The Abu Dhabi government cooperates with Microsoft to launch the “Pioneer Employee” program

The Abu Dhabi government announced the launch of the “Microsoft 365 Copilot” platform in the government sector in the emirate, providing tens of thousands of government employees with generative artificial intelligence capabilities within their daily tools, at a time when the emirate is moving towards achieving its ambition to become the first government based on artificial intelligence in the world by 2027.

Through the Pioneer Employee Program, the Abu Dhabi government made the CoPilot platform available to 26,000 government employees in 27 government agencies, in addition to 9,000 existing licenses for the platform, bringing the total to 35,000 licenses.

The initiative adopts CoPilot as the Abu Dhabi Government’s AI productivity platform, by integrating generative AI capabilities into daily operations and public service delivery. Accelerating AI-powered decision-making across government will translate into faster and more responsive services for all.

All licenses are provided with the Advanced Data Residency (ADR) feature, ensuring that all artificial intelligence processing operations take place within the borders of the UAE, in a model of sovereign artificial intelligence that is attracting increasing interest from governments around the world.

This launch includes specialized training and accreditation programs in artificial intelligence, ensuring that employees are empowered to use these tools responsibly, safely, and with the highest levels of effectiveness.

The Director-General of Digital Government at the Department of Government Empowerment – Abu Dhabi, Sam Lootah, said that Abu Dhabi is moving forward to build a government based on artificial intelligence from the ground up, so that technology contributes to improving the way government agencies work, cooperate, and provide services to society.

He added that the deployment of “Copilot” at the government level represents a qualitative step in providing our cadres with advanced capabilities in artificial intelligence, while ensuring that this adoption takes place within a reliable, safe and sustainable governance framework, pointing out that through the Pioneer Employee Program, we provide government employees with the tools and skills that enable them to contribute to shaping the future of innovation in the government sector.

For his part, General Manager of Microsoft in the Emirates, Amr Kamel, stressed that the country’s national trend towards agent-based artificial intelligence (Agentic AI) reflects a unique approach to government transformation, based on a clear vision and decisive leadership.

He added that the Pioneer Employee Program embodies an extension of this same approach, by empowering 35,000 government employees in Abu Dhabi and expanding the scope of employing agent-based artificial intelligence to drive achievement at a faster pace and enhance the efficiency of government operations.

Kamel explained that Microsoft’s role is to provide the secure and sovereign foundations that enable this type of transformation, expressing pride in supporting the leadership of the Government Empowerment Department in embodying this vision on the ground.

The program is supported by a framework for adopting and enabling artificial intelligence, covering structured deployment, change management, and user empowerment, driving safe, disciplined, and high-impact adoption across various entities. The deployment process is based on rigorous security, data governance and readiness assessments to ensure compliance with government compliance and data protection standards.

The deployment of “Copilot” stems from an ongoing and growing strategic cooperation between the Department of Government Empowerment – Abu Dhabi and Microsoft, which includes government cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity operations, services supported by artificial intelligence, and modern work environment technologies.

In March 2025, the Department of Government Empowerment – Abu Dhabi signed an agreement with Microsoft and Core 42 to implement a sovereign cloud environment that can handle more than 11 million daily digital interactions between government agencies in Abu Dhabi, community members, and companies, as a solid foundation for the ambitions of transforming into a government based on artificial intelligence in terms of design and operation.

The “Tamm” government platform, supported by artificial intelligence in Abu Dhabi, takes advantage of Microsoft technology, which includes “Dynamics 365”, “Power BI” and “Azure”, to provide more than 1,150 governmental and non-governmental services through one platform.

Microsoft and the Department of Government Empowerment – Abu Dhabi have developed their relationship into a strategic partnership in the field of cybersecurity, enhancing the protection of the digital government in Abu Dhabi by taking advantage of global information about threats, responding to critical tasks, and sovereign resilience capabilities.

This includes the department’s Government Security Operations Center, built on Microsoft Sentinel and Defender XDR technologies, which supports approximately 60,000 users and tens of thousands of tasks across the Abu Dhabi government.

A government-wide “AI Factory” is currently being established to enable the development and scaling of AI use cases, solutions and agents, targeting hundreds of use cases and more than 1,000 agents across the government sector, enabling employees to automate workflows.

The agents undertake tasks ranging from document processing and handling customer inquiries to policy analysis, accelerating Abu Dhabi’s goal of achieving an artificial intelligence-based government by 2027.