By Danial Dzulkifly
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 — Nearly half a million Malaysian civil servants, or 445,000 officials, will soon be equipped with Google’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools, ultimately benefiting Malaysians as the government aims to transform public service delivery across agencies.
The programme, dubbed AI at Work 2.0, will provide civil servants with Google Workspace’s generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini, following a successful pilot programme launched in December alongside Malaysia’s National AI Office.
Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo, who officiated the launch, stressed the importance of AI adoption in the country’s effort for better government services through digitalisation.
“Initiatives like this is very important so we can actually start together this whole development of new thinking, a new shift in the way we do things, accepting, acknowledging the fact that if we do things the old way, we are not going to be able to see the results this technology will provide the entire world as we go along,’’ he said in his launch speech.
Gobind said the initiative, enacted with the right guardrails, is part of the government’s five-year AI technology action plan to improve overall services, dubbed Government Technology, or GovTech.
“It means we will see a fully paperless government — one that is fully automated and powered by AI-driven services.
“This is the new technology we have, and ultimately, we want to ensure citizens can log onto a single platform to access all government services.
“It’s about how we access government services, but for this to happen, we can’t just create a platform for quality digital services without also building an ecosystem around it,’’ he said.
[caption id="attachment_388879" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Digital Minister Gobind Singh Deo listens to a briefing on the ‘AI at Work 2.0’ initiative by the National AI Office and Google Cloud at Google’s Axiata Tower headquarters in Kuala Lumpur on February 5, 2025. — Picture by HARUN TAJUDIN/MEDIA SELANGOR[/caption]
Gobind also explained that the government, through the proposed Digital Trust and Data Safety Commission, will look into data sovereignty and challenges pertaining to possible biases in government data that may be used to formulate policies or influence key government decisions.
He said the commission is likely to be launched this year.
This initiative builds upon an existing integration between the government’s MyGovUC system and Google Workspace, and will now include expanded AI features across apps like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet, among others.
Early results from the pilot programme, which involved 270 public officers, showed promising outcomes. According to user feedback, 97 per cent of participants saved an average of 3.25 hours per week, while 91 per cent reported improved work quality.
The expanded toolkit includes features such as AI-powered video creation through Google Vids, automated note-taking during meetings, and NotebookLM Plus — a research assistant that can analyse up to 250 sources simultaneously.
Google Cloud managing director for the public sector in the Asia-Pacific, Rahul Sharma, said the partnership positions Malaysia as a regional leader in AI adoption.
“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,” he said.
The initiative is part of Google’s broader investment in Malaysia, which includes a US$2 billion (RM8.8 billion) commitment for a new data centre and cloud region, alongside AI training programmes like Gemilang and Gemini Academy.
