L-R: Vincent Loy (MAS), Ben King (Google Singapore), Heng Swee Keat (Prime Minister’s Office), Karan Bajwa (Google Cloud), Sherie Ng (Google Cloud), Chan Cheow Hoe (SNDGO).
Google Cloud has partnered with Singapore’s smart nation and digital government office (SNDGO) to launch an artificial intelligence government cloud cluster (AGCC).
The AGCC platform is hosted in a ‘dedicated’ cloud computing environment and will allow government agencies to leverage the vendor’s AI technology stack as well as its channel partners to deploy ‘scalable’ AI applications ‘quickly’ and in a 'cost-effective' manner.
Through this collaboration, Google Cloud aims to enable the accelerated adoption of AI across Singapore’s public sector, help advance research around applied AI practices, and support the growth of the local start-up ecosystem.
The vendor will be providing agencies access to solutions like its A2 supercomputers powered by NVIDIA’s A100 graphics processing units and hosted on Google Cloud’s infrastructure.
They will also offer ‘customisable’ first-party, third-party and open-source AI models through a central repository where users can access pre-trained generative AI models that can fit their specific needs, including translating text in multiple languages, turning audio into text, and generating and fixing software code.
Developers can also look forward to a generative AI app builder to build chatbots and enterprise search experiences.
Furthermore, agencies can rely on a suite of explainable AI and data governance toolkits to ensure ‘secure’ and ‘responsible’ use of AI.
Government agencies can access the AGCC and other accredited Google Cloud services from June 2023 onwards through the ‘Government on Commercial Cloud’ (GCC) 2.0 platform built by the Government Technology Agency (GovTech).
Besides the public sector, those in Singapore’s research, innovation and enterprise (RIE) ecosystem can leverage on the platform.
“AI can shape the public sector’s digital service delivery in profound and meaningful ways – from automating data entry, to detecting fraud, to accelerating cancer research, to strengthening emergency response, to informing water resource management, and more,” said Sherie Ng, country director, Singapore at Google Cloud.
“Beyond providing Singapore government agencies with access to advanced and truly open AI technologies, we look forward to working with GovTech to build a vibrant pool of homegrown talent across a range of AI-related roles in public service, to help advance Singapore’s national strategy for deploying scalable and responsible AI innovations.”
GovTech was the first public sector organisation to tap on the AGCC by integrating Google Cloud’s Vertex AI with its Open Government Products team.
They are currently exploring the use of its models in ‘Pair’ – a large language model-powered assistant that civil servants can use to boost their productivity while maintaining the confidential nature of their jobs.
Google Cloud will also partner with GovTech to design and run ‘Digital Academy’ programs to help government agencies build in-house data science and AI expertise, develop AI innovation strategies, and implement data governance best practices.
This public sector partnership is yet another collaboration announced at Google Cloud’s recent summit in Singapore. The vendor struck similar strategic partnerships with the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) as well as its central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), in hopes of advancing the country’s generative AI capabilities.
