Did your office or school struggle to get up to speed on Google Classroom or Google Meet during the pandemic? Perhaps next time, the new Google Public Sector division will be there to help.
Google Public Sector, announced this week, will be a subsidiary of Google LLC, and is intended to help US public sector institutions—federal, state, and local governments, plus schools—figure out how to use Google Cloud, which includes Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace.
"Our experts will assist agencies and educational institutions in their use of Google Workspace to enable secure communication and collaboration, and to attract new employees to the government through the use of these modern tools," Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post.
Customers will also get access to analytics, as well as AI and machine learning tools, Kurian says, so government agencies in particular "can modernize their legacy information systems."
Will Grannis, current head of Google Cloud's Office of the CTO, will lead Google Public Sector until a permanent CEO is named. Google Public Sector will also have a separate board of directors; members will be revealed later this year.
Kurian name-checks some of Google's recent government partnerships, including the US Navy and Departments of Defense and Energy, as well as efforts to launch virtual career centers with officials in Wisconsin and Rhode Island, among other programs.
"The [US] government has asked for more choice in cloud vendors who can support its missions, and protect the health, safety, and security of its citizens," Kurian says. "We are proud to have served the US public sector for many years, and the launch of Google Public Sector will help us rapidly expand our services to the government, now and into the future."