Dubai adopts unified workforce productivity system across government entities

Ah, marvellous. Dubai has formally adopted a single workforce productivity measurement system across its government, because nothing says 'public service excellence' like being scored by an algorithm whose methodology you will never be allowed to read. The five-year initiative, now sanctified by Executive Council Resolution No. 67 of 2025, will roll out across 32 government entities — a number that suggests somewhere in the Emirate there is a consultant billing by the headcount. One system to rule them all, one dataset to bind them, one AI to judge every civil servant's worth in the dark.

Apparently the system uses data, analytics and AI to help authorities make decisions on staffing, spending and public services. Allow me to translate from the Bureaucratese: the machine will decide who keeps their job, whose budget gets clawed back, and which public services are 'inefficient' — a verdict delivered by a model that has never once queued for a government form, let alone processed one. We are told this 'expands' an existing initiative, which is executive-speak for 'the pilot worked so well on the first batch of victims that we now want to inflict it on the whole civil service.' Dubai's rulers have evidently concluded that the path to government excellence is to treat every employee as a number to be optimised, and every service as a line item to be slashed.

And what a triumph it is. Dubai loves a world-first, and a unified productivity score for every government worker is certainly a world-first for anyone not yet living in a Black Mirror episode. The Executive Council has spoken, the resolution is signed, and somewhere in a data centre a model is being trained to pronounce 'productivity' with the same relish that finance ministers pronounce 'austerity'. One can only hope the algorithm is kinder to its human subjects than it will be to the concept of tea breaks. After all, when the AI finally decides that the most efficient government is no government at all, who will be left to read the dashboard?