The City of Tamarac, Florida, earned the 2025 AWS Champions Award for its forward-thinking reimagining of resident communications. Through the deployment of an AI-powered, cloud-native, omni-channel platform built on Amazon Connect, Tamarac has dramatically elevated the accessibility, responsiveness, and efficiency of city services.

Project Overview
Tamarac’s initiative centers on an intelligent, multi-channel communication platform designed to serve residents across voice, SMS, web chat, video, and even smart home devices like Amazon Alexa. Built on a robust AWS foundation, this solution supports six departments, as well as the internal IT Service Desk, with more in the pipeline.

The platform’s centerpiece is a multilingual virtual agent powered by Amazon Bedrock, which pulls live data directly from public websites, RSS feeds, and other city data sources to provide accurate, real-time responses to residents. Combined with Amazon Lex for intelligent chatbot and call routing, and Amazon Q for real-time staff assistance, Tamarac’s system provides personalized and timely support at scale.

Whether delivering emergency alerts or helping residents navigate complex services, the solution guarantees every interaction is seamless, personalized, and consistent, regardless of channel or language.

Addressing Legacy Challenges
Before adopting AWS technologies, Tamarac’s customer service experience was limited by:

• Outdated infrastructure: A voice-only contact center that lacked channel integration, automation, or analytics. 
• No multilingual support: Non-English-speaking residents were underserved, especially during emergencies. 
• Limited proactivity: No tools to deliver timely alerts or proactive updates. 
• Inefficient IT support: Internal teams lacked automated workflows and self-service tools. 
• Scalability constraints: Adding new departments or functionality required costly hardware and complex reconfiguration. 

These issues hindered Tamarac’s ability to deliver equitable and efficient services, especially during high-stakes events such as hurricanes.

Outcomes: Smarter Services, Greater Impact
Since launching its AWS-powered ecosystem, the city has realized transformational improvements:

• Omni-channel self-service: Residents can now access support via SMS, voice, web, Alexa, and more, reducing agent workload and enhancing user convenience. 
• Real-time, AI-driven engagement: Virtual agents and Amazon Q streamline responses and improve accuracy with live data integration. 
• Emergency response automation: By connecting RSS feeds from the Emergency Alert Center to Amazon Connect, the city can now automatically broadcast real-time updates across all channels, which is critical for hurricane and disaster preparedness. 
• Multilingual inclusion: The platform supports eight languages, enabling equitable access for a diverse population. 
• Measurable resident satisfaction: Post-call surveys show a 77% satisfaction score — significantly higher than state (53%) and national (56%) government service averages. 
• Cost efficiency: Cloud-native infrastructure eliminated the need for hardware investments, offering scalable, pay-as-you-go pricing. 
• Proactive Communication: Automated voice and SMS alerts notify residents of inspections, code enforcement, and more. 

These results have positioned Tamarac not only as a leader in constituent engagement, but also as a model of operational efficiency and inclusive digital service delivery.

“The City of Tamarac is honored to be recognized as an AWS Champion for 2025. This award reflects our commitment to harnessing cloud technology and AI to enhance how we serve our residents. By leveraging AWS solutions like Amazon Connect, Bedrock, and Lex, we have reimagined resident communications to be more accessible, responsive, and inclusive than ever before. This recognition is not just about technology — it’s about our vision to create a smarter, more connected city that delivers exceptional services and critical information when it matters most.” — James Twigger, Chief Information Officer, City of Tamarac

A Culture of Innovation and Service
Tamarac’s transformation wasn’t a one-off project. It was the result of strategic planning, technical vision, and an organizational commitment to equity and efficiency. By adopting cloud-smart principles, fostering collaboration, and focusing on user experience, the city has demonstrated how technology can be a true enabler of public good.