 Live from Washington, D.C., it's theCUBE, covering AWS Public Sector Summit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit here in Washington, D.C. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, John Furrier. We're joined by Kim Majeris. 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. Welcome to theCUBE. I'm excited. Welcome to your first radio. I'm sure you'll be a natural. Let's start by telling our viewers a little bit about what you do and how being, 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 asked that question. What's the difference between a federal versus the state and local? And I look at it, I attribute it to this way. Programs are very important in the 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 the state and local governments also, and we've heard this on theCUBE 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, Andy Jassy talks about experimentation and learning through failure. They don't, a lot of them don't have the luxury and this changing landscapes, different diversity environments. It's doing, yeah, it's absolutely. It's doing more with us 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 on a 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 in the cities. What about the community aspect of it? Because one of the things we're seeing on the trend side is the wave that's coming is besides all the normal investments they 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? A 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 solution that's going to come from? Save to invest, right? So they're taking a look at net new technologies that allows them to actually reinvest 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 a 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 DC 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 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 and 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 get their services when they look for it. They don't want to have to go to the buildings. 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 as the day that you would stand there and 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 Teresa talk about, removing all that on differentiated, heavy lifting. 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 with it? How do you get people to over the hump saying, okay, it's okay to start this journey. Here's some successes. Is it get a couple of wins under your belt first and what's the process? Take us through it and I'm going to use Kasey. 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 you're 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 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 are 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 have 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 its 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 of conversations earlier and then came up with the keynote was, the old days was, if you work for the government, it was slow, why take the effort? I 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. 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 stays, like they now conceive visibility into a light at the end of the tunnel. So there's changing the game on what's gettable, it's attainable, which is aspirational. You know what, 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. You know, 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 closed 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. With real problems out there. Andy also talked about the real problems that could be solved. And he didn't really kind of say federal or any kind of category, he's just going to lay it out there generally. And that's what people care about that work for state, local and federal. They actually want to solve problems. So there's, 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 these 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 to say let's de-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 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 need, 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 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 two 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 of our up and rising drivers. I mean, 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 at 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 that are 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're thinking about even the people who are in cloud, not necessarily in the public policy, what are you hearing? What are you thinking? What's AWS's position on that? 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 at 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 and 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 you know what? 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. It's an old community vibe going on. Yeah. 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. 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. I mean, it's been progress before, I don't mean to say it's no problem, but it's new kinds of progress. You know what, I think the best part, and I say this to people who are working with Amazon is like, 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 is 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 cat-packs. They don't know how to do apex, so how can you help us change the way they look at assets and more importantly, give us the 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 this means education is paramount for you. So what are 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 club. But for state and local customers today, it is about workforce redevelopment and giving them the basics 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, because 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 us. Not like, I mean, no one's skilled enough. We need more people. No, you know, I'll give you another, it was a great case study and they actually did a session here this week, LA County. They get 8 to 900 calls a day just within an IT, one of the IT organizations. And, you know, Benny would say my customer is those who are working in the community, in the county. So they've been able to move to Connect. 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 seeing. He's like, 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 U.S., cause Andy talked about the middle class, shrinking with the whole reference to the, you know, mills going out of business and inferring that digital's coming. Where do you see the trends in the U.S. where outside of the major metros like Silicon Valley and New York, et cetera, Austin, where there's growth in digital mined IQ. You're seeing, I mean, obviously we're joking with the Minnesota guys, it's our 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, you know, 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 are your 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, in a new way. So Kansas City, I think, has done a fantastic job. And then having jobs that work remotely because 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. It's where you're at, it's not where you go. And yet we do need 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. And those are 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 we're going 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, we'll have to check in with you and find out your progress on the state and local. Certainly it's a real opportunity for jobs and revitalization across 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, thanks so much, Kim. Thank you. Appreciate it. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of AWS Public Sector Summit.