In 2022, Google bet big on government business and launched Google Public Sector. A few months later, Karen Dahut, who previously led Booz Allen Hamilton's multibillion-dollar global defense business, took over the helm, and she has since led a team of Googlers to work with federal, state, and federal governments. It provides services to local governments and educational institutions. .
Nextgov/FCW interviewed Dahut at the Google Cloud NEXT conference in Las Vegas on April 10th. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Nextgov/FCW: Your term of office is approaching two years. Tell us about your biggest challenges, priorities, and successes so far.
Dahat: First of all, I have to say that Google Public Sector stepping in and leading this great opportunity has exceeded my expectations. Looking back on the year and a half since I joined the company, there are a few things I'm really looking forward to. The opportunity we had to hire the best talent was just amazing. Because they recognize the incredible opportunity to bring Google technology to the public sector. We picked up trash.
The second highlight was hearing from our federal customers, as well as our state and local government customers, how excited they are to bring Google technology to their missions. And they're not only bringing us along, they're partnering with us to help build true next-generation technology that supports the mission. I love my job, what can I say?
Nextgov/FCW: Can you talk about your move into the government market? There have been some really big deals announced recently, and different agencies are looking to improve the delivery of citizen services and how they are using technology to achieve their missions. There's a great use case featured on NEXT on how to use it.
Dahat: We're really proud to be a cloud provider for both. [Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability] contract and [Commercial Cloud Enterprise] contract. This gives us the breadth of scope to deliver true commercial cloud technology to government missions, no joke. So it's important to understand that in NEXT.
We've made a number of announcements about our amazing Vertex AI platform. It's a vertically integrated, enterprise-grade AI platform that promises not just AI, but the potential for generative AI. Therefore, these points alone differentiate us and allow us to offer different services to our customers.
I mentioned some use cases in government. I'm extremely proud of the translation work we're doing for the state of Minnesota, which allows us to bring public safety to Minnesotans who don't speak English.excited about us [Document AI] It has contact center AI capabilities and delivers next-generation AI capabilities in action. So I think this is just the beginning for us. We have a large contract and many customers, but we are currently growing well and looking to scale.
Nextgov/FCW: NEXT, you too Announcement of obtaining IL5 and IL6 certification. This is a big deal for Google Public Sector. Because it means we can provide commercial cloud services to the highest levels of the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. Can you unpack that for our viewers?
Dahat: Being secretly and top secretly cleared for the most stringent government requirements demonstrates Google's commitment to this market above all else. I'm very proud of that. As you know, I'm a mission enthusiast and former naval officer. This is what I came to Google for. To enable us to deliver on the promise of our technologies and their mission. What's really true about Google technology is that it's moving away from commercial clouds to reliable workloads. [Impact Level 5]to Google Distributed Cloud Hosted [Impact level 6] Confidential and Confidential Data and Information. So we're deploying the same Google commercial cloud architecture across that continuum. That means we can offer enterprise-grade commercial cloud technologies that include AI, machine learning, and data analytics that no one else on that continuum can really offer.
Nextgov/FCW: It's a differentiator. Let's talk about that in a little more detail. Because at NEXT, we've heard many customers and prospects talk about what makes our services different and why they're interested in your services.
Dahat: First of all, the day before Google Cloud NEXT launched, the first-ever National Security Day was held here in Las Vegas as part of NEXT. More than 100 customers came there. That's a big deal. And the interest in and commitment to using our services is more attractive than ever.
Part of the mission they are interested in is language translation for analysis. As you can imagine, if you have a very important need, you need to be able to translate documents for the national security community into a myriad of different languages. Not just commercial cloud-grade technology. [Google Distributed Cloud Hosted] And at the edge. Delivering on the promise of AI and data analytics and being able to offer a variety of intelligence analytics products is exciting for our customers. To be honest, they've partnered with us in the process. We didn't build his GDCH in a closet somewhere and then try to get it certified. We worked closely with the intelligence community and the Department of Defense to consider what it would take to be able to provide them with the technology we know they would use.
Nextgov/FCW: Do you have any special relationships with industry partners or government customers that you would like to highlight?
Dahat: I would like to emphasize something particularly on the government customer side. We had the opportunity to work closely with John Sherman from the Department of Defense. [chief information officer]. He was a great advocate for us. He wants to bring his Google to the table and really help us understand what technology Google needs and how it needs to work. It was helpful. Therefore, I consider him an important partner in this effort.
Google is a partner-first company. We recognize that we need strong partnerships to bring all of this technology to our customers. So we have strong relationships and strategic partnerships with global systems integrators like Accenture and Deloitte where we actually market together. They know their market better than we do, and we know our technology better than they do. So in this combination and this combination, one plus one is five. We are excited about our relationship with our partners.
Nextgov/FCW: One of the things that's been really interesting to me to see is this shift in how Google looks at government work. Fast forward a few years to 2018, and you're on Google Next for National Security Day. That's a big axis.
Dahat: But it is certainly so? If you look at it from this perspective, I'm sitting right now at Google Cloud NEXT in the middle of this amazing technology, talking about how it can change our mission. I think this shows that Google is doing an incredible job of making these technologies available to the U.S. government and the public sector.Go forward a few years [from 2018] And with the launch of Google Public Sector in 2022, there was no clearer commitment to this market than creating a separate LLC within Google to focus on this market.
We will do our best. There is no question about our desire to impact this market and deliver on the promise of truly great technology for public sector missions.
Nextgov/FCW: It wouldn't be a technology conference if it didn't touch on AI. Google is famous for its AI research. We talk about how that is a differentiator for Google public sector.
Dahat: Google has been an AI-first company since 2016. And we were developing generative AI internally at Google as part of every product portfolio long before generative AI was considered good.
And then when it came out in December of 2022, it was like, “Well, we've been doing this for a long time.” But what we've done since then, and it's a given around Google, is that if generative AI plays a central role in corporate governments and corporate customers, whether it's in the public sector or the private sector. If this happens, we will have a very important role to play. A presence that stands out in the space.
We've built an enterprise-grade, vertically integrated AI and generative AI stack, from infrastructure to Gen AI, all of which is available to our customers.
We see four prominent use cases for generative AI. In government, the first challenge is about worker productivity: how do we make civil servants more efficient? It doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of workers. The goal is to reduce their workload and enable them to operate more efficiently. The second is to use AI to automate end-to-end processes, reducing labor and letting machines do the work they do best. The third is citizen participation in all aspects. Frank, you mentioned it, the idea that our citizens deserve a better experience in how they interact with government. And generative AI is the perfect suite of tools to make that happen. And the last one is about building new products using generative AI and AI in general.
The scenery and table are now set. And I think a lot of the announcements coming out of NEXT really show why Google is the leader in AI and generative AI. That's because Google is building enterprise-grade features, not consumer-grade features.
