Abu Dhabi’s first live test of AI-run government processing is already delivering results that officials once measured in days, now measured in minutes. At the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority, thousands of policy documents governing food imports have been converted into formats that artificial intelligence can interpret, and complex import cases that previously took a few days to a week are being completed in minutes, according to Faisal Al Hawi, director of the AI Factory at Abu Dhabi’s Department of Government Enablement.
The pilot is the first deployment of what the department calls machine-readable government, a system that turns policies and regulations into formats AI systems can process. Before the technology arrived, officials had to examine applications and supporting documents against extensive regulatory requirements by hand. The AI system now performs much of that preliminary work and presents 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 in an interview with The National, the publication whose report at https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/technology/2026/11/06/openai-deal-to-cut-abu-dhabi-government-processing-times-from-days-to-minutes/ details the roll-out.
The food safety pilot sits within a broader delivery programme. Building permits, business licences and inspections are the next services being targeted, and the department intends to extend the approach across government. The work builds on existing digital infrastructure, including the Tamm platform, which brings government transactions together in a single application.
What changed this week is the formal partnership with OpenAI, though implementation began at the start of the year, Mr Al Hawi said. The agreement was one of four signed 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 other deals cover energy, investment and the adoption of AI across businesses and education. They include an arrangement involving Adnoc and G42 to deploy OpenAI’s frontier technology in the energy sector, and plans to use AI to support investment analysis.
The roll-out is part of Abu Dhabi’s Dh13 billion ($3.5 billion) digital strategy, which aims to make the emirate the world’s first AI-native government by the end of 2027, with OpenAI’s advanced models expected to play a central role. Under the partnership, Abu Dhabi gains access to OpenAI’s frontier AI, which carries out complex tasks for businesses and government departments.
Operationally, the department of 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. “We want to get to a workforce that is not purely human, that is human plus agents,” Mr Al Hawi said. The aim 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.
Early gains are already visible in software development. Mr Al Hawi said the department’s 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 identify candidates, research potential partners and process information more quickly. For Mr Al Hawi, the larger opportunity lies in freeing employees to spend more time on work requiring judgment, creativity and collaboration.
Deploying such technology across government raises practical questions about where sensitive information is processed and who owns the systems being built. Under the partnership, OpenAI’s frontier models are made available through computing infrastructure hosted in the UAE, so 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,” Mr Al Hawi said. “We are not processing anything outside. We are not sending out any data outside of the UAE.”
The arrangement reflects the country’s broader investment in sovereign AI infrastructure, including Stargate UAE, which involves G42, OpenAI and other global technology companies. 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,” Mr Al Hawi said.
Cybersecurity forms another strand of the delivery plan. 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.
At Adipec, speaking to The National’s Editor-in-Chief Mina Al-Oraibi, 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, a constraint that will matter as Abu Dhabi works to scale its pilot from one food safety authority to the whole of government by the end of 2027.