Across the public sector, the conversation has shifted; we are no longer just talking about the potential of AI, we are already seeing the impact. While visionary leadership and cultural buy-in are crucial for driving the agentic era forward, moving from pilots to full-scale, organization-wide agentic transformation requires a resilient, scalable and secure foundation. I was honored to moderate a breakout session “From silos to synergy: Architecting the AI-powered governments of tomorrow” where customer speakers shared how they are building future-ready and future-proof systems that will power a more efficient, secure, collaborative, and connected government.
Let’s take a closer look at key innovations across infrastructure, data, and security that are helping public sector organizations turn their bold AI ambitions into a reality.
Building a resilient foundation with our AI infrastructure
Designed for demanding AI workloads, our AI Hypercomputer is an advanced, purpose-built architecture that unites performance-optimized hardware for compute, storage, networking, along with flexible consumption models into an integrated system. At Google Cloud Next, we announced several new innovations including our eighth-generation TPUs, with TPU 8t for accelerated training and TPU 8i for cost-effective, near-zero latency inference, along with networking advancements like Virgo Networking for high-performance at massive scale. We also announced new capabilities in Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) that bring Gemini and our advanced AI stack to wherever your data is.
We are committed to providing the highest level of assurance that sensitive agency data is protected while also streamlining the adoption of secure and modern cloud technologies, with our latest DoD IL4 & IL5 authorizations for Cloud Service Mesh, our fully managed service mesh based on Envoy and Istio and Filestore, our high-performance, scalable, fully managed file storage. These services are foundational components of our AI infrastructure designed to help organizations build a resilient foundation for the agentic era.
Our powerful AI infrastructure technology comes to life at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory where we are providing the exploration and analysis platform for a 500-petabyte dataset–the largest astronomical dataset in history, to help Rubin Observatory chart the cosmos and democratize science for 30,000 researchers worldwide. Added to that, we are partnering with Starfish Space to accelerate satellite servicing in orbit leveraging the scalability of Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
Scaling impact with our agentic data cloud
The agentic era requires a fundamental shift in data architecture. Today we are moving to a “system of action” built for proactive, trusted agents that run at scale, powered by our agentic data cloud. At Google Cloud Next, we introduced a new, AI-native architecture that allows data to be utilized at the speed and scale required by agentic AI. Key innovations include Knowledge Catalog (formerly Dataplex Universal Catalog) – now FedRAMP High and DoD IL4 & IL5 authorized – grounds agents in trusted organizational context. We also announced our cross-cloud, AI-native Lakehouse that provides seamless access to your data – regardless of where it’s located.
Our powerful data cloud technology comes to life at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where our technology is enabling fast, scalable mobility data analysis to help researchers better predict human behavior to aid in disaster response. Meanwhile, The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), which serves as the U.S. Government’s central recordkeeper, is digitizing and cataloging billions of federal documents and other historical records–starting with the original Constitution and Declaration of Independence–at the National Archives.
Securing the organization with our agentic defense
Public sector organizations face compounding security challenges as they expand into complex hybrid and multicloud environments. Meanwhile, adversaries are using AI to launch faster, more sophisticated attacks directly targeting new models and the critical data powering them. The agentic era demands a new security era, and to that end, we announced several advancements at Google Cloud Next that will help public sector organizations accelerate their security transformation. Our cybersecurity platform combines Google’s Threat Intelligence and Security Operations with Wiz’s Cloud and AI Security Platform to detect, prevent, and respond to threats. We introduced a number of new agents for threat detection, detection engineering, remediation, and shared more about Wiz’s AI Application Protection Platform to provide autonomous protection from code, to cloud, to runtime, across multicloud, hybrid, and AI environments.
We continue to invest in providing the highest level of assurance that sensitive agency data is protected. Google Cloud Armor, which helps protect your applications and websites against denial of service and web attacks, is now DoD IL4 & IL5 authorized. Additionally, Model Armor, which provides comprehensive protections against prompt injection, sensitive data leaks, and harmful content, is now FedRAMP High authorized. These services are foundational components of broader solutions to secure organizations in the agentic era.
Our powerful security technology comes to life At UC Riverside where we are powering more secure computing environments for researchers so they can focus on the breakthroughs that will define the next generation of scientific discovery. Added to that, the State of Connecticut is revolutionizing its cyber defense and moving away from a fragmented operating model to a unified, proactive security posture using Google Security Operations (SecOps) in order to create a secure-by-design digital infrastructure for the future of public service.
Tune into the Best of Next for Public Sector
We invite you to to attend our Best of Next for the Public Sector Webinar for a deep dive into the latest advancements from Google Cloud Next, as well as a recap of our Spotlight Session on agentic transformation in the public sector and customer stories from the City of Angeles, City of Dearborn, the state of Maryland and the state of Connecticut. Don’t miss this webinar to learn how organizations are partnering with Google Public Sector to build a resilient, scalable and secure foundation for the agentic era.