Abu Dhabi, OpenAI launch world's first AI-native government initiative to speed up public services

Abu Dhabi: Abu Dhabi has partnered with OpenAI to turn government laws, policies and regulations into machine-readable formats, allowing artificial intelligence systems to assess routine applications and compliance checks in minutes rather than days.

The initiative, called Machine-Readable Government (MRG), makes Abu Dhabi the first government to optimise a defined set of laws and policies for AI, according to the announcement on Monday, November 9.

The system will initially support routine regulatory assessments, including applications for permits and certificates. Each assessment will be linked to the specific regulation or clause informing the outcome, creating an audit trail while keeping government officials responsible for oversight and final decisions.

The initiative is part of Abu Dhabi's ambition to become the world's first AI-native government by 2027. It will initially change how existing rules are applied rather than rewrite the legislation itself.

Under the MRG framework, written government policies are converted into a format that AI systems can process. When an application is submitted, the system checks the case against the relevant rules and generates an outcome linked directly to the clause that informed the assessment.

Routine cases can be processed autonomously around the clock, potentially reducing decisions that previously took days of manual review to minutes.

However, the government said human judgement would remain central to the process. Officials will establish standards, review complex applications and retain responsibility for final decisions.

The framework is not intended to make autonomous decisions in high-stakes areas or cases that materially affect individuals' rights, eligibility or access to essential services.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said the initiative demonstrated how AI could change public service delivery while keeping people in control.

“Making AI accessible for everyone requires transforming public sector delivery, helping it become faster, more responsive and more effective,” Altman said.

“By making certain laws machine-readable, while keeping people in control of decision-making, Abu Dhabi has set a new standard for AI-enabled public services.”

Beyond processing applications, the initiative could help government departments identify overlapping or conflicting regulations.

By structuring policies in a common machine-readable format, officials can see where rules across different departments intersect. They can also test proposed policy changes against related regulations before introducing them.

The aim is to simplify and strengthen regulation while preserving existing legislation.

Ahmed Tamim Hisham Al Kuttab, Chairman of the Department of Government Enablement (DGE), which is leading the initiative, said applying AI to existing government processes would only achieve limited progress unless the underlying policies were also made accessible to the technology.

“When we set out to build the world's first AI-native government, we knew that applying AI to old processes would only take us so far. The harder task was making policy itself intelligent, and that is what a Machine-Readable Government does,” he said.

He described the framework as the “connective tissue” between Abu Dhabi's AI ambitions and their implementation across public services.

“The rules that shape daily life, how a permit is approved, how a tender is decided, how a service reaches the public, will now be as capable as the systems we build to serve our people,” Al Kuttab said.

The first MRG application is already in production with the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority (ADAFSA), focusing on food imports.

The pilot was developed in collaboration with Inception42, a G42 company, and tested a Policy Adoption Engine that converts written government policies into automated compliance checks.

Each outcome can be traced to the specific rule that produced it, allowing officials to review how the system reached its assessment.

Abu Dhabi plans to extend the framework to other government services, with upcoming applications covering construction permits, business and freelance licensing, data access governance, human resources compliance and procurement.

A key feature of the initiative is that AI processing takes place within the UAE's national infrastructure.

OpenAI's UAE inference residency means real-time model computation runs on graphics processing units (GPUs) located in UAE data centres. The system operates under a 'fail-closed' security architecture governed by UAE cybersecurity standards and subject to Abu Dhabi law.

The government will retain full ownership of data generated through the system. According to the announcement, this data will not be used to train AI models, while agreed safeguards govern how information is stored, used and deleted.

The deployment also makes the UAE the first country in the Middle East to use OpenAI's GPT models through in-country inference infrastructure, according to the announcement.

Machine-Readable Government is a cornerstone of Abu Dhabi's Dh13 billion ($3.5 billion) Government Digital Strategy for 2025-2027.

The initiative will integrate with TAMM, Abu Dhabi's unified government services application, which brings together more than 1,200 public and private services.

The government said AI use cases were already active across 40 government entities, with all Abu Dhabi Government civil servants trained in AI.

MRG is intended to provide the underlying policy infrastructure for these systems, making government regulations and procedures accessible to AI-powered applications.