During a session on public sector innovation at Google Cloud Next ’24, leaders from the World Bank, the United Nations Population Fund, and the United Nations Office for Project Services shared strategies for boosting productivity by fostering operational consistency and shared understanding. They also stressed the importance of transparency and continuous feedback and focused on the tangible benefits of eased workloads and enhanced efficiencies.

Enhancing collaboration

Public sector agencies operating worldwide are adopting cloud-based collaboration tools to create a more integrated work environment where documents and projects are easily accessible anytime and on any device. This shift not only boosts productivity but also enhances the flexibility of working environments by giving employees more universal access to agency resources and reports from offices around the world. It also helps overcome language barriers by providing translation services. And it helps ensure communications with international partners meet agency standards across different time zones and geographies. 

Justin Waugh, head of platforms, ITG enterprise platforms team at UNOPS, highlighted the transformative impact of Google Workspace in managing extensive infrastructure projects involving frequent account and project turnover. By leveraging Workspace tools like Google Docs and Sheets, UNOPS has streamlined project management and data handling and significantly reduced operational friction while enhancing user experience.

“The key thing to remember is to reduce friction for people using the systems that we’ve got, and we’ve been heavily into the book to do that,” said Waugh.

Waugh’s comments underscored the importance of integrating various Google products within organizational applications. Doing so facilitates more seamless project communication, budgeting and reporting. This strategic integration has allowed UNOPS to maintain standardized procedures across projects, fostering consistency and understanding throughout the organization.

Leveraging AI enterprise search solutions for efficient and confident information access

One of the standout applications of AI within the public sector is improving information access through enterprise search solutions. AI-powered search tools within Google Workspace can easily access vast amounts of data to find relevant documents, emails, and files. This capability is particularly transformative for government agencies, where quickly retrieving and correlating information can influence policy-making and public service delivery.

Raman Pugalumperumal, senior IT officer and lead for AI and ML platforms at the World Bank, discussed how Vertex AI and Google Cloud Search have revolutionized their data management practices. The World Bank, which manages extensive financial and economic analysis datasets, has benefited from the enhanced speed and accuracy these tools provide.

“We can measure things with quantitative information… we’re able to do [certain things] faster, or maybe things which we weren’t able to do — they’re able to do it because of the volume process,” said Pugalumperumal.

Pugalumperumal explained how AI is being used to quicken information retrieval, creating a more responsive and productive environment. This shift towards leveraging AI in its operations has unlocked new avenues for global access and sharing the World Bank’s wealth of knowledge, positioning AI as a pivotal asset in its mission to distribute developmental knowledge.

At UNFPA, IT Director Nayanesh Bhandutia said they’re working on developing an AI-powered search experience product. “We aim to break the data silos. We don’t want our users to worry about the data source when they’re looking for something,” said Bhadutia.

“This will be very time-saving because now the global population is not going through the pain of finding information.”

Maintaining the flow of multilingual work with AI-assisted translation 

Another significant advantage of integrating AI with Google Workspace in the public sector is overcoming language barriers. AI-driven language translation tools embedded within Google Workspace allow government employees from different linguistic backgrounds to collaborate effectively.

At UNFPA, IT Director Nayanesh Bhandutia highlighted the transformative role of the Gemini AI interface within Google Workspace. Introduced initially to simplify operations, Gemini has evolved to solve more complex challenges, particularly in multilingual settings. The AI-driven tool has been instrumental in helping staff draft clear and concise communications in English, Spanish, French, and Arabic.

“The introduction of Gemini has solved the [fluency] problem. Our users are getting more confident, and they’re spending less time making revisions, but we want to take it to the next level. We noticed many potentials,” said Bhandutia.

The potential for AI to extend beyond basic translations to fully integrated document management systems is vast. Bhandutia shared ambitious plans to leverage Gemini AI to automate the generation of critical documents, such as requests for proposals and job descriptions, which would reduce administrative overhead and enhance responsiveness.

For example, teams can use AI to translate documents and emails directly within the Google Workspace environment when collaborating on international aid programs or global policy initiatives. This seamless integration of translation services helps maintain the flow of work without the interruptions typically caused by language differences, fostering stronger connections and more cohesive teamwork.

