The Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship announced the start of the second phase of the national project to measure the readiness of the public sector to adopt artificial intelligence technology, in cooperation with the Japan International Cooperation Agency – JICA’s technical assistance. This phase will include 9 government institutions with the aim of assessing their readiness through 6 main criteria: (1. Skills 2. Data readiness 3. Digital infrastructure concerned with the application of artificial intelligence 4. Procedures and policies 5. Analytics 6. integration)  with the aim of analyzing the gaps and weaknesses and the most prominent current and future challenges in those institutions, in addition to providing some recommendations to build institutional strategies in artificial intelligence in line with the national vision of artificial intelligence in the Kingdom, one of the strategic objectives of which is the application of artificial intelligence tools in order to raise the efficiency of the public sector and priority sectors.

This phase comes as a continuation of the first phase of the national project to measure the readiness of the public sector to adopt artificial intelligence, through which 9 government institutions were evaluated, namely the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Water, the Ministry of Interior, the Civil Service Bureau, the Ministry of Energy, the Energy Authority, the Land Transport Authority, the Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority, and the Ministry of Labor, where the evaluation process included the training of 2091 government employees and leaders through capacity-building programs that are part of the readiness assessment project with the aim of raising awareness in artificial intelligence. The improvement in the level of awareness of public sector employees in the institutions of the first phase reached 26%, and during the first phase of the project a detailed report was produced for each of the participating institutions showing the extent of their readiness to apply artificial intelligence and analyze their gaps, in addition to providing them with a 5-year road map that will emerge from the most important projects and initiatives proposed that the institution must implement to transform from a traditional institution to an institution that adopts artificial intelligence and is managed by data.

It is noteworthy that the Ministry of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship began in April 2022 through cooperation JICA -through the technical cooperation program between Japan and Jordan - the implementation of the national project to measure the readiness of public sector institutions to adopt artificial intelligence, which is the first project of its kind in the Middle East, aimed at developing a road map for public sector institutions in line with the national vision of artificial intelligence in the Kingdom, where the project aims to conduct a comprehensive study of the readiness of public sector institutions and evaluate 18 ministries and government institutions, work is underway on the implementation of this project and according to a measurement methodology followed by them using artificial intelligence tools to analyze the data and inputs that are monitored in institutions.