Just as artificial intelligence can transform the way businesses operate, it can also improve public sector services and processes. To help technology and consulting companies to accelerate solutions using AI, machine learning and deep learning for government agencies, Amazon Web Services Inc. created the AI and ML Rapid Adoption Assistance Initiative.

“It provides a direct, scalable and automated mechanism for all the public sector partners to reach out to AWS experts within our team for assistance in building and deploying machine learning workloads on behalf of the agencies,” said Wilfred Justin (pictured), head of AWS AI and machine learning enablement and partnerships at AWS.

The program was launched in response to the 2019 presidential executive order called American AI Initiative, which embraces the importance of AI and instructs the U.S. government to take a more active role in the development of the technology.

Justin spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during AWS re:Invent. They discussed the characteristics of the new program, as well as the benefits it can offer to AWS partners and, ultimately, to the public sector. (* Disclosure below.)

Program has three phases and lasts up to eight weeks

Although partners have been building a lot of applications with AWS for more than a decade, they have limited resources when it comes to deep learning and machine learning, such as speech recognition, cognitive computing and natural language processing, according to Justin. AWS wanted to address just that.

The program has three different phases, the first being the envisioning stage, when AWS dives deep to the use case and the problem that it is trying to solve. It is where teams talk about algorithms and frameworks, solidify the architecture and then validate the architecture.

After that, there is the enablement phase, in which AWS engages with partners and trains their technical teams on the machine learning stack in a hands-on approach.

“And the third phase would be the build phase, and the partners leverage the knowledge they’ve gained through the enablement and envisioning phase and they start building and rolling out workloads on behalf of the agencies,” Justin explained.

The entire journey can take six to eight weeks. Announced just over two months ago, the program already has the involvement of 15 AWS partners. To apply, technology and consulting companies do not need to have any special competency, but they must be part of the Amazon Partner Network and the Public Sector Partner Program. The application process is also simple, according to Justin.

“The partners have to go and fill pretty basic information about the workload, the problem that they’re trying to solve, the machine learning services that they are planning to use, and a couple of other [things] like contact information. And then our team reaches out to the partner and help them with the journey,” he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE