Inside the Transportation Department’s technology transformation

The Transportation Department will soon run on Google Workspace, fulfilling part of the department’s “1DOT IT” strategy to unify and strengthen the sprawling 55,000-employee department and completely modernize its IT infrastructure.

As first reported by Nextgov/FCW, Transportation inked a five-year contract in September worth up to $89 million to move from Microsoft’s collaboration suite to Google’s cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools — Gmail, Docs, Meet and more — and also incorporate Google’s popular AI tools, Gemini and NotebookLM.

Google’s significantly discounted rates negotiated through its April ‘OneGov’ agreement with the General Services Administration first got the Transportation Department’s attention, according to Deputy Chief Information Officer Jack Albright, but technology-enablement ultimately proved the deciding factor for the new partnership. 

“The 71% discount on pricing got us to the table,” Albright said in a recent interview with Nextgov/FCW, noting general parity between products like Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail.

“But when you start looking at it with the AI engines and so forth, that's where we saw things as kind of the separation-type factor,” Albright said. “We wouldn't basically be looking at Google just from purely a cost perspective, that's not the driver. That’s a byproduct of potential savings. But we're really looking at the technology enablement, and enabling factors associated with that product.”

The department is moving toward that technology enablement as quickly as possible.

Transportation migrated initial users to Workspace within 30 days and provided agency-wide access to Gemini and NotebookLM within 60 days. 

Stephen Serrao, senior advisor to the chief information officer at the Transportation Department, said he anticipates a “global go-live” for 12,500 DOT-proper employees in February 2026 and a subsequent rollout shortly after for the Federal Aviation Administration and remaining staff, totaling more than 50,000 employees.

“We want to move these capabilities out as quickly as possible, so that way we get these products in use,” Albright said. “We don't want bolt-on related services. We want, basically, AI to be institutionalized into what we do every day, and we're going through our education campaign and letting people basically play with these products.”

“You can clearly see in the Workspace product how Gemini is completely embedded in the entire life cycle of their product, whether it's Gmail or NotebookLM or whatever it may be, it's in there. And we're trying to get people to be used to using AI as part of their everyday life,” Albright added.

There will be a “period of coexistence” for Microsoft and Google collaboration tools until the Google rollout is finished, said Serrao, whose portfolio includes this critical migration. Change management, he said, is a key piece of the migration, and it’s been resourced properly, with clear communications, training sessions, office hours and intentional messaging.

“We’ve been very careful in our communications to make sure that folks know this is coming, they understand why it’s coming, and we’ve been working hand-in-hand with Google to make sure that the change management piece is as important as the technology migration piece,” Serrao said. “The technology is proven; we don't have to prove the technology. We just have to get folks to adopt it and advocate for it.”

Jim Kelly, Vice President of Google Public Sector's federal business, said in a recent blog post that Transportation created a “new blueprint for federal excellence” other agencies should follow. 

“The leadership demonstrated by Secretary [Sean] Duffy and the DOT team creates a clear blueprint for cabinet-level peers,” Kelly said.

Transportation’s bold new IT strategy

While the Workspace migration is critical, Albright said it’s “just one cog” in the department’s planned digital transformation journey. That journey began with the centralization of all IT under the Office of the Chief Information Officer and product-focused thinking from leadership. The department’s full plans under  Duffy and Chief Digital and Information Officer Pavan Pidugu were laid out in its IT Strategic Plan, “A Path to 1DOT IT,” published in September.

“1DOT IT is a truly once-in-a-lifetime transformative opportunity here at [the Transportation Department]” said Albright. “Google is just one part of our digital transformation journey.”

The plan sets forth four strategic goals — eliminate technical debt, become customer-centric, build obsessive products and grow talent — and will divide the department’s IT team into two complementary domains: “digital factories that deliver mission-focused products and centralized shared services that provide governance, common platforms, standards and enablement.”

The plan also calls for bringing on chief product technology officers to oversee certain portfolios to drive efficiencies and modernization,and it addresses artificial intelligence, which the department is increasingly looking toward. The plan bluntly lays out the current state of IT within the department, which operates more than 425 information systems with redundancies, and another 45 systems across seven data centers running on more than 4,200 servers.

“We are committed to true modernization, retiring outdated, siloed systems and replacing them with integrated, data-driven solutions that create a seamless flow of information across the departments and with external partners,” Pidugu said in signing the strategy. 

Shouting out GSA and the Federal CIO Council

Albright, who has been in government for about the last ten years, said this rejuvenated Federal CIO Council is the first he’s seen “really taking an active lead role” in helping drive IT efficiencies like what’s being undertaken within his department. The Federal CIO Council is led by Federal Chief Information Officer Greg Barbaccia.

“The federal CIOs are all working in concert together and looking at these kinds of opportunities for efficiencies and so forth,” he said.

Albright also credited GSA, which took a lead role in reforming acquisition during the first year of the Trump administration, including negotiating close to two dozen OneGov deals with tech companies that ultimately dropped prices for agency customers. OneGov’s aim is to treat the entire federal government as a single customer, thus increasing the government’s buying power. 

“Negotiating deals with vendors has helped us significantly,” Albright said. “Based on the OneGov deal, we were able to basically get to the finish line really quickly compared to what we would have had to do. It’s been a massive help with GSA helping drive these conversations, these negotiations, with the big vendors that are out there to really get them to step up to the plate and offer these deep, discounted deals from a government perspective.”