Today, we’re excited to announce the opening of our offices in San Salvador. This is an important step as we move forward in our commitment to help support the country’s digital transformation, including the modernization of its government services and economic development.
Since August 2023, when we announced the collaboration agreement signed with El Salvador, we have focused on supporting the country in modernizing its processes and the services provided to its citizens, as well as offering training to different government entities. In addition to announcing the opening of our new office, we also want to share the progress we have made as part of this agreement in the areas of digital government, health and education:
- Digital government. We worked hand-in-hand with the government in its journey to develop simple digital ecosystems for import, export, health and sanitary registration. Next steps will be to continue supporting the government on developing platforms that allow interoperability between institutions and improve citizen services through digitization.
- Healthcare. As a first important step, we’ve trained different government agencies on how to use cloud technologies. Now, we’re supporting the government in the development of its telemedicine platform with cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence, to automate processes and bring more access to health services in the country.
- Education. Building on a collaboration with El Salvador’s Ministry of Education since 2020, we’re proud to support a long-term project putting technology at the center of improving teaching and learning in the nation’s public education system. The first phase began by delivering Google Workspace for Education accounts to all students in public schools and training teachers through the Ministry of Education’s National Institute for Teacher Training (Instituto Nacional de Formación Docente del Ministerio de Educación). We’re supporting the acceleration of that program by delivering the most advanced Google Workspace for Education Plus tools that incorporate AI to personalize the learning experience and introducing Chromebooks, laptops running Chrome OS, an operating system manufactured by Google, for fourth grade students. The next step is to continue training pedagogical managers to multiply the digital skills of teachers and students in El Salvador.
According to a Google-funded study from AlphaBeta, digital technologies such as cloud computing and AI could create a potential opportunity for up to $3.4 trillion per year of economic impact in the major and emerging economies in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East by 2030. We see our collaboration with the Government of El Salvador as a testament of this potential.
Boosting entrepreneurship in El Salvador
In addition to our new office presence and the current digital transformation efforts underway, Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, will provide a donation of $200,000 USD to civil society organizations in the region to provide digital skills training to local entrepreneurs to help support the growth of local businesses.
Innovation and technology have helped millions of people around the world. It is the coordinated action of governments, the private sector, and civil society that translates the benefits into economic growth and stability for all communities and people to benefit.