Google Cloud empowers nearly half a million civil servants in Malaysia with Gemini AI

The AI at Work program will see 445,000 civil servants in Malaysia have access to Google Workspace with Gemini suite of tools.

Google Cloud is providing Google Workspace with Gemini suite of tools to 445,000 public officers in Malaysia. The program, in partnership with Malaysia’s Ministry of Digital, is part of the AI at Work pilot program launched in December 2024.

According to Google Cloud, the AI at Work pilot program was conducted with 270 public officers from various government agencies. The officers leveraged Google Workspace’s GenAI capabilities to accomplish day-to-day tasks quicker, such as drafting policy papers and written communications. User feedback and usage analytics revealed that 97% of pilot participants experienced time savings of 3.25 hours per individual per week, with 91% indicating that gen AI has helped enhance their quality of work.

Speaking at the media event, Gobind Singh Deo, Malaysia’s Minister of Digital stated that currently 415,000 civil servants in the country are already using AI tools in their daily tasks.

“If you are a business that is exposed to new tech and does not use it, you could end up falling behind your competitor and over time become irrelevant. This same approach applies to governments. We want to be a government that can encourage people to go digital. But we must first make sure we are ready to use the technologies first,” said Deo.

Currently, 415,000 civil servants in Malaysia are using Google Workspace's AI tools powered by machine learning, predictive AI, and natural language processing. AI at Work 2.0, which is the next phase, equips these civil servants, with plans to increase to 445,000, with Google Workspace's latest and expanded suite of GenAI and Gemini powered tools.

Rahul Sharma, Managing Director, Public Sector, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud, who was also present at the event, said that the Ministry of Digital and National AI Office (NAIO) are applying a comprehensive approach to enhance workforce proficiency and productivity, from deploying employee agents through Google Workspace with Gemini, to appointing and training gen AI champions to help accelerate adoption across agencies, to implementing before-and-after measurement to quantify value.

“Our partnership is establishing the Government of Malaysia as a leader in reimagining how work gets done and serving as the blueprint for governments and enterprises in the region looking to derive measurable value from AI adoption at scale. We look forward to continuing to advance Malaysia’s national AI agenda through AI at Work 2.0, as well as other joint initiatives,” said Sharma.

Google Workspace with Gemini benefits public officers in Malaysia by offering contextually relevant content generation and richer meetings. This includes leveraging capabilities for Gemini in Google Workspace apps. Apart from that, civil servants will also have access to develop more engaging employee and citizen communications through tools like Google Vids, a GenAI-powered video creation app that is integrated with Drive and Photos.

The Gemini Advanced app on public officers’ work laptops or mobile devices will also help them tackle complex tasks like coding and data extraction and analysis, or brainstorm new ideas for projects. Lastly, NotebookLM Plus, Google’s GenAI-powered research assistant, will allow public officers to simultaneously interact with up to 250 trusted sources, including their legislative and policy documents, to get grounded insights for quicker decision-making and improved responsiveness to citizen needs.

“Through AI at Work 2.0 by NAIO and Google Cloud, the government is taking the lead in harnessing gen AI, with the right guardrails built in, to better serve the rakyat under our five-year AI technology action plan. We are swiftly progressing beyond the pilot, which reinforced our belief that AI can uplift the productivity and efficacy of a workforce. In the coming months, we look forward to highlighting the tangible value generated by our public-private AI partnerships, as we drive further AI adoption momentum across government agencies and our broader business ecosystem,” added Deo.

To ensure data sovereignty requirements are met, Google stated that the data used by civil servants on these programs will be secured through the government agencies security capabilities as well as Google’s soon to be launched cloud region in Malaysia.

The program, which does not include any costs by the government, is provided to government agencies through AwanTec Systems Sdn Bhd, a Google partner in Malaysia. The company, which is responsible for managing and delivering Google cloud services to the government, recently had its contract with the government extended for another year.

According to reports, the cloud-based service provider initially entered into the agreement with the Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) and Google Cloud Malaysia in March 2022, to provide the specified service for up to 35 months until Dec 31, 2024.