in the private sector? Cause the private sector's been the leader to the public sector, and know you're seeing people starting to integrate it. I mean, half the people behind us, that are exhibiting here, are from the commercial side doing business in the public sector. And public sector doing, enabling action in the private sector. Talk about that dynamic, cause it's not just public sector. >> Right. >> Can you just share your? >> These public, private. Great example with NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. They have a new program called NEXRAD. It's the next generation of doppler radar. They have 160 stations across the world, collecting moisture, air pressure, all of the indicators that help predict the weather. They partner with us at AWS to put this data out, and through our open data program. And then organizations like the Weather Bug can grab that information, government information, and use it to build the application that you have on your I-Phone that predicts the weather. So you know whether to bring an umbrella to work tomorrow. >> So you're enabling the data from, or stuff from the public, for private, entrepreneurial activity? >> Absolutely. >> Talk about the non-profits. What's going on there? Obviously, we heard som stuff on stage with Teresa. The work she's showcasing, a lot of the non-profit. A lot of mission driven entrepreneurships happening. Here in D.C, it's almost a Silicon Valley like dynamic, where stuff that was never funded before is getting funded because they can do Cloud. They can stand it up pretty quickly and get it going. So, you're seeing kind of a resurgence of mission driven entrepreneurships. What is the nonprofit piece of it look now for AWS? How do you talk about that? >> Sure. Well again, one of the areas that I'm really passionate about being here, and being one of the people who helped start our nonprofit vertical inside of AWS, we now have over 12, I'm sorry, 22,000 nonprofits using AWS to keep going. And the mission of our nonprofit vertical is just to make sure that no nonprofit would ever fail for lack of infrastructure. So we partnered with Tech Soup, which is an organization that helps vet and coordinate our Cloud credits. So nonprofits, small nonprofit organizations can go out through Tech Soup, get access to credits, so they don't have to worry about their infrastructure. And you know we.. >> Free credits? >> Those credits, with the Tech Soup membership, they get those, yeah, and using the word credit, it's more like a grant of AWS cloud. >> You guys are enabling almost grants. >> Yes, cloud grants. Not cash grants, but cloud grants. >> Yeah, yeah great. So, how is that converting for you, in your mind? Can you share some examples of some nonprofits that are successful? >> Sure. A great presentation, and I think it was your last interview. A game changer. Where these smaller nonprofits can have a really large impact. And, but then we're also working with some of the larger nonprofits too. The American Heart Association, that built their precision medicine platform to match genotype, phenotype information, so we can further cardiovascular research. They have this great mission statement, they want to reduce cardiovascular disease by 20 percent by 2020. And we're going to help them do that. >> You guys are doing a great job, I got to say. It's been fun to watch, and now, we've been covering you guys for the past two years now, here at the event. A lot more coming on, in D.C. The CIA went in a few years ago. Certainly a shot heard around the cloud. That's been well documented. The Department of Defense looking good off these certain indicators. But, what's going on in the trends in the civilian agencies? Can you take a minute to give an update on that? >> Yeah, so I started earlier saying I've seen the full spectrum. I saw the very beginning, and then I've seen all the way to the end. Where, I think it was three years ago at this event, I talked to Joe Piva, who is the former CIO for the Department of Commerce ITA, the International Trade Association. He had data center contracts coming up for renewal. And he made a really brave decision to cancel those contracts. So he had 18 months to migrate the entire infrastructure for ITA over on to AWS. And you know, there's nothing like an impending date to move. So, we've got agencies that are going all in on AWS, and I think that's just a sign of the times. >> Data centers, I mean anyone who were startup nine years into it, we've never had a data center. I think most startups don't.. >> Born in the cloud. >> Born in the cloud. Thanks so much Dave, for coming on. Appreciate the time. Congratulations on your success. AWS public sector doing great, global public sector. You guys are doing great. Building nations, we had Baharain on as well. Good luck, and the ecosystems looks good. You guys did a good job. So, congratulations. >> John, Stu, thank you very much for having me here today. >> Live coverage here, we are in Washington D.C. For Cube. Coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit. We'll be back with more. Stay with us, we've got some more interviews after this short break. (techno music)