The UAE Cabinet approved a mandatory agentic AI training programme for 80,000 federal employees on Sunday, covering every ministry and government entity from ministers to junior staff. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum called it the largest AI training programme in UAE government history, according to The National.
The programme is part of what the UAE is calling “Government 4.0,” a national transformation strategy directed by President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to deploy agentic AI across 50% of government services and operations within two years, as Khaleej Times reported.
Training Structure
The programme is organized across five categories: leadership, technical, specialist, general workforce, and train-the-trainers, according to Khaleej Times. A dedicated digital platform powered by agentic AI tools will deliver personalised learning pathways tailored to each employee’s role and current competency level.
The initiative is being developed in partnership with national universities and global technology companies, though neither the universities nor the tech partners have been named publicly. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed, Vice President and Chairman of the Presidential Court, oversees the project, with a task force led by Mohammed Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs, according to The National.
First Service Packages Approved
The Cabinet also approved the first package of government services to be powered by agentic AI. Gulf News reported that the initial phase covers four service bundles: citizen services, resident services, business sector services, and investor services.
Teams within each ministry will set targets and establish assessment indicators to evaluate efficiency and productivity gains, with a phased rollout based on continuous performance assessments, according to Khaleej Times.
Broader Context
The announcement follows a series of UAE government moves toward agentic AI in recent weeks. Dubai unveiled a separate plan in early May to integrate agentic AI across the private sector. The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation launched an AI-powered platform in May to automatically evaluate work-permit applications. Computer Weekly noted in April that the UAE’s 50% automation target within two years would make it the most aggressive government-level agentic AI deployment announced by any nation-state.
The Cabinet also approved a National Policy to Enhance Artificial Intelligence in the Health Sector, covering digital health infrastructure, a national AI-driven medical system, and a federal law to regulate smart health applications, according to The National.
The Scale Question
80,000 workers trained on agent-specific tooling across an entire federal government is a first. Governments have launched AI literacy programmes before, but this one targets agentic AI specifically: autonomous systems that make decisions and execute tasks with limited supervision. The two-year timeline to automate half of federal services is aggressive, and no comparable government programme at this scale has been announced elsewhere.
Whether the training translates to operational deployment at that pace depends on execution details the Cabinet has not yet disclosed: which vendors supply the underlying agent infrastructure, what governance constraints are placed on autonomous decision-making, and how the phased rollout handles the inevitable friction between AI-automated and human-driven service delivery.