The Abu Dhabi Government has announced the rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot across its public sector, providing tens of thousands of government employees with access to generative AI-powered tools as part of its digital transformation strategy.
The initiative marks a significant step toward the emirate’s ambition of becoming the world’s first AI-native government by 2027, enhancing productivity, streamlining public services, and accelerating innovation across government operations.
Through the Frontier Employee Program, the Abu Dhabi Government has recently deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot to 26,000 civil servants across 27 government entities, building on 9,000 existing licenses to reach a total of 35,000.
The initiative standardizes Microsoft 365 Copilot as the AI productivity platform for Abu Dhabi Government, embedding generative AI capabilities into daily operations and public service delivery. Faster, AI-assisted decision-making across the government will translate into quicker, more responsive services for Abu Dhabi’s citizens, residents, and businesses.
All licenses are provisioned with Advanced Data Residency (ADR), ensuring that all AI processing takes place within UAE borders, a model of sovereign AI deployment that is attracting growing interest from governments abroad. The rollout also includes AI training and certification programs, ensuring employees can use these tools responsibly, securely, and to maximum effect.
His Excellency Wesam Lootah, Director General of GovDigital at Department of Government Enablement (DGE), said that, “Abu Dhabi is building a government that is AI-native by design, where technology elevates how government entities operate, collaborate, and serve the community. The rollout of Microsoft 365 Copilot across government marks a significant step in equipping our workforce with advanced AI capabilities, whilst ensuring adoption is governed, secure, and built to last. Through the Frontier Employee Program, we are empowering government employees with the tools and skills to shape the future of public sector innovation.”
Amr Kamel, General Manager, Microsoft UAE, noted that, “The UAE’s national direction toward Agentic AI reflects a distinctive approach to government transformation, one built on a clear vision and decisive leadership. The Frontier Employee Program is an extension of that same approach: empowering 35,000 government employees across Abu Dhabi and scaling agentic AI to drive faster outcomes and more efficient processes across government. At Microsoft, our role is to provide the secure, sovereign foundations that enable transformation of this kind, and we are proud to support DGE’s leadership in bringing it to life.”
The program is supported by an AI Adoption and Enablement framework, covering structured rollout, change management, and user enablement to drive safe, governed, and high-impact adoption across entities. The deployment is underpinned by rigorous security, data governance, and readiness assessments to ensure alignment with government compliance and data protection standards, as per the statement.
