GovAcademy executive to speak at HR Tech MENA Summit on AI and workforce skills

H.E. Dr. Amna Al Mahri, Executive Director of GovAcademy, will join the opening sessions of the 12th Annual HR Tech MENA Summit 2026 in Dubai on 9-10 September. Her fireside chat will focus on how Abu Dhabi is using AI and skills intelligence to build a self-sufficient talent system.

Why it matters: - GovAcademy’s approach puts AI and skills intelligence at the center of government workforce planning, with implications for how public-sector talent is trained, measured and deployed. - The summit will spotlight how HR leaders can move from tracking training activity to making evidence-based decisions about capability gaps and performance. - Abu Dhabi is applying this model across 53 government entities, making the discussion relevant for large-scale public-sector transformation.

What happened: - H.E. Dr. Amna Al Mahri, Executive Director of GovAcademy at the Department of Government Enablement, Government of Abu Dhabi, is confirmed for the opening sessions of the 12th Annual HR Tech MENA Summit 2026. - The event takes place 9-10 September 2026 at the Waldorf Astoria Dubai Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, UAE. - Dr. Al Mahri will join a Day 1 fireside chat titled “The Sovereign Workforce System: Building a Self-Sufficient Talent Nation.” - The summit theme is “The Era of Execution: Where AI Gets Human.”

The details: - Dr. Al Mahri said HR technology has focused too long on learning management metrics such as who attended training, who completed it and who was satisfied. - She argued that the next step is real-time visibility into the gap between an organization’s current capability and the capability it needs to deliver its mandate. - GovAcademy uses AI inside Tomouh, its learning platform, to diagnose employee capabilities and gaps and personalize development paths. - The system supports evidence-based workforce decisions rather than intuition-based ones. - GovAcademy says more than 20,000 government employees have been upskilled in AI so far. - Dr. Al Mahri said the goal is a workforce that is more AI-capable, not only AI-assisted. - She described the platform as an engine for personalized development and evidence-based workforce decisions, not a chatbot layered onto old processes. - Dr. Al Mahri said workforce transformation at this scale cannot be done by one organization alone. - She said Abu Dhabi’s work across 53 government entities makes peer learning and comparison especially important. - For C-suite leaders, she said HR technology should be judged by behavior and performance change, not login activity. - She also said data foundations and manager capability need investment alongside the platforms themselves. - She warned that advanced AI cannot overcome fragmented data or managers who do not trust or understand the output.

Between the lines: - The comments reflect a shift in HR strategy from training administration to workforce intelligence. - The focus on evidence, data quality and manager adoption suggests AI success depends as much on operating discipline as on software. - The summit’s theme lines up with that view by emphasizing execution over broad AI discussion.

What's next: - Dr. Al Mahri is expected to bring Abu Dhabi’s government workforce model into the summit’s opening discussion. - The event will examine how AI can be embedded at the core of HR while keeping human decision-making central. - Organizers said the program will focus on turning AI ambition into measurable execution. - Registration information is available at the event website.