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Ahead of this year’s Emergency Tech Show, we are delighted that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is not only a Premier Partner but is also sponsoring our Emergency Tech Leaders Stage. We’re looking forward to hearing from them at the show and found some time to sit down with Grace Blake-Turner, Head of Public Safety at Amazon Web Services, to understand how AWS is innovating in the blue light technology sector.

1. AWS is a huge name in tech but for those in emergency services, what should they know about your work in this space specifically?

The AWS mission for the emergency services is to enable better technology access where it matters most. Our aim is to help policing, fire and rescue and ambulance services develop resilient technology to achieve more with less, modernise, and digitally transform back office, public engagement and operational services, ultimately improving services for UK citizens.

2. You often talk about the ‘art of the possible.’ What does that look like for blue light services in practice?

We seek to help the emergency services reinvent citizen experiences, improve community confidence, make data-driven decisions, and increase productivity through digital enablement. Let me give you some concrete examples. We have worked with West Midlands Police and partner TTEC Digital to reduce 101 call wait times from 25 minutes to 10 seconds and prioritise vulnerable calls.  We’ve also worked with Bedfordshire Police and partner NEC to save 9,500 officer and staff hours a year using AI to auto redact documents. Both solutions were shortlisted for the Police Digital Awards 2024.

3. How do you work with emergency services customers and partners to support innovation?

The key is removing the technical burden from emergency services staff. You should not have to worry about servers and infrastructure – but focus on mission outcomes and public safety. We start with the problem and work backwards to find the right solution. Support is available from both your AWS account team and our extensive AWS Partner Network (APN) to help emergency services achieve your objectives through native services, or partner solutions built on AWS. Together, we can provide the right resources, skills development, potential funding, and credits to support cloud adoption and innovation.

4. You mentioned a culture of ‘starting with the problem and working backwards.’ Can you give us an example of how that plays out in a public safety context?

We start by identifying an end-customer, and their specific problem or opportunity. We work backwards from there to define a new solution that meets your most pressing need. Together, we bring the idea to life in a future proof of concept and build as needed to further validate and refine. When you are ready, we then use AWS to take the solution to scale. For customers interested in applying Working Backwards to address a broader innovation agenda across your organisation, we also offer a multi-stream engagement. We work with your leaders, chief officer groups, and change teams to align on an overall vision and strategy for innovation and then activate it through multiple innovation workstreams – each addressing a specific customer problem or opportunity.

5. We understand you have recently published a case study with Bedfordshire Police. Can you tell us a bit about that project and what it demonstrates?

Bedfordshire Police have achieved remarkable results working with AWS including 9,000+ police hours saved on administrative work annually, allowing officers to focus on other high judgement tasks, 1,500+ control room staff hours saved yearly and the winner of the NPCC Commissioner’s Award at the National AI Awards.

“Working with AWS has been a revelation in mine, and therefore our force’s, strategic, problem-solving approach, and not only with those problems that can be addressed through technology. The working relationship with AWS and their willingness to work with the policing sector has helped us ensure that we understand and use cloud technology where it is more efficient for us to do so, whilst not reducing the service provided to the public. The journey thus far has been inspiring.” - Assistant Chief Officer at Bedfordshire Police

6. What challenges do your emergency services customers most commonly face and how is AWS helping them move forward?

We work with emergency services customers on a wide variety of use cases, including digital transformation, implementing a data strategy and AI into your organisation, streamlining public contact, workforce management and wellbeing, tackling complex crime and automating manual tasks to improve productivity and efficiency. The common thread is trying to do more with less while improving service quality. The AWS cloud helps emergency services innovate at scale, increase speed and agility and offers flexibility and efficiency while adhering to stringent standards and regulations. It allows organisations to innovate and improve citizen experiences, without having to invest in maintaining physical infrastructure.

7. Emergency services often operate in high stakes, high pressure environments. How does the AWS cloud support resilience, security and scalability at that level?

AWS delivers the most reliable cloud for building and running highly available solutions, with infrastructure built from the ground-up for reliability, comprehensive resilience capabilities and guidance that make it easy to build with best practices, and proven operational expertise for mission-critical workloads. AWS designs its global infrastructure with built-in redundancies and safeguards against failures and is the only major cloud provider to offer three or more Availability Zones (AZs) within all of its regions, providing greater redundancy and protection.

8. You work with a broad ecosystem of partners. How does that benefit your emergency services customers?

AWS connects customers with specialised partners who serve as trusted advisors -making it easier for them to achieve predictable value from the cloud, safeguard existing investments, and reduce the complexity of cloud adoption. By combining AWS services and infrastructure with our partners’ deep expertise in building software and solutions for the emergency services, customers can achieve mission outcomes more quickly and confidently than ever before. 

9. Looking ahead, what are you most excited about in terms of AWS’s potential to support policing, fire or ambulance services?

We are excited about the future of generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI). This is a once in a lifetime technological advance that can completely change what’s possible for our customers. Being able to envision, build and develop technological strategies with our customers can unlock their data to feel the full benefits of Gen AI. Seeing results brought to life and the positive impact we can have at AWS for the front line, and keeping our citizens and communities safe is what we live for in the team.

10. Finally, what’s the one thing you wish more public safety leaders understood about cloud technology today?

Our cloud capabilities enhance departmental mission effectiveness, improve collaboration, and allow emergency services customers to tackle extant and emerging issues. AWS provides end-to-end facilitation to guide you and your team through the cloud adoption with customised discussions, activities and presentations. Whether you are just starting on your cloud journey or are already realising benefits of cloud, starting with a Working Backwards session is an excellent way to expand knowledge, define potential solutions and accelerate your digital innovation to meet your organisational goals.

Amazon Web Services is a Premier Partner at this year’s show, and sponsoring our Emergency Tech Leaders' Stage which will host a wide variety of insightful discussions on the future of blue light technology.