Abu Dhabi Says Governments Should Use AI To 'Rewire' Services, Not Just Automate

Abu Dhabi is redesigning government workflows around artificial intelligence rather than simply inserting AI into existing processes, with officials warning that the biggest gains will come from changing how work is done from the ground up.

Najyb Al Maskari, Executive Director of the Government Cybersecurity Operations Sector at the Department of Government Enablement, said governments risked missing the point of AI if they simply added it to traditional workflows.

“Starting by taking a normal workflow and putting AI into it is not the most efficient method of doing so,” he said. "The best method is actually to do domain rewiring."

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Instead of using AI to pass a task from one government employee to another before reaching the same human approval points, AI can handle much of the workflow and bring the process to the stages where human authorisation is actually required, Al Maskari said.

“That's highly inefficient,” he said of simply adding AI to existing processes.

He said AI could complete everything that needs to be done before the relevant financial or organisational authorisation, with humans retaining the final approval.

The approach reflects a broader shift in Abu Dhabi towards an 'AI-native' government, where AI is intended to handle routine work while people remain responsible for judgement and decisions that require human intervention.

Ruba Alhassan, Director General of DGE, said the aim was not to remove people from government services but to give them more time to deal with the parts of their jobs that require empathy, judgement and human connection.

“The one thing that we worry about... is the impact to jobs,” she said, noting that people could fear doctors and government officials being replaced by AI.

Her answer was to focus on preparing people for a workplace where AI handles more routine tasks.

“Firstly, focus on your people. Give them the capabilities that they need,” she said.

Alhassan said AI users could eventually need a form of certification, similar to a driving licence, covering not just how to use the technology but when it should and should not be used.

“We all need driver's licence to drive,” she said.“All should be focused on having that sort of certification for AI, to be able to deal well with the technology, but also to act responsibly, to use it safely, and to know... when to use it and to know when not to use it.”

She said privacy, security, safeguards and ethics should be built into AI systems from the beginning rather than added later.

“Every design, every element needs to start embedding the privacy, the guardrails, the security, and the ethics in the design,” she said.

That principle is particularly important as government services gain access to increasingly detailed information about residents, she said, adding that the UAE follows UN and OECD standards.

But Alhassan said the ultimate test of an AI-enabled government was whether it made people's lives easier without stripping away the human moments that matter.

She gave the example of how Abu Dhabi redesigned the process following the death of a loved one.

The administrative side of the process can be handled by AI, making paperwork and services faster and more seamless. But the government deliberately retained a human interaction at a moment of grief.

“Somebody very smart in the room had the good judgment call to say, hold up, this is where you need to ensure that human connection is not lost,” she recalled.

Under the redesigned process, someone from the government contacts the bereaved person to offer condolences and can arrange access to a community centre for condolences, she said.

“That is the part that we should never take away,” Alhassan said.

“Keep the humans at the centre and the heart because compassion and empathy and judgment is what's critical. And let the AI do the routine tasks and take care of the things we don't want to do.”

The shift, she said, will also change what employers value.

As AI takes over routine tasks such as searching, data entry and other repetitive work, the remaining work becomes more dependent on judgement and intuition.

Alhassan called this the“light workforce paradox”.

“As the workload gets lighter, because AI takes away the routine, the search, the data entry, all of that, what gets harder is the decisions you have to make, the judgment calls, the intuition,” she said.

“If there was one skill that is going to be there, most important skill for the next couple of years, I would say it's judgment.”

Al Maskari said the same principle applies to the architecture of government processes themselves: AI should not simply be placed inside an old system, but used to rethink how the entire domain operates.

The objective, he said, is to reach the correct points for human authorisation while allowing AI to complete the work around them.

For Abu Dhabi, that means an AI-enabled government in which technology takes on the repetitive work, while people remain responsible for the decisions, safeguards and human interactions that cannot simply be automated.

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