AWS Partners With Eastern Foundry to Host SBA Hackathon; David Levy Quoted

Amazon Web Services and Eastern Foundry will host a hackathon from Dec. 15 to 16 to help the U.S. Small Business Administration address challenges in disaster response for small businesses, FedScoop reported Wednesday.

The two companies aim to provide SBA with the technologies and methods that could speed up a small business’ access to federal assistance after a natural disaster and make the Small Business Innovation Research grant process more transparent and accessible.

David Levy, vice president of U.S. federal government at AWS, said the event will help “foster innovation within the small business community” and allow “tech talent to showcase new ideas” that SBA could utilize.

Geoff Orazem, co-founder of Eastern Foundry, said he expects the hackathon to update the SBIR grant process by providing an “actionable roadmap” to guide the SBA in promoting transparency.

He hopes the participants will include federal workers and civilians experienced in government technologies, user experience and design as well as those “who never touched government problems before.”

AWS will host the event at its offices in Arlington, Va.