Google Cloud and Malaysia’s Ministry of Digital have launched “AI at Work 2.0,” a joint initiative to equip public officers with Google Workspace’s latest generative AI capabilities.
“AI at Work,” the first iteration of this initiative, was unveiled as a pilot program at the launch of Malaysia’s National AI Office (NAIO) in December 2024.
Following the successful pilot, the enhanced and scaled iteration of this program is providing the government of Malaysia with an expanded Google Workspace with Gemini suite of tools and making them accessible to up to 445,000 public officers.
Gobind Singh Deo, Minister of Digital, said that the ability of public and private sector organizations to improve service delivery using next-generation technologies, will play an essential role in establishing Malaysia as a digitally-driven, high-income economy.
“We are swiftly progressing beyond the pilot, which reinforced our belief that AI can uplift the productivity and efficacy of a workforce,” said Gobind. “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.”
Google Workspace with Gemini benefits public officers in four main ways — contextually relevant content generation and richer meetings; more engaging employee and citizen communications; creative support while streamlining repetitive tasks, and; synthesizing and extracting insights from multiple information sources.
AI at Work 2.0 will provide dedicated training and consultation to help public officers effectively use Google Workspace with Gemini. This includes hands-on workshops to help users write effective prompts and identify where these tools can deliver the most value.
Rahul Sharma, managing director of Google Cloud’s public sector team in Asia-Pacific, said the Ministry of Digital and 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 generative 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,” said Sharma.
The AI at Work pilot was conducted with 270 public officers from various government agencies, including Jabatan Digital Negara (JDN). These officers leveraged Google Workspace’s generative AI 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 generative AI has helped enhance their quality of work.
AI at Work 2.0 builds upon Google’s ongoing commitment to Malaysia, which includes a US$2 billion investment in a new Google data center and Google Cloud region, and AI skilling initiatives like Gemini Academy and the Google AI Essentials course, offered via the Gemilang training program.
