The United Arab Emirates said it will integrate agentic artificial intelligence across half of its government operations within two years, a sweeping push to let software do more than recommend the next step and instead carry out some tasks from start to finish.
Agentic AI refers to systems that can analyze information, make decisions and take action with minimal human input, and the UAE said every ministry and government entity will be judged on how quickly it adopts the technology, how well it implements it and how fully it redesigns workflows around it. Oversight will come from Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, while day-to-day execution will be led by a task force chaired by Mohammad Al Gergawi.
The plan also calls for every federal employee to receive AI training, a sign that the government is treating the shift as a whole-system change rather than a narrow technology upgrade. The move fits into a broader strategy that frames the UAE as moving faster than most governments, many of which are still debating whether to use AI at all.
That speed is the point. Brendan Steinhauser’s shorthand for the approach was “80–20,” a way of saying the UAE is pushing for broad gains now instead of waiting for perfect systems later. The tension is that the same ambition that could make public services faster and more automated also puts pressure on ministries to prove they can redesign work, not just buy tools.
For the UAE, the next two years will show whether the country can turn a national AI plan into day-to-day government practice at scale, or whether the promise of agentic systems outpaces the machinery needed to manage them.