Introducing Google Public Sector

Google Cloud has a long history of supporting and working with the governments in many different parts of the world, including the United States, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Japan. We’ve helped government agencies modernize their core technology systems; transformed the way in which they deliver services via digital platforms to citizens; delivered security solutions to help agencies protect themselves from cyber attacks; provided communication, collaboration, and productivity tools to educational and healthcare systems; and enabled them to use data to improve financial systems and other critical infrastructure. We’ve offered products that address the unique needs of the public sector; built a dedicated sales force, partner ecosystem, and services organization; and worked with partners to bring joint solutions to government and educational institutions. 

Today, we’re expanding this commitment in the United States with the creation of Google Public Sector, a new Google division that will focus on helping U.S. public sector institutions—including federal, state, and local governments, and educational institutions—accelerate their digital transformations. 

This new division will operate as a subsidiary of Google LLC and will specialize in bringing Google Cloud technologies, including Google Cloud Platform and Google Workspace, to U.S. public sector customers. Google Public Sector will provide unique products and expertise, such as Google Cloud’s data and analytics platform, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) tools, so institutions can better understand their data and automate core processes. And the division will offer Google Cloud’s highly scalable and reliable open infrastructure, including compute, storage, and networking, so government agencies can modernize their legacy information systems and build new applications that serve citizens with mission-critical reliability and scalability. 

Google Public Sector experts will help U.S. public sector customers use Google Cloud’s advanced cybersecurity products to protect their users, applications, and data from growing cyber threats. 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. And we will also continue to invest in training public sector employees in digital and cloud skills, and in expanding the thriving ecosystem of partners who are already working with Google Cloud to build solutions that meet the urgent and growing needs of U.S. public sector organizations.

A new subsidiary to address growing customer needs

Google Public Sector will provide a full complement of business functions and capabilities, including specialized sales, customer engineering, customer success and services, customer support, channel and partner programs, compliance, and security operations, so that our U.S. public sector customers can leverage the full range of technology offerings from Google Cloud. Google Public Sector will also operate in accordance with our existing principles.

Google Public Sector will be led by Will Grannis, a longtime Google engineering and product veteran, who currently leads Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO. He will serve as head of the new division until a permanent Google Public Sector CEO is named. Lynn Martin will expand her remit to lead the full U.S. Public Sector Go-To-Market organization, which includes federal, state, and local customers, and educational entities, reporting to Will.  

Will and Lynn, together with other leaders, will bring their deep domain experience in support of the new Google Public Sector division. These leaders include Troy Bertram, managing director of Google Cloud’s Public Sector Partner Ecosystem and former general manager for Worldwide Public Sector at AWS; Jeanette Manfra, senior director of Global Risk and Compliance and former Assistant Director for Cybersecurity at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Joel Minton, Google Cloud technical director for the Office of the CTO and former executive director of Login.gov at The White House; Phil Venables, Google Cloud CISO and current advisor on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; and many others.

Consistent with government divisions of other technology companies, Google Public Sector will also have a separate board of directors. The board will serve as an important feedback channel, ensuring Google Public Sector products and services meet the needs of our customers, help us anticipate future needs, and drive differentiation in the U.S. public sector market. The board of directors will have a chair and additional members, to be named later this year.

Customer momentum in the U.S. public sector

Over the last several years, we’ve continued to help customers across all levels of the U.S. government on their cloud initiatives and digital transformations. We have undertaken a number of projects with the armed services. For example, we worked with the U.S. Air Force to accelerate collaboration and research, assist with aircraft maintenance, and transform pilot training. We partnered with the U.S. Navy to use Google AI and ML tools to reduce corrosion on ships. And we supported the Defense Innovation Unit in its implementation of our secure cloud management solution—a scalable, highly responsive architecture for managing government network security.

On the civilian side, we announced a partnership with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs to improve veteran access to benefits and services. We signed a five-year agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to provide a broad range of Google Cloud technologies to help DoE scale its research efforts across national labs and field sites. We worked with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to help the Office’s more than 9,000 patent examiners rapidly perform more patent searches using AI tools. We partnered with the U.S. Postal Service to improve its customer service across web, mobile, messaging, and call centers. And we recently drove an initiative with the U.S. Forest Service to use Google tools to analyze the impact of environmental change. 

In state and local government, we partnered with the State of Wisconsin and State of Rhode Island to launch brand-new virtual career centers—built on Google Cloud—for job seekers. We helped the State of New York launch a streamlined unemployment application and New York City Cyber Command more quickly detect, prevent, and respond to cyberthreats through high-performance cloud services. We assisted the State of West Virginia in its transition to Google Workspace from its legacy productivity provider, saving millions of dollars. And we partnered with the City of Pittsburgh to move the city to modern, cloud-based IT infrastructure, improving the delivery of services for citizens. And just last week, we announced a new platform called Climate Insights, designed to help government agencies quickly understand and respond to climate change issues.

Google Cloud is partner-first, and Google Public Sector will operate in a similar manner, bringing customers an expanded ecosystem of partners with extensive expertise in serving public sector institutions. These include Google-certified system integrators like Accenture Federal, Deloitte, ManTech, and World Wide Technology (WWT); resellers like Carahsoft; and independent software vendors like C3.ai and SAP. We will continue to invest in our programs and these partners, who work closely with Google Public Sector to build and deliver technology to U.S. public sector institutions.

Zero-trust security and certifications at its core

With Google Public Sector, our plan is to continue down the path of achieving the highest levels of U.S. government certifications and requirements possible. This means the division will have the capability to manage sensitive government data, and we are committed to protecting this data through our secure, zero-trust-based infrastructure. 

Earlier this year, we announced that Google Workspace had achieved FedRAMP High authorization, a major milestone in giving the U.S. government more choice among productivity software offerings. Today, Google Cloud has more than 100 products authorized at FedRAMP High or FedRAMP Moderate. This includes products for collaboration, security, document translation, and many other use cases. We also have Impact Level 4 (IL4) certification across numerous products, which allows U.S. government agencies to store and process controlled unclassified information across our key cloud services. 

In addition, we continue to support the federal government through enhanced security solutions like Assured Workloads, which enables agencies to confidently secure and configure sensitive workloads in support of compliance requirements; BeyondCorp, a zero-trust solution that enables secure access to applications and cloud resources with integrated threat and data protection; Chronicle, a cloud-based threat detection and response solution; and unique dedicated teams such as the Google Cybersecurity Action Team, which has the mission of supporting the security and digital transformation of governments, critical infrastructure, enterprises, and small businesses. 

We believe Google Public Sector can and will play a critical role in applying cloud technology to solve complex problems for our nation—across U.S. federal, state, and local governments, and educational institutions. The government has asked for more choice in cloud vendors who can support its missions, and protect the health, safety, and security of its citizens. We are proud to have served the U.S. 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.