The City of Los Angeles will deploy Google Workspace with Gemini across its workforce of 27,500 employees as part of its broader digital transformation strategy.
Google Public Sector announced the deal at its Google Public Sector Summit in Washington DC. The City of Los Angeles will leverage Google's AI for communications, project planning and ultimately public services. The gains in Los Angeles come as Google Public Sector is landing other states and local governments.
For instance, Google announced that the Maryland Department of Information Technology (DoIT) will roll out Google Workspace with Gemini to nearly 43,000 employees as its usage grows across 59 state agencies. Maryland already had 12,500 state employees who were active users of Google Workspace with Gemini making the DoIT account a classic land and expand.
Los Angeles' Google Public Sector usage comes as the city is rolling out a broader digital transformation effort called SmartLA 2028. LA is preparing for the 2026 World Cup, 2027 Super Bowl and 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
At a high level, SmartLA 2028 includes multiple levels of the resident journey.
- Smart city infrastructure to use technology in LA's physical assets such as 5G, IoT and fiber.
- Data tools and practices to work across departments and deliver government to resident and business services.
- Digital services and applications to deliver services.
- Connectivity and digital inclusion efforts.
- Governance and coordination of investments across LA departments.
Ted Ross, CIO for the City of Los Angeles, said Google Public Sector and Google Workspace will be key to "modernizing the city’s approach to constituent services."
Here's a look at where Google Workspace with Gemini fits into LA's technology plans.
- Workspace is being used to improve communication and information with residents. LA creates multilingual content, public announcements and emergency communications via Workspace and uses Gemini to rewrite at the most accessible reading level.
- Workflows are being revamped across LA's 45 departments with Gemini summaries and data analysis.
- City employees are using NotebookLM to analyze grant documents for project funding.
- AI training for LA's workforce.
Speaking on a panel, Ross outlined the Gemini for Government plans and offered some best practices. Here's a look:
Use cases are not hard to find. Ross said that in government use cases abound for areas where AI can improve efficiencies. Information dissemination and analysis are big ones. "In emergency management, AI has the ability to synthesize real-time information from utilities, cities, counties, states and multiple jurisdictions," said Ross. This information also has to be multi-lingual.
In addition, managers have been able to leverage NotebookLM and query it for new grant opportunities.
Ross added that it helps to think through AI use cases in terms of personas. "Think from the perspective of personas like the broad workforce, manages, front lines," said Ross.
Don't scrimp on training. "I'm a huge fan of training and giving employees an intro to AI," said Ross, who added that the training and use of AI is critical to employee engagement. "AI is a once in a generation shift of how people are computing and you have to train the workforce so you can launch them into the future and build AI fluency. Make the investment in training now."
Contractual protections. If adopting AI in the public sector make sure you are using tools with contractual protections, said Ross. Since the City of LA was using Google Workspace it made sense to use Gemini since it fell under the same contract.
The roadmap ahead. Ross said using AI for transportation modeling is a big focus for the city. "We're getting into predictive modeling to see what happens when people go to an event," said Ross, who noted that the 2028 Olympics will be like having a Super Bowl every day for two weeks. "That includes multilingual traveling assistance."
