 Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit 2017. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and its partner ecosystem. Welcome back here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit 2017, along with John Furrier. I'm John Walls, we're in the World of Washington Convention Center for the sixth show of almost 10,000 attendees. Somewhere in that ballpark, it's come a long way in a very short period of time, so AWS has a lot, I think, to feel good about, a lot of good us. It's a new reinvent for public sector, it's huge. And not just, we think about government, we think about education as well, we've had a couple of segments about that. We are going to talk about government though with our next guest. And if we get a name wrong on this segment, shame on us. John Stevenson with John Walls and John Furrier. And John's the senior manager. You're managed by JC though, we have to call you. Yeah, JC, right. Public policy at AWS. John, nice to have you with us, we appreciate that. Thank you for having me. Thanks for taking the time. So you're focused primarily state and local governments. And then what exactly, as the conduit of what, in terms of what you want to bring to their table from AWS? Well, I'm a senior manager of public policy for Amazon Web Services in the Eastern United States. I handle state and local government relations in the Eastern US from Texas to Maine and then South to Florida. I help our business and also our partners in government understand how public policy can enable cloud and modern technologies. It's a very exciting place to be because there's a lot going on in state and local government when it comes to IT modernization and cloud right now. You know, I think about government too. I think there's a big umbrella we could put all in. Government, it's public service. But federal government I think has a place and then state and local I think much more responsive, much more grassroots. And so those applications are much more immediate, I would say. And so does that come into play with you that you need to be a little more nimble or you're helping your clients if you won't be a little more nimble or more agile? Absolutely. If you look at what state and local governments are doing, essential services from delivery, healthcare to taking out the trash, providing public safety, providing education. It's handled at the state and local government. And if you look at the number of times you touch government, it is state and local. Think about renewing a driver's license. Think about paying a parking ticket. Think about getting a zoning permit for remodeling of your house. You're dealing with state and local government. The demands on state and local government are also higher. They're holding more data on citizens than the federal government. They are undergoing massive population changes, either positive or negative. So state and local government, which also have budget constraints, need to be more nimble, more innovative. They're natural early adopters and first movers of technology. And if you look at some of the more exciting things about technology that are happening in the government space, I think it's happening at state and local government in the U.S. Yeah, and Smart Cities, by the way, is the hottest trend intel. One of the key sponsors of this show. And we had two folks on here. AI is really going to be a nice gateway for some of these innovations on their side. They have 5G opportunities, they have a transformation. A lot of technology going on under the covers, under the hood, if you will. One of them is Smart Cities. And that is something that is just mind-blowing, just from a technology standpoint. But we've been more mind-blowing from a policy perspective. Who sets the rules? What side does the car run on? What digital services are citizens going to get? Who pays for them? What does the government do? What does the private sector do? These are issues that need to be grappled with. Your thoughts on how you guys look at that and how are your constituents engaging with that and thinking about it? Well, I'm glad you mentioned Smart Cities because there's a lot of activity going on in that space. If you look at internet of things, technologies alone, one of the enablers of Smart Cities, as many as 53% of state and local governments, according to NACIO, are looking at these technologies or deploying them. So it's great to see that because that'll enable a lot of potential from smarter government services, better government services, improving service delivery and improving constituent fulfillment, which resonates with us as part of Amazon. We're all about customer fulfilling fulfillment and delighting our customers with new products and services. They'll ship things faster. That's Bezos' ethos, that's the Amazon's culture. And you can deliver services, any digital services. Everything we do starts with the customer and we work backwards. And in the conversations I've had with policymakers, the state and local government, they see Smart Cities as a way to do that. Everything from improving transportation in places like Columbus, Ohio, to improving connectivity and engagement with the internet in places like Kansas City, Missouri, and new ways of delivering services in places like New York and Los Angeles. It's very exciting stuff. Where policymakers are coming to us and others in the industry about are what are the policies? What are the best practices that can enable these technologies? And so we've been working with them providing information on what we're seeing around the world, how open data can be made and able how security and compliance can be built into applications. And we're happy to provide that because we know from working in the cloud ourselves, the potential that's there for state and local government. You want to foster innovation at the same time. You don't want to create such a restrictive environment or have legacy be the baggage that holds things back. In fact, if you look at some of the best Smart Cities implementations, it's Singapore, it's Dubai, it's areas all over the world that in some cases didn't have really strong infrastructure. So now come back to your role as you look at the U.S. which has great infrastructure except for broadband connectivity. We do faster, but they have some preexisting conditions. So they're under pressure. The cloud is a perfect vehicle for them because they can come in with their existing stuff, get apps and services online quicker. How are you dealing with the challenge of okay, calm down, you're not going to take over the world, you know, Skynet's not coming, you know, terminator reference as always. But you know, that's a concern. Privacy, a lot of policy issues to be dealt with. How do you handle those? Well, I think with any policy issue and I've been in public policy for a while now, it really starts with education. Understanding in very simple layman's terms what the cloud is and what it is not. It is a very transformative technology. It is not an end all one size fits all technology. So what we've