AWS launches "re:Start" IT skills programme with backing of UK government and military

With handy cloud services message included...

AWS has launched a "free training and job placement programme for the UK" to benefit around 1,000 "young adults as well as veterans, reservists and their spouses".

The scheme was launched today in London, with Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Karen Bradley citing the "the ability to connect in this way" being absolutely vital to a 12.6 per cent of adults who lack "basic digital skills to function in society".

"We need to make sure we"re ahead of the curve," Bradley continued, echoing an AWS' representative's earlier sentiments that "if the Monopoly board was designed today, its utilities would include cloud computing".

"It's fantastic [the scheme is] going to give young people the opportunity to get those skills, but also veterans."

The Ministry of Defence, The Prince's Trust and QA Consulting as well as other organisations - including ARM - who AWS counts as part of its "AWS Partner Network".

Outgoing MoD CIO Mike Stone was on hand to add words of support:

Information is the lifeblood of operations in any organisation, and it's partouclalty apt for the military, where we do operations out in the field, as well as in business," said Stone.

"If we're going to get the most of that, we need to deliver efficiency along a force multiplier. To do that, we need to embrace mobility and the cloud, and the cloud is the force that's gloing to allow us to do that.

"We also need skills, but also the major advantage of cloud providers in the UK, and to deliver it in a secure way. It"s the delivery of hybrid cloud services in a secure way that's allowed us to power forward. We need people who are more digitally native, and I'm bringing in more and more apprentices - and my goodness can they do amazing things in a short amount of time."

Stone said it's not just military and civilians who work in the civil service, but also reservists.

"And we have to make use of skills right across the board. We're undoubtedly going to have shortages of key skills, and we need to reach out for them."