Johns Creek Named Finalist In Amazon's Innovation Challenge

JOHNS CREEK, GA — The city of Johns Creek is a finalist in Amazon's City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge.

Johns Creek was named a finalist for the Best Practices Award for its development of an Amazon Alexa skill, which uses information from Data Hub, the city's open data portal.

Johns Creek is the first city in the world to use open data with Amazon Alexa, which pulls information from the city's website and DataHub to answer users’ questions. This new Alexa skill makes key data about the city's operations more accessible to citizens through the skill and Alexa's natural language question-answer workflow.

By simply asking the "city of Johns Creek" skill, users can find out information such as where police and fire activity has occurred, what the current traffic conditions are, and even learn more about the zoning is of any property in Johns Creek.

Winners will be announced on Wednesday, June 20 at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. The City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge recognizes local and regional governments and public and private schools and districts as "hubs of innovation" in four categories: Best Practices, Partners in Innovation, Dream Big, and We Power Tech. Winners will receive AWS promotional credit to start or continue their projects, the website adds.

You can learn more about Amazon Web Services by visiting its website.

Photo: Johns Creek Chief Data Officer Nick O'Day, left, and GIS Analyst Julie Kutz. Credit: city of Johns Creek