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Good practice Imported

MoHRE's AI-Driven Work-Permit Quota System Cuts UAE Approval Times by Up to 99%

United Arab Emirates · Dubai · See the United Arab Emirates profile · See the Dubai profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 51% 60/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

The UAE's Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation deployed a self-learning AI system that scores work-permit and quota applications against live labour-market data, cutting processing time for auto-approved cases by up to 99% and issuing permits in under 60 seconds.

900,000 quotas
Work-permit quotas granted (by end Oct 2025)
13 million transactions
Transactions processed via automation and AI (by 10 Dec 2025)
56 %
Reduction in required human effort (sample of 175,000 of 310,000 requests) (Feb-Oct 2025)
under 60 seconds (down from ~10 minutes)
Average time to issue or amend a permit (as of 2026)
MoHRE's AI-Driven Work-Permit Quota System Cuts UAE Approval Times by Up to 99%

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE), with the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security (ICP)
Period
2025-01/2026-05
Keywords
labour administration, immigration, service delivery, digital government

Context

The UAE's Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE), together with the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP), operates an AI-powered work-permit quota system as part of the country's "Zero Bureaucracy" programme to speed up government permit and visa issuance.

Activities

Launched at the start of 2025 and expanded from 1 May 2026, the system automatically scores every submitted work-permit application by analysing skills, education, experience and professional licences against live labour-market shortage data, generating an eligibility score within seconds; straightforward, compliant applications are approved automatically, while inconsistent or complex cases are escalated to a specialised human review committee.

Results

By the end of October 2025 the system had granted roughly 900,000 work-permit quotas, and by 10 December 2025 close to 13 million transactions had been processed through automation and AI. MoHRE reported a 56% reduction in required human effort across a sample of 175,000 of 310,000 requests handled between February and October 2025, and cut the average time to issue or amend a permit from around 10 minutes to under 60 seconds.

Conclusions

The ministry describes the model as "self-learning" and states accuracy is expected to keep improving as it matures, meaning current outcomes are not yet fully optimised and complex cases still depend on human adjudication.

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)
Staffing & skills
MoHRE and the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP) jointly operate the system, A specialised human review committee adjudicates inconsistent or complex cases escalated by the AI

Conditions for success

  • Scoring model draws on live labour-market shortage data alongside applicant skills, education, experience and licences
  • Straightforward compliant cases are auto-approved while complex cases are routed to human review, keeping a human-in-the-loop safeguard

Common failure modes

  • MoHRE describes the model as still 'self-learning', meaning accuracy and outcomes are not yet fully optimised
  • Complex cases still depend on human adjudication, so full automation is not yet achieved

Where it fits

Governance type
national government ministry with cross-agency integration
Scale
national
Income level
high-income

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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