GCP – Google Cloud Public Sector Summit Day One in Review

Bright and early this morning, we were thrilled to welcome thousands of attendees from government organizations, education institutions, and nonprofits around the globe to our first-ever digital Google Cloud Public Sector Summit.

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, and Mike Daniels, Vice President of Global Public Sector at Google Cloud, opened the Summit with a keynote presentation full of lessons learned from a year of unprecedented challenges and achievements, calling 2020 a “catalyst for innovation that has accelerated digital transformation” across public sector organizations.    

Following the keynote, a diverse line-up of public sector leaders offered real-world stories about tackling tough challenges, developing best practices, and looking ahead to the future of digital service in 2021 and beyond. We saw several technology trends surface in our programming. Here’s a round-up of today’s themes: 

Virtual collaboration supports remote work, distance learning, teleempathy & more

This year we’ve seen our customers embrace virtual collaboration tools to solve for an array of critical challenges. We heard from a physician on the pandemic’s frontlines at LaSalle Hospital in Montreal who’s leveraging Google tools to create a new way for patients to virtually communicate with loved ones amid the COVID-19 pandemic in their session, TeleEmpathy: Creating Vital Human Connections in the COVID-19 Era.

Attendees learned how Google Workspace enables users to improve their work-life by simplifying workflows – all the more important as so many employees now work from home and are seeking ways to make their days more efficient. Google Workspace: Make Your Day a Little Easier and Increase Your Impact! 

Virtual collaboration will continue to be essential for our public sector customers to fuel operations and deliver virtual experiences. To help our community provide services in an increasingly virtual world, we announced Google Workspace for Government – an offering that brings the best of Google Cloud’s collaboration and communication tools to the government with pricing and features that meet the needs of the public sector. Read more on the announcement here. 

Applied AI boosts productivity and scales service delivery 

The Head of Missions for the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), Col. Bobby Kinney, spoke to the audience about how the JAIC is accelerating AI adoption to advance the mission in their session Overcoming AI Adoption Challenges in the US Department of Defense. This theme permeated our programming, and will show up in more sessions tomorrow! Don’t miss Rapidly Addressing Illinois Unemployment with AI, the City of Toronto in Scaling Virtual Support in the Pandemic Era: The AI Connection and Johns Hopkins University in Reimagining Clinical Research with AI.

Interoperability is key to faster cloud adoption

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) shared how they are using a ground-breaking prototype that improves security, control, performance, and scalability when accessing cloud services in their session, Defense Innovation Unit Pilots Faster Path to the Cloud.

Security, compliance and privacy remain critical

Earlier today attendees heard from government organizations like the State of Colorado about using Assured Workloads for Government to accelerate critical Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) and FedRAMP compliance during their session, Jumpstart FedRAMP and CJIS Compliance.

Be sure to check out our programming tomorrow to learn how agencies are harnessing analytics and AI / ML to analyze and detect threats in Transforming Cybersecurity with Analytics and AI/ML: A Case Study and Lessons Learned. Also, be sure to catch one of our partners, SpringML, as they discuss how we’re working together using AI and ML to help public sector organizations defend against improper payments while managing over $560B in one-time cash payments and record claims for unemployment benefits during Limit Fraud, Maximize Benefits: Identify, Manage, and Thwart Improper Payments. And from our global programming, mark your calendars for a discussion on Charting a Course to Greater Digital Sovereignty and Secure vs. Open: the Cloud Conundrum. 

Rapid modernization improves citizen services

Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training shared their story about the Virtual Career Center – a new solution developed to help constituents find jobs and prepare to re-enter the workforce – and its impact on the future of work in their state post-pandemic in their session,  COVID-19 Recovery: Getting Rhode Islanders Back to Work.

Another must-watch session is Transforming Benefits Delivery with a Unified, Cross-Program View. Rachel Stone, Chief Data Officer, Utah Governor’s Office of Management and Budget, shared how her organization built and implemented a secure solution to more accurately and effectively manage social services programs. Read more on Utah’s story here.

Haven’t registered yet? Don’t worry, we have another full day of programming tomorrow, and all sessions will be available on-demand. Register today.

If you have any questions about the event, please reach out to us at ps-summit-support@google.com.