done is help educate policy makers by understanding the potential of cloud, what it can do in terms of cost savings, improved security, and being more agile. And to tell that story, you know, we're not, you know, using, we don't use PowerPoints at Amazon. We're not coming in and giving PowerPoint presentations, although I haven't- It's good old pound, slash pounding handshakes and hitting the streets. Well, more importantly, it's sharing the customer's stories. We're talking with them about what's happening at the New York City Department of Transportation. We're talking with them about what's happening at the city of Los Angeles with their emergency operation center about how cities are using cloud technologies to deliver far superior products and services faster. Well, I mean, hit on some of those. So what is New York doing? And what is LA doing specifically? So New York City, they have their iRide application to help citizens get from one point to the other much more quickly and safely as part of their Vision Zero campaign. Anyone who's been in New York and I've been in New York quite a few times knows that traffic can be a real pain in getting from one part of Manhattan to the other. So what iRide does is it helps people navigate Manhattan and the other boroughs much more quickly and efficiently using all the modes of transportation available to them. City of New York is able to deploy that much more quickly to many more people. They're able to update it, keep it secure thanks to cloud technology offered by AWS. City of Los Angeles, they face cyber attacks every day. Then they're the huge costs of maintaining that security. But with cloud, they're able to build out event management systems and integrate those with their Homeland Security technologies and practices and they're able to do it for a fraction of the cost using traditional systems, traditional IT and traditional practices. It's very exciting. Suddenly local government can move with the speed and agility of Astarta, which has made Amazon very innovative when last year we launched over 1,000 new services and features. So, state and local governments are seeing that they want to be more like us and others in the industry that are using cloud to deliver new products and services and be better at their jobs. In the education, I would also add probably patients in the educational role. Yeah, I mean you think about just the civil liberties of the citizens. That's really a job one because I think most people would get spooked, whoa, all the surveillance. But you think about just watching Patriots Day with my family, you know, the Boston bombing, Boston Strong with Mark Wahlberg. You know, these things actually happen all the time and we take for granted some of the things that we have in the surveillance community for the kinds of data that's out there. At the same time, that's the balance. You know, can you bring me value with my liberties? So it's all the same compliance game, same governance game. This is the public sector. Well, that's where I think cloud has a great story to tell. So with cloud, you get the benefits of economies of scale of Amazon with security and also with privacy. We have multiple compliance frameworks, everything from HIPAA, FERPA, Seegis, criminal justice information systems. We are zealous guardians of security and our customers' privacy. We don't look at data, we don't share data customers' permission. We have very strong safeguards and that's why if you look at the customer base of Amazon from banks to government agencies, healthcare companies, even companies like Netflix and you would think they're a competitor of ours, they're running their IT in AWS. They trust us even though with Amazon Video and Amazon Prime, you would think they're a competitor but they've put that level of trust in us and our systems and our practices that they can put their data there. And we're hearing it from customers after customer that they feel more safer and more secure with their data in the cloud offered by AWS and we've shared that with government officials and they take great comfort in those statements. You hit on something earlier when you said that state governments or local governments have more data at their disposal than the federal government has about their consumers, if you will, in quotation marks. Because of that, how much higher do you find their concerns to be in terms of cybersecurity in terms of hack-proof, secure networks and systems as opposed to what might happen on the federal level? Because we think federal, right? We think big about what happened with through the US government's payment systems, right? Last year, OPM, but you say state, local, they've got a lot more data they're protecting. Well, I've had a great opportunity in my current job to talk with a lot of IT officials and policy makers in the States. And oftentimes a meeting will start and they'll say, you know, I've read about this, I've heard about this. And we're often able to say that's not an issue with the cloud offered by AWS or that's something we've already addressed through our security and compliance frameworks. So for example, I was in one meeting and a state policy maker asked me, well, what do you do about HIPAA compliance? We have HIPAA compliance in AWS. And then he tried to ask questions, well, what about this? What about that? And each time our team was able to tell the state policy maker, we meet that, we exceed that, we actually helped write the standard for that compliance framework. So what we've been able to show that policy maker and others is that the cloud just offers a far superior security posture than what they can do on their own. It's taken some time because the cloud is new. And it's still, as we like to say, it's still day one in this field. And, but we are very confident that as the word gets out, more and more people will be trusting, particularly in state government, their data to the cloud because of the superiority it offers on so many different levels. Certainly the word is getting out. This event here is just as big as it's ever been. It's like, I almost reinvent now. These would be a little summit. Now it's grown, there's a lot of interest. It's very exciting. For me, I've been to reinvent now twice. And this is just so delightful to see so many people from government, from the US, from internationally here to learn about the cloud, share their story. It's really inspirational to see what's possible. It's a testament to Theresa Carlson, who was just years ago knocking on doors. No one, that was before cloud was cloud. And now it's just come a long way. Congratulations to the whole team. Thank you. It's really delightful to see and I can't wait to see what's in store for next year and after that. We still got a little bit to go here though, John. Don't kick us out quite yet. John Stevenson, public policy at AWS. Thanks for being with us, we appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. With John Furrier, I'm John Walls and we'll be back with more here on theCUBE from Washington DC right after this.