OpenAI deal to cut Abu Dhabi government processing times from days to minutes

Abu Dhabi is preparing to overhaul how its government operates under a new partnership with OpenAI, and artificial intelligence is already speeding up some complex procedures from days to minutes, an official has said.

Although the agreement was announced this week, work began at the start of the year, Faisal Al Hawi, director of the AI Factory at Abu Dhabi's Department of Government Enablement, told The National in an interview.

The collaboration goes beyond automating government transactions. It aims to change how officials work, make decisions and deliver services, while keeping sensitive data and technology developed by the government under its control.

“We want to get to a workforce that is not purely human, that is human plus agents,” Mr Al Hawi said.

Show caption: Faisal Alhawi, director of the AI Factory at Abu Dhabi's Dep…

The partnership gives Abu Dhabi access to OpenAI's frontier AI, which carries out complex tasks for businesses and government departments. The technology will be hosted in the UAE, keeping sensitive data within the country.

The move is part of Abu Dhabi's Dh13 billion ($3.5 billion) digital strategy to become the world's first AI-native government by the end of 2027. OpenAI's advanced models are expected to play a central role.

Beyond the agreement

The partnership was one of four agreements announced after Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, met OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on Monday.

The deals cover government services, energy, investment and the adoption of AI across businesses and education. They include an agreement involving Adnoc and G42 to deploy OpenAI's frontier technology in the energy sector, as well as plans to use AI to support investment analysis.

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Sam Altman says humans must remain in control of AI

Speaking to The National's Editor-in-Chief Mina Al-Oraibi at Adipec, Mr Altman said human control of AI should not be open to debate, even as increasingly capable systems take on more complex work. He also identified the growing energy demands of AI as one of the industry's biggest challenges.

From days to minutes

As part of the roll-out, Abu Dhabi's Department of Government Enablement (DGE) is introducing what it calls machine-readable government, a system that converts policies and regulations into formats AI can interpret.

The first pilot is already operating at the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, where thousands of policy documents governing food imports have been made accessible to AI.

The results, according to Mr Al Hawi, demonstrate how dramatically the technology could change government services.

“The cycle time that it used to take, a few days to a week, for example, for some complex cases, now can be done in literally minutes,” he said.

Previously, officials would have had to examine applications and supporting documents against extensive regulatory requirements. The AI system now carries out much of that preliminary work before presenting its findings for review.

“AI did a lot of the heavy lifting. But the most important task, which is judgment and decisions, still remains with the human,” Mr Al Hawi said.

Building permits, business licences and inspections are among the next services being targeted, with the department seeking to extend the approach across government.

The work also builds on Abu Dhabi's existing digital services infrastructure, including its Tamm platform, which brings government transactions together in one application.

AI colleagues

Mr Al Hawi said DGE, which has about 1,200 employees, is working towards a model in which each official can direct specialised AI agents to handle tasks ranging from research and data analysis to writing documents and developing software.

The idea is to give employees capabilities that would previously have required much larger teams. “You give the capability of an exponential number of employees while maintaining the core workforce,” he said.

The department is already seeing significant gains in software development. According to Mr Al Hawi, its AI agents can generate the equivalent of the code produced by 30 developers in a day, although human oversight remains necessary.

AI is also being incorporated into recruitment and procurement, helping staff to identify candidates, to research potential partners and to process information more quickly.

For Mr Al Hawi, the greater opportunity lies in freeing employees to spend more time on work requiring judgment, creativity and collaboration.

But deploying such technology across government raises questions about where sensitive information is processed and who ultimately owns the systems being built.

Under the OpenAI partnership, Mr Al Hawi said the company's frontier models are made available through computing infrastructure hosted in the UAE, ensuring government and citizen data is processed within the country.

“We have access to their frontier capabilities, the most advanced models, but the caveat here is that all of these capabilities are in-country,” he said.

“We are not processing anything outside. We are not sending out any data outside of the UAE.”

That arrangement reflects the country's broader investment in sovereign AI infrastructure, including Stargate UAE, which involves G42, OpenAI and other global technology companies.

Crucially, Mr Al Hawi said the government also retains ownership of the intellectual property behind the applications it develops, even as it uses OpenAI's underlying models.

“All the IP of what we build as a machine-readable government, and so on, belongs to DGE,” he said.

Cybersecurity is another focus. Mr Al Hawi said DGE was the first civilian government entity to gain access to OpenAI's Daybreak Blue programme, which is designed to support advanced cyber defence capabilities.

Alongside the technology roll-out, Abu Dhabi is investing in AI skills training to prepare employees for a workplace in which managing AI agents becomes part of their daily responsibilities.