From carrying government files as a boy to a government that carries the burden: TAMM’s AI-Native vision

Abu Dhabi- TAMM means "consider it done" in Arabic. Abu Dhabi's government services platform says it is working towards a model in which government does more of the work itself, rather than leaving residents to find and navigate services on their own.

Dr. Mohammed Al Askar, Director General of TAMM describes the evolution of government services from manual, paper-heavy processes to an AI-native model. The strategic roadmap for TAMM involves transitioning from digitising services to creating an environment where the government anticipates and acts on citizen needs without explicit requests.

Al Askar discusses the historical difficulty of navigating government bureaucracy and physical paperwork back in his childhood.

As a boy, Al Askar went with his father on government errands. His father was a businessman, and the visits could take them across the city, from one office, counter, and queue to the next.

“He used to call me his coolie,” he said, “this means I am his little porter, and my job was to carry the files.”

Years later, Al Askar found himself working within the very system that had shaped those childhood trips. The memory gave him a personal way to see the challenge: government services might move online, but if people still had to figure out which service to find, what paperwork to prepare, and how to navigate each step, much of the burden remained theirs.

Al Askar said the experience reflects a central challenge for public services: digitising a process does not necessarily remove the burden from the people using it. The goal, according to him, should be to make government handle more of that complexity on the citizens’ behalf.

Abu Dhabi aims to become the world’s first AI-native government by 2027. Al Askar said TAMM brings more than 1,200 services into one experience, with a reported customer satisfaction rate of 94.5 per cent.

He described the longer-term ambition is to move beyond putting services online: first, make services easier to access; then let technology handle more of government’s complexity; ultimately, create a government that can act around people’s lives, potentially before they need to ask.

Al Askar added AI should not simply be layered onto inefficient processes. As governments adopt the technology, he urged leaders to consider ‘who each service is for’ and to preserve human judgment and responsibility.

He pointed to its value, that lies in the time it returns to people rather than in the technology itself. “In the UK,” he said, “20,000 government workers using AI save an average of 26 minutes a day,” a small figure that adds up across a whole workforce.

His childhood story framed the change he wants to see, instead of people carrying files and navigating government processes, government should carry more of the work.

He closed on a cautionary note, admitting that AI tools have made them more productive but have also eroded skills.

Should we be afraid or stop? “No,” he said, no single person, organisation or government controls AI's direction.

According to him, the only question that remains is what kind of world we intend to shape with it, adding that the answer remains in our hands and that we owe it to future generations to get it right.