Public Sector
Sovereign data foundations for government entities.
From ministries to authorities across the Gulf, DAI helps the public sector build the standards-aligned, sovereign data backbone responsible AI requires.
Our approach
Why Public Sector
Every government in the Gulf is running a national data and AI programme, and each one is assessed against its own standard. Saudi Arabia has SDAIA, the NDMO data management standards, and the National Strategy for Data and AI. Qatar has the National Planning Council's National Data Program, the Qatar Data Knowledge Case, and the National Data Standards. The UAE has its National AI Strategy 2031 and federal data governance law, Oman has Vision 2040 and the National Digital Economy Programme, Bahrain has the Information and eGovernment Authority and a cloud-first policy, and Kuwait works through CITRA and the Central Agency for Information Technology under Vision 2035.
The constraint is the same in all six. AI ambition is limited by the maturity of the data foundation beneath it, and that maturity is measured against a national standard the entity did not write and cannot negotiate. ISO/IEC 27001 for information security, ISO 8000 for data quality, and increasingly ISO/IEC 42001 for AI management systems recur across those programmes as the common reference points.
DAI Consultancy works with ministries, authorities, and government-linked entities to assess maturity against the standard that actually applies, design a governance operating model that survives contact with the organisation chart, and build the in-house capability to run it after we leave. An operating model nobody can staff is a document, not a capability.
Regulatory context
Frameworks we navigate
Saudi Arabia
The National Data Management Office issues the data management and personal data protection standards government entities are assessed against, alongside PDPL obligations supervised by SDAIA. NDMO standards are specific to Saudi Arabia and do not apply elsewhere in the Gulf.
Qatar
The National Planning Council's National Data Program sets the National Data Standards and the Qatar Data Knowledge Case, with maturity measured through the Qatar Data Trust Index. PDPPL governs personal data across both the public and private sectors.
United Arab Emirates
Federal Decree-Law 44 of 2021 on data governance, the Federal PDPL, and the National AI Strategy 2031 sit alongside emirate-level digital government programmes in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and separate data protection regimes inside DIFC and ADGM.
Oman
The Personal Data Protection Law issued under Royal Decree 6/2022 and supervised by MTCIT, together with Oman Vision 2040 and the National Digital Economy Programme, set the data protection and digital government baseline.
Bahrain
The Personal Data Protection Law of 2018 and the Information and eGovernment Authority's cloud-first policy shape how government entities hold, process, and site citizen data.
Kuwait
CITRA sets the Data Privacy Protection Regulation and the cloud computing framework that governs classification and residency, while the Central Agency for Information Technology leads government data and open data work under Vision 2035. Kuwait has no omnibus data protection law, so obligations are assessed per entity and sector.
Use cases we deliver
High-impact engagements
National data strategy implementation
Translate a national data and AI strategy into entity-level operating models, roadmaps, and KPIs. The gap is almost always between a national ambition and what a single ministry can actually staff and fund this year.
Citizen 360 and service intelligence
A unified citizen view enabling cross-entity service delivery and proactive outreach, designed for privacy from the outset. Cross-entity sharing succeeds or fails on the lawful basis established before the integration is built.
Sovereign AI platform deployment
Data and ML platform reference architectures that meet national residency and sovereignty requirements. Residency is a design constraint from day one, not a deployment-time decision.
Capability uplift programmes
Workforce upskilling across CDMP, IAPP, and cloud certifications, building capability the entity keeps. National standards are assessed continuously, which means the assessment has to be survivable without external support.
Relevant services
Pillars that matter most
Where public sector engagements usually start
Discuss your public sector priorities
Let's map your sector's data and AI priorities to a governance-first delivery plan.