Interoperability and modernization: Competition drives progress

Government IT is marred by technical lock-in and restrictive contracts that generate waste and slow innovation. Bundled licensing, for example, packaging multiple products, solutions or services into a single license, can make it difficult to clearly understand and isolate the costs for individual pieces. 

“When you start to bundle everything from security, to productivity, to infrastructure, cloud, servers, when you put all of those things together, it starts to get confusing to a lot of customers when they try to unwind it,” said Chris Niehaus, strategic growth executive in federal civilian at Google Public Sector. 

Moreover, agencies incur additional costs trying to separate bundles, as scaling down or opting for smaller packages can increase the price. This often results in agencies sticking with a bundle from a single vendor rather than comparing solutions from a range of companies to choose the best in breed for each individual piece of their technology portfolio.

Interoperability requirements, however, and a focus on modular, open standards-based IT products and services will incentivize the kind of competition between technology vendors that has consistently been a foundation for American innovation. Such requirements also drive efficiency and security by increasing resilience and redundancy and reducing the likelihood of single points of failure.

Overcoming artificial barriers to interoperability

As agencies have become locked into their technology stacks, industry leaders delivering those solutions have created additional barriers to interoperability, such as proprietary file formats for calendars, spreadsheets, and more. Standards-based solutions, rather than proprietary, make it easier for agencies to implement tools from a variety of vendors. 

“Then interoperability can actually be achieved by any vendor or any competitor in the space,” Niehaus said. “That creates a more competitive environment, that provides more options, and allows for interoperability — everything from calendar to document type and even the cloud.”

A focus on interoperability also simplifies collaboration and breaks down silos between agencies and departments. Not every agency uses the same productivity suite, but as long as there is some level of compatibility between calendars from different vendors, for example, agencies encounter fewer barriers to efficient partnerships.

Eliminating unnecessary hurdles and lock-in also incentivises competition — when agencies have an easier time switching between options, they won’t continue with the status quo simply because they feel like they have to. Greater competition also speeds innovation, helping government agencies leave behind legacy systems that are not only dated and inefficient but also pose security risks that could be mitigated by more modern systems and applications. 

Committing to interoperability

Google’s longstanding commitment to interoperability, security, and open-source solutions maximizes the continued use of existing infrastructure while accelerating modern development. 

“We’ve been differentiated in our approach with cloud to be very supportive in contributing toward open standards, to open-source,” Niehaus said, citing Google’s development of open source Kubernetes as emblematic of its commitment. 

After much lifting and shifting of infrastructure, today’s cloud focus is application modernization, he added. “We don’t get into a big discussion with customers about, ‘Well, if you want to modernize, we need you to lift and shift again out of one cloud to another,’” Niehaus explained. “We really just want to get access to the data where it’s at, regardless of what cloud, and then focus on modernizing the application for cost efficiency and for the benefit of citizens.”

As an example, Niehaus highlighted the U.S. Postal Service’s modernization efforts. USPS delivers around 129 billion mail pieces and packages a year and manages more than 34,000 post offices according to its CIO, Pritha Mehra, at Google Cloud Next 2025. Managing such       a massive physical and virtual infrastructure is a monumental task. Mehra recounted elements of the agency’s recent “unprecedented transformation.” 

Using the hybrid Apigee platform, “we’ve been thoroughly successful,” she said. Rather than eliminating legacy systems altogether, USPS has created a “beautiful playground in front of legacy systems” to put out APIs and simplify operations.

“We’ve been allowed to modernize without thinking about modernizing every legacy application we have,” Mehra said. “We couldn’t afford it, we couldn’t do it, we wouldn’t be delivering in the times that we do.”

The government as a unified customer

Further demonstrating a commitment to enhancing collaboration, productivity and efficiency across government, Google reached agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to offer both Workspace and Gemini to every federal agency at significantly reduced prices. The goal of the agreements is to reduce redundancy and streamline IT acquisition, essentially viewing the federal government as one unified customer versus a collection of disparate agencies. 

Tony Orlando, GM of specialty sales for Google Public Sector, emphasized the interoperability of Workspace with other software tools, “leading to faster deployment and increased productivity — including an estimated 30% improvement in collaboration.”

Moreover, in the August Gemini for Government announcement, Federal Acquisition Services Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said, “GSA is delivering on the President’s AI Action Plan and helping agencies access powerful American AI tools to optimize daily workflows and create a more efficient, responsive, and effective government for American taxpayers. Critically, this offering will provide partner agencies with vital flexibility in GSA’s marketplace, ensuring they have the options needed to sustain a strong and resilient procurement ecosystem.” 

Not only is a flexible, interoperable approach effective for updating and modernizing legacy systems, but also for future-proofing agencies as they look toward increasingly sophisticated AI applications. Increased competition between vendors will encourage faster innovation, while interoperability is a foundational requirement for AI.

“AI is expecting interoperability and a multi-cloud approach,” Niehaus said. “To have a good data strategy, a nimble, agile way you can take advantage of the data across your organization, across your agency, without having to worry about what silo it's in, that's critically important and a good foundational step for any AI strategy.”

Watch Google Public Sector Summit 2025 on demand to learn more about Google Public Sector’s commitment to modernizing government agencies.