Artificial intelligence is playing a central role in selecting winners of the Abu Dhabi Award for Excellence in Government Performance, officials have said.
The awards, which will be presented later this month, are intended to promote a culture of excellence and continuous improvement across all aspects of government work, the emirate's media office said on Thursday evening.
The awards involve 37 government entities and 103 initiatives being assessed by more than 90 local and international experts, alongside a grand jury comprising leaders from the public and private sectors.
Mohammed Al Marri, director of the data and digital innovation department at the Abu Dhabi Executive Office said the growing emphasis on AI reflects the need to adopt rapidly evolving technologies early, rather than waiting for them to mature.
“AI has existed as a concept for a long time, but as an application and a useful tool, it is still evolving,” he said. “You cannot afford to wait – it’s something you need to adopt now and improve as you go, because it’s an industry that never sleeps.”
AI is being used in this instance as a form of real-time quality control, ensuring that assessments are aligned with required standards, as well as identifying inconsistencies and guiding evaluators on structure, language and data interpretation.
The second stage focused on AI supporting the technical jury, which is responsible for validating findings. “We built more than 30 AI agents that work together as a team,” Mr Al Marri said. “They review content, compare it against existing data and surface gaps that may not have been identified earlier.”
At the final stage, AI was used to support the grand jury by identifying broader patterns across government entities, rather than isolated performance indicators. This was enabled through a system known as a knowledge graph, designed to reduce errors and ensure that AI outputs remain grounded in verified information.
“It allows us to see common challenges across entities, not just individual findings,” he said. Mr Al Marri said the system is designed to evolve over time, with each cycle improving the intelligence and capability of the AI tools.
“These agents have been developed as part of this initiative, but they will continue to learn and become more advanced,” he said. “The aspiration is that, in the future, they could play a much larger role, even acting as a holistic adviser.”
He added that one of the most striking aspects of the system is its ability to generate highly tailored insights based on the award’s own data, rather than relying on generic outputs. “It’s not like asking a general AI tool,” he said. “This is deeply embedded in knowledge of the awards – it’s specialised, contextual and highly precise.”
Nasser Al Rahma, executive director of strategy and future sector at the Abu Dhabi Executive Office, said the overall goal is to reshape how government performance is measured and delivered.
“We want to introduce a cultural shift that incentivises collaboration,” he said. “This directly aligns with Abu Dhabi’s broader vision. “It reflects our focus on human-centricity, public value creation and the efficient use of AI to drive change.”
