DHCS: Winner of the 2021 Season of Amazon Web Services Jam Competitions

The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS)won the hotly contested Amazon Web Services (AWS) Jam 2021 Season, edging out five other California state departments in the inaugural state competition.

Over the course of five months—April through August—and four head-to-head competitions between the departments, the DHCS team won three out of the four challenges. Although they came in last place during the first challenge, they demonstrated grit and determination and went on to sweep the remaining three to lock up the season title.

AWS Jams are immersive engagements that encourage participants to level-up their AWS skills using hands-on, real-world scenarios. The scenarios, called challenges, vary in level of difficulty and allow participants to identify their strengths and areas of improvement while working as a team to solve the numerous challenges that comprise a four-hour Jam event.

The purpose of the competition is to help each department’s IT teams become more self-reliant with AWS Cloud technologies and to expose them to new services that can help them provide better, faster, cheaper services to the citizens they serve.

"After our executive team celebrated winning, we learned that one of our developers had already applied their newly learned skills to help improve our AWS environment," said Zach Clements, Chief, Cloud Business Application Section for DHCS.

Each California State Department was invited to create a team of 3-4 people to compete against peers from other departments. The DHCS team consisted of Benjamin Winter, Amera Belay, Amir Pahlavanzadeh and Chris Dicely.

The CA Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) had a strong showing and was the winner of the very first challenge. Puthika Chau is the DMV’s Cloud Architect and said this about the AWS Jam Season. “I was blown away with what I learned at the first Jam. One of the challenges asked us to use Identity and Access Management Permission Boundaries to limit a contractor’s ability to escalate their privileges,” Chau explained. “Later that week, I was in an internal meeting and asked to do almost the exact same thing in our production environment. I was able to take what I learned in the JAM and immediately apply that knowledge,” he said. “Can’t wait for the next JAM!”

Plans for the 2022 State of California AWS Jam Season are underway. To reserve a place for your team in next year’s competition, reach out to your AWS Account Manager or Solution Architect or contact the AWS California team at aws-california-team@amazon.com.