“It is a fantastic stepping stone in the technology sector — [the capability] to deliver what people need…this is an excellent step towards accessibility,” said Waugh.

The future of AI and public sector innovation

The ongoing advancements in AI are expected to introduce more sophisticated tools for predictive analytics, supporting complex decision-making and personalized public services. These developments will not only drive greater efficiency within agencies but also enhance the quality of services provided to the public.

By leveraging these tools, government agencies are enhancing their operational capabilities and setting new standards for accessibility, efficiency, and collaboration in public service.

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One challenge that remains at the forefront of those efforts is ensuring that today’s increasingly dynamic and distributed IT environments continue to meet the government’s complex security, regulatory and data privacy compliance rules — while learning how best to capitalize on AI’s potential to serve the public.

Google Cloud’s understanding and recognition of those challenges was widely reflected in a series of sweeping announcements at last week’s Google Cloud Next ’24, that promise new levels of security, flexibility and AI-assisted capabilities to Google Cloud’s public sector customers.

Building AI capabilities within protected workspaces

When it comes to securely managing public sector data, agencies using Google Cloud gain immediate benefits by building on top of its foundational architecture. Because the architecture was built for the cloud and also incorporates a substantial portion of federal security controls, it’s possible to demonstrate security compliance and obtain operating authority in weeks instead of months when folding in applications like Workspace or AI models like Gemini.

Another way agencies can enhance the security of their workloads is by using the Google Cloud Assured Workloads, which also have foundational government security compliance assurances built in, according to a panel of technology experts speaking at Google Cloud Next ’24.

The panelists, representing NASA, Palo Alto Networks, SAP and Google Cloud, argued that using zero-trust and compliance-as-a-code technologies has become essential to creating and maintaining easily reproducible compliant workload environments. That’s in part because of the diversity of government agency compliance requirements, from FedRAMP to the Department of Defense Impact Level 2, 4, and 5 security controls. 

By deploying workloads in pre-certified, software-defined environments set up to limit activity to compliant products and restrict where data can flow and who can access it, agencies can better ensure their workloads meet government requirements.

“Moving to Assured GCP is not just an upgrade; it’s a transformational leap forward,” said Collin Estes, the CIO of MRI Technologies working at NASA.

He pointed to two benefits: The “ability to generate compliant documentation as both a product of these large language models as well as helping us produce very well-structured definitions of what we’re doing, based on your actual implementations within Google Cloud. It is not a human saying, here’s what we do. It is us generating what we do from our environment. I think that’s going to really change the game in terms of how federal agencies manage risk across these portfolios.”

Among other benefits, the panelists pointed to:

Streamlining software development – Transitioning to Assured GCP allows government bodies to leverage and deploy cutting-edge technologies and methodologies, such as containerization and microservices, with unprecedented ease.

Focusing on the mission – By moving to Assured GCP, organizations can shift their focus from the backend to what truly matters—their mission. This shift represents not just an operational change but a philosophical one, where technology becomes an enabler rather than a hurdle in support of agency missions.

According to Palo Alto Networks Senior Manager Michael Clark, another reason for adopting Assured Workloads is the volume of data and the compute intensity with all this data. “We’re at that critical pivot point. We’ve been using this data to learn new threats and find zero-day threats so that we can enforce zero trust, improve security protection mechanisms, and map into new areas of innovation for threat detection and automated remediation.”

When building a compliant environment, SAP’s NVP Architecture and Product Launch, Hunter Downey, urged session attendees “to build it within a framework that I can ensure controls are in place, so I can rinse and repeat across 20 to 100 different teams, potentially touching 1,000 or 5,000 developers. If you start with the lowest common denominator, you’re going to fail. The reason why we partnered with GCP Assured Workloads is because you’re able to control the flow of information and messages. The minute the data goes global, it’s a different jurisdiction.”

Among other AI-related developments announced at Google Cloud Next ‘24:

• Google Public Sector achieves Top Secret and Secret cloud authorization. 

• Gemini for Google Cloud is a new generation of AI assistants for developers, Google Cloud services and applications that help users work and navigate security challenges more effectively.
• See more announcements here. 

Learn more about how Google Public Sector can help your organization “Kickstart your AI and security journey”.

This article was produced by Scoop News Group and sponsored by Google Public Sector. Google Public Sector is an underwriter of AI Week.

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