Busan Metropolitan City signs new agreement with AWS to develop smart city initiatives and foster public sector innovation

The Busan Metropolitan City and Amazon Web Services (AWS) signed a new agreement to address real-world public sector technology challenges at the Busan Cloud Innovation Center (CIC).

Building on a collaboration initiated in March 2016, this new agreement will span the next five years with a focus on smart city initiatives. These initiatives will tackle challenges such as traffic, public security, health and well-being, logistics, and the environment within Busan, South Korea.

Shin Chang Ho, Director of Future Industry Bureau City, and Peter Moore, General Manager, APAC AWS, sign the Busan Cloud Innovation Center Agreement.

The Cloud Innovation Center program, powered by AWS, promotes solving real-world challenges faced by government, education, and nonprofit organizations. In this next phase of Busan Cloud Innovation Center, organizations can leverage Amazon’s innovation mechanisms and continue to build with AWS Cloud technology to accelerate public sector innovation and expand regional economic growth in Busan.

This new phase of the Busan CIC will include training programs to develop cloud expertise for students, and introduce internship programs for local college students to acquire real-life experience by applying AWS Cloud technology to business projects and solve public sector challenges.

The Busan CIC was the first of seven CIC initiatives around the world supported by AWS Worldwide Public Sector, and the only initiative to be hosted by a local government agency. This worldwide network of Cloud Innovation Centers powered by AWS creates the opportunity for collaboration, accelerating the speed of innovation in public sector organizations and helping to make the world a better place.

The Busan CIC has identified and supported promising startups, and over the past three years has provided cloud business consultations to 186 companies and has trained over 800 cloud experts. The CIC has selected 65 startup members to support, and these members have increased their sales by KRW 16 billion and added 150 employees, helping to revitalize the local economy.

The CIC seeks to open the door to rapid, iterative, innovation in support of digital transformation for the public sector.