Pandemic drove rapid digitization and modernization, Google exec says

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, state governments were forced to put on hold massive projects that ordinarily would’ve taken years to execute so they could continue to provide digital services to citizens and support government employees.

“The pandemic [is] driving what amounts to rapid digitization and modernization into these supremely compressed time periods,” Mike Daniels, Google Cloud’s vice president of global public sector, says in a video interview. “How do we do all of this during times of crisis, with uncertain budgets and certainly budgets that are down and hit with a lot of unplanned expenses.”

The executive says the pandemic has resulted in an interesting climate for Google Cloud’s customers, of which he provided some examples. Google Cloud worked with the State of Illinois to roll out a chatbot to streamline requests that would have originally gone through a call center. In Oklahoma, meanwhile, the company helped the state government track disease spread and supplies, like personal protective equipment. Google Cloud also worked with New York state, he said, to revamp its unemployment insurance system as record numbers of requests flooded in during the pandemic.

Daniels said it was about “making those kinds of impacts in literally days, not weeks, being joined at the hip with our customers to drive outcomes that really matter to citizens and America at large.”

This video interview was brought to you by Google Cloud.