UAE Government Plans to Run 50 Percent of Operations on Agentic AI Within Two Years

The United Arab Emirates announced a plan to move 50% of government sectors, services, and operations to agentic AI within two years, according to Computer Weekly. The initiative, framed as structural redesign rather than incremental digitization, represents one of the most aggressive public sector AI commitments by any nation.

“AI is no longer a tool. It analyses, decides, executes and improves in real time. It will become our executive partner to enhance services, accelerate decisions and raise efficiency,” said Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in the announcement, per Computer Weekly.

Infrastructure Readiness

The UAE has spent years building the foundation for this move: digital identity infrastructure, smart government services, sovereign cloud capabilities, and national AI programs.

Manish Ranjan, research director for software and cloud at IDC EMEA, told Computer Weekly that the compute foundation is largely in place. “The UAE’s infrastructure capability is very strong, with mature sovereign and public cloud capacity from local hyperscalers and regional providers,” he said. “The compute foundation to support large-scale agentic workloads is largely in place, which few governments globally can claim.”

The harder challenge, according to Ranjan, sits at the data and process layer: “Workflow, policy and process redesign is the hardest part and, in a federal government, a multi-year change management exercise rather than a technology roll-out.”

Scope and Limits

Mohamed Roushdy, CIO at Reem Finance, described the target as ambitious but credible given the UAE’s existing digital maturity, pointing to platforms like UAE Pass and TAMM alongside sustained public investment, per Computer Weekly.

Roushdy added a critical caveat: “Reaching 50% is achievable if defined as AI-assisted or AI-enabled services, particularly for high-volume, low-complexity use cases. However, fully autonomous AI decision-making in complex areas remains constrained by trust, governance and accountability challenges.”

The distinction matters. The gap between AI-assisted services (where agents handle intake, routing, and simple resolutions) and fully autonomous decision-making (where agents execute policy without human review) is where governance frameworks become essential.

The Accountability Question

As governments move from using AI as a productivity tool to deploying systems that participate in decisions, risk management models need to evolve. The UAE initiative will test whether agentic AI can operate within the accountability structures that public services require, particularly in areas like welfare eligibility, permit approvals, and regulatory enforcement where individual decisions carry direct consequences.

No other national government has set a comparable timeline or scope for agentic AI adoption in public services.