The Abu Dhabi Accountability Authority and Presight.ai, a unit of artificial intelligence company G42, have signed a preliminary agreement to implement the latest technologies to drive efficiency in the operations of government entities.
Under the agreement, ADAA will use Presight.ai's applications in AI, the cloud and big data to streamline the entities' auditing and public finance practices, as well as step up anti-corruption efforts, the authority said in a statement on Wednesday.
The agreement was signed by Haifa Al Balooshi, the ADAA’s director of information technology, and Adel Al Sharji, chief operating officer of Presight.ai, at the Gitex Global Week in Dubai.
The partnership will "fortify our capacity to apply best practices in governance and achieve the authority’s directive to preserve public funds and assets by keeping pace with digital transformation processes and utilising the cloud environment", Ms Al Balooshi said.
This will "reduce environmental risks and operational costs, enhancing security and regulatory compliance, and thus contributing to enhancing the overall competitiveness of the emirate of Abu Dhabi", she said.
The Abu Dhabi government is encouraging the use of digital technologies to streamline the services of entities. Government units have either led their own initiatives or have partnered with other organisations to help them realise their goal.
Last month, the Ministry of Economy unveiled its new headquarters in the metaverse, where it will provide its full portfolio of services to users in the virtual world.
In August, the Abu Dhabi Global Market, the emirate's financial free zone, and the Abu Dhabi Residents Office signed a partnership that aims to encourage more investments and retain talent using the former's digital platform.
Global technology companies are also playing a part. In September, US software company Oracle opened a technology collaboration centre in Abu Dhabi that aims to help public and private sector organisations leverage the use of emerging technology to boost their bottom lines.
The agreement between the ADAA and Presight.ai will see a range of technology solutions that will be adapted to improve the authority's services, which is part of the Abu Dhabi government's vision for a technology-oriented government sector.
This will "strengthen the application of best governance practices and introduce new monitoring technologies, all to enhance Abu Dhabi's competitiveness in global governance indices", Mr Al Sharji said.
The latest agreement follows a December 2021 partnership between the two sides, in which ADAA became the first government entity to completely migrate its data centre to G42 Cloud's infrastructure.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
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Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
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Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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