UAE publishes design guide for agentic AI-powered public services as part of drive to automate half of government
Photo: Pexels/Markus Winkler
The government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched a guide for designing government services administered by AI assistants as part of a drive to convert 50% of government operations, services, and tasks to agentic AI models within two years.
The national committee for the country’s agentic AI project released the guide during a workshop attended by more than 100 government officials.
Mohammed Rashid bin Talia, assistant minister of cabinet affairs for government knowledge exchange and head of the government services track in the artificial assistive intelligence project, said the guide marked a milestone in moving administration for public services from the customer to an AI assistant. According to a report by Khaleej Times, he said AI assistants would enable customers to simply say what they needed before the agent would take the necessary steps to coordinate with relevant authorities and complete the transaction on their behalf.
Using agentic AI in this way is expected to free users from traditional processes involving repeated personal information requests and the completion of time-consuming documentation.
A report on the meeting by the Emirates News Agency said that the plan focused on embedding AI capabilities into federal operations to improve policy formulation, future foresight, and decision-making, across seven key pillars: strategy and projects, foresight and strategic intelligence, policies, structures and governance, government performance, global competitiveness, and innovation in government work.
Referred to by the committee as a “unified guide” to AI agents, it is intended to provide unified principles for agentic service design. These included never asking users to provide information they had already provided previously and keeping them informed at every step of their service journey, and protecting their privacy and security.
The guide anticipated instances where a user might need to interact with a human being, based on a principle that “human leads, AI enables”.
Read more: How should governments respond to AI agents going rogue?
Bedding in AI infrastructure and regulation
The UAE has taken bold steps in recent years establish key institutional infrastructure and rules to aid its AI advancement.
In June this year, the government established an AI and data authority that it said would consolidate public data, AI and other digital government capabilities into a single national body.
The new authority merges the Office of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications and the UAE Data Office, with the objective of incorporating the country’s digital government portfolio.
Its core function will be to set standards and guidelines for data and AI management, digital transformation and government services to firm up compliance across federal bodies, build national capabilities in AI and digital transformation through research, development and technical advisory services; and work to increase the digital economy’s contribution to the country’s GDP.
Last year, the UAE took the decision to regulate the use of AI in national elections, in what it claimed was a world first.
Under the new policy, candidates in Federal National Council (FNC) elections would need to declare and register the use of AI tools in their campaigns to ensure transparency and prevent voter manipulation. The result of this move was the establishment of the ‘National Elections Committee Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence’, which was unveiled by Omar Sultan Al Olama, the minister of state for AI.
According to Al Olama, AI used in national election campaigns would need to be “declared, reviewed, and monitored” to preserve fair and transparent election processes. He warned that while AI was helpful to candidates seeking reach a broader audience, it also carried the risk being “misused to influence voters unfairly”.
