There has been way too much lost in recent months: jobs, routine human interaction and, most importantly, lives. That has led one executive of Amazon Web Services Inc. to frame consequences of the global pandemic in terms of reassessing how governments handle technology as a critical solution for the recovery to come.

In an opinion piece published today on Morning Consult, Shannon Kellogg (pictured), vice president of AWS public policy, Americas, called for federal funding to modernize state information technology systems.

“Governments at every level have already started to accelerate their digital transformation,” Kellogg said. “One of the things I was trying to emphasize in the opinion was there is an opportunity to continue to do that. We need to continue to move forward and accelerate digital transformation across the board. We owe it to citizens.”

Kellogg spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Public Sector Summit event. They discussed bipartisan congressional support for modernizing IT, changing attitudes toward faster technology adoption, training military veterans in cloud skills and a new initiative for sustainability investment. (* Disclosure below.)

Moving toward modernization

Bold investments to modernize IT systems at the state and federal level have been hampered in the past by government inertia. However, Kellogg was optimistic that scenario was already beginning to change even before COVID-19 drove millions of citizens to seek government health and unemployment services.

“The good news is that Congress, in a bipartisan way, has been supporting federal IT modernization,” Kellogg noted. “The states need funding in order to modernize some of these systems.”

Previous lack of action has also been due, in part, because it is difficult for government agencies to think and act like technology startups. Kellogg believes that events of this spring may have changed that mindset.

“Across the public sector, people were a little apprehensive sometimes in adopting these new technologies and practices because they were adverse to risk or felt that if they served as a first mover or did something bold it might come back to potentially hurt them,” Kellogg explained. “Over the last several months, I’ve seen that apprehension in every organization that we’re working with basically not be there. People recognize that they have to move quickly and adopt these new technologies and practices in order to do their jobs.”

Cloud skills and sustainability

In addition to pushing for increased federal and state funding for IT modernization, AWS has been actively promoting other initiatives. One of these involves supporting military veterans in science, technology, engineering and math careers.

AWS has recently expanded partnerships with local community colleges to enable the training of more veterans in cloud-based capabilities. “We’re really passionate about this area,” Kellogg said. “We have a lot of programs across Amazon to hire veterans, to train veterans in both basic and advanced cloud skills.”

AWS has also been involved in another key initiative: sustainability. In June, the company announced that it would launch a $2 billion fund for sustainable technology investment.

“The fund focuses on startups and new technologies in this space,” Kellogg said. “We have a long-term goal of being 100% renewable and eventually carbon neutral.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Public Sector Summit event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Public Sector Summit Online event. Neither Amazon Web Services Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE