Google Cloud and the UK government are teaming up to tackle the latter’s reliance on legacy IT.

Announced during the Google Cloud Summit 2025 in London, the two hope to save taxpayer money by replacing old technology.

Also announced at the event, Google has teamed up with the Imperial War Museum to digitize and transcribe its oral history collection, and is working with Additive Catchments to clean up the UK’s rivers, among other customer updates.

Google Cloud will, under the partnership with the UK government, help government agencies to leave “ball and chain” technology contracts, which are making it difficult to move data to modern systems, and adopt Google’s “secure-by-design” cloud technology.

Currently, more than one in four public sector systems run on legacy tech – rising to 70 percent in some police forces and NHS trusts. This leads to the agencies relying on old servers, which are vulnerable to outages and cyber attacks.

Speaking on the partnership, UK technology secretary Peter Kyle said at the Summit: “When I negotiate with tech companies, I am negotiating on behalf of the British taxpayer. Britain will be using more technology, in more areas, and more than ever before. So, my message to the big technology companies is clear: bring us your best ideas, your best tech, and your best price.”

Also under the partnership, Google will work with the government on exploring “groundbreaking technology” including quantum computing in the public sector, and will help train tens of thousands of public sector workers in AI by 2023.

Tara Brady, president of Google Cloud EMEA, said: “Google Cloud is proud to be a strategic partner of the UK Government as they embark on this ambitious digital transformation. As the country evolves, the flexibility of Google Cloud will help the government lead the AI era.

“We are deeply committed to empowering the UK public sector with the technical skills and innovative AI-powered solutions required to build a truly modern, secure, and efficient digital future, delivering tangible benefits to citizens and driving significant economic value.”

While legacy tech has long been a known issue for the UK government, concern has also frequently been raised about the ongoing reliance on US companies for cloud computing services.

In response to the partnership with Google, Mark Boost, CEO at Civo, said: “Digital transformation shouldn’t come with unanswered questions about data sovereignty. 

“This new partnership positions Google Cloud at the heart of the UK’s digital infrastructure, despite being governed by the US CLOUD Act.  Under this legislation, government data, even if data is hosted in the UK, could still be accessed by US authorities if stored on Google’s platform.”

Boost goes on to argue: “This move risks entrenching the very vendor lock-in the Government claims to be escaping. Relying on a single overseas provider concentrates too much power in too few hands. We’ve already seen how geopolitical tensions can spill into tech policy, from software sanctions to sudden export controls. Cloud infrastructure isn’t immune.”

During his talk, tech secretary Kyle directly addressed his relationship with “big tech,” noting tongue-in-cheek: Sometimes I am being accused of being too close to big tech, and I can have no right out on the table with you. Now. Last May, The Guardian criticized me for meeting with the sector 70 percent more times than my previous. To this crime, I plead guilty. In truth, that was 28 times over the course of a six month period.”

He later defended this: “I am determined to secure a new deal for the British taxpayer. For too long, too many governments haven’t done enough to build the positive relationships that Britain needs to prevent the taxpayer being short-changed when it comes to procuring technology.”

DCD has contacted Google for comment on how the US CLOUD Act could impact this partnership.

Additive Catchments partners with Google Cloud to clean up UK’s rivers

Also announced during the Summit was a project between Additive Catchments and Google Cloud to use AI-powered infrastructure to improve river health in the UK.

Additive Catchments, through IoT sensors in rivers across the UK, Earth observation data, and big data from lots of government sources, is looking to find how to treat and improve the health of the UK’s rivers.

The organization, majority owned by a non-profit, has teamed up with Google for a “Catchment Monitoring as a Service” platform which provides a real-time diagnostic layer for rivers and delivers environmental data, AI-powered early warnings, and interactive dashboards, and uses Google Cloud technologies including BigQuery, Vertex AI, Earth Engine, and Looker.

Capgemini is serving as the cloud implementation and integration partner.

“This alliance combines the agility and environmental expertise of Additive Catchments with the scale and technical excellence of Google Cloud,” said Rob Passmore, CEO of Additive Catchments. “It ensures clients have access to consistent, secure, and credible data services, driving a new standard of innovation in environmental decision-making.”

“By combining the scale of Google Cloud, the delivery power of Capgemini, and the intelligence of Additive Catchments, we’re establishing a world-class foundation for scalable water resilience,” added Quinton Davies, CTO at Additive Catchments. “This is not just a UK solution, it’s a globally exportable model for digital catchment management.”

Additive Catchments aims to eventually scale this to also include soil health and air pollution.

Imperial War Museums transcribes and translates history with Google, and other customer tidbits

The Imperial War Museums (IWM) has also teamed up with Capgemini and Google on the transcription and translation of more than 20,000 hours of content from IWM’s oral history collection.

Using an AI transcription technology, the IWM will bring the transcripts to the public, researchers, and educators globally, along with translation and interactive exploration services.

Of those oral histories, a large portion was from between 1945 and 2000 and included around 8,000 interviews with service men and women. All were only available as audio files, and processing was complicated by the wide range of expressions from the time they were recorded, specialised military terminology, and varying audio quality.

By using Google’s Gemini models for transcription, Google was able to extract metadata such as the names of people, places, and military units, and generate written summaries of interviews, highlighting key events and themes in the recording. According to the companies, this would have taken 22 years to do manually, and was completed in just a few weeks.

“This project is a big step forward in our mission to broadening access to our vast collections,” said Nick Hodder, director of Digital Engagement and Transformation at Imperial War Museums. “Our expert curators have been fully involved in this work, ensuring the technology delivers very high levels of accuracy, including understanding and interpreting accents, historical facts, and military terminology. This landmark collaboration between IWM, Capgemini, and Google Cloud is a significant innovation and a first for a UK museum.”

John Abel, managing director of the office of CTO at Google Cloud, added, “Google Cloud is committed to empowering organizations like Imperial War Museums with AI tools that can transform how we interact with history. The use of Gemini models to process and understand such a vast and nuanced audio collection demonstrates the sophisticated capabilities of generative AI to overcome complex challenges and deliver meaningful outcomes.”

Other customer announcements were similarly heavy on AI.

Formula E is using Google Cloud’s AI technology to create an AI-powered race report podcast.

Cosmetics brand Lush has launched “Lush Lens,” an AI-powered image recognition tool at checkout to recognize unpackaged products.

UK supermarket Morrisons has launched an AI-powered product finder for its app to help customers find products in stores faster.