COVID-19 recovery: a chance to take a step forward

There is no way around it: COVID-19 has been brutal on business. Many small and medium-sized businesses are unsure if they will survive the cycles of spiking cases and rolling lockdowns . And governments have to balance these economic effects with the public-health disaster that COVID has brought to Europe.

The result: massive strain at all levels, and uncertainty about how to rebuild once COVID is finally under control.

Google Cloud sees the efforts governments are making, and we believe that we have constructive solutions to offer.

NGEU: a vehicle for recovery and modernization

In July 2020, the European Council agreed upon “an exceptional response to those temporary but extreme circumstances”: a recovery fund of €750 billion (at 2018 prices). This will consist of €360 billion in loans and €390 billion in grants.

The fund, called NextGenerationEU (NGEU for short), is tied to the 2021-2027 EU budget, and to pay for it, the European Union itself will issue sovereign bonds for the first time ever. Member states have until April 30 to apply for funding.

To receive funding, countries’ national plans should allocate at least 37% of the budget to climate and biodiversity and a further 20% to digital measures.

Google’s role in modernizing public services

We at Google Cloud are uniquely able to support governments as they work toward those targets. In particular, our tools for research insight and collaboration, constituent engagement, and collaboration can help meet the digitalization targets that the EU has set.

For example: Our Google Workspace for Government solutions bring the best of Google’s collaboration and communication tools to the public sector. A case in point is in the Veneto region of Italy.

There, the regional health authority consisted of 13 local authorities. Each one was running its own data center and e-mail servers, which meant that the regional authority was not able to safeguard delivery of crucial ICT resources across its territory. It was time to upgrade.

The region put out a call for tenders, and Google Cloud was selected.

Eighty-five thousand users were migrated to the Google Cloud Platform system. Giving them standardized access to cloud-based collaboration tools has reduced overall business travel by 60%. Now, administrators travel only when they must, and routine collaboration happens online. Video conferencing, written communication, document sharing, real-time co-authoring — it is all included.

E-mail and other critical data were moved away from the on-site data centers, reducing vulnerability and increasing reliability. And because the overhead of running their own data centers was eliminated, they were able to reduce these operational costs by 90%.

Not just data-center replacement

For departments where it makes sense, Google Workspace for Government can also enable remote working. A huge percentage of the workforce worldwide has been working from home for the last year. This gives employers the chance for immense cost savings, but it also presents logistical challenges. Google Workspace’s collaboration tools eliminates variables, enabling workforces to accomplish a lot even in uncertain times.

Google’s state-of-the-art research insight and collaboration solutions provide data processing and pattern analysis that speed up and improve services. Those services, in turn, are delivered with smarter, better digital-intake, document-processing, service, and application experiences. Constituents are more engaged, their experiences are more positive, and organizations are better able to make use of resulting data.

Cyber threats are a huge concern for all kinds of institutions. Being aware of the threat landscape and staying ahead of the curve is pivotal to a successful cloud-strategy. At Google Cloud, we continuously advance our integrated security to stay on top with our cloud security. Hence, we are proud to say that following an independent audit, Google Cloud has completed the C5:2020 certificate, developed by the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Our GCP and Google Workspace customers can rest assured that our products offer excellent transparency and security.

As the light at the end of this tunnel grows brighter, Google Cloud stands ready to help our public sector clients prepare for what’s next. Recovery is a great opportunity to modernize. Europe will take a step forward together, and Google Cloud will be walking with it.