#GCC #digitalgovernment - BCG (Boston Consulting Group) has published findings from its 2026 Digital Government Citizen Survey showing that 79 percent of citizens in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE expect government services to be AI-centred, compared with 66 percent globally. The GCC results draw on more than 1,500 respondents, within a global sample of 48,500 across 44 countries. GCC comfort with AI and agentic services runs 30 percentage points above global peers. Yet confidence that AI’s benefits outweigh its risks has dropped 21 points since 2024.
SO WHAT? - GCC residents have embraced AI earlier and more positively than anywhere else on the planet, with the possible exception of China. So, it is no wonder that Gulf citizens are more comfortable with AI-powered government services than anywhere else. However, that goodwill seems to be slipping, with optimism dropping sharply over the past two years. Governments that move early on agentic services have the public’s backing, but they’ll arguably need visible safeguards to keep that support.
BCG (Boston Consulting Group) has published its 2026 Digital Government Citizen Survey, covering 44 countries and 48,500 respondents. The GCC findings come from more than 1,500 respondents in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and BCG describes this edition as an inflection point driven by agentic AI.
Service satisfaction across GCC countries has risen 15% over a decade, while global satisfaction is 21% lower than a decade ago. The GCC is the only surveyed region where citizens rate public digital services above private ones.
Citizens rating government digital services as better than private ones reached 76% in the UAE, 74% in Saudi Arabia and 68% in Qatar. The GCC average is 72%, against 44% globally.
The net score favouring government services fell from 75% in 2024 to 69% in 2026 as citizens’ opinion of private sector digital services improved. BCG says this suggests the private sector is innovating faster.
Three of the top four government service use cases now employ agentic AI. GCC citizens are 30 percentage points more comfortable with AI and agentic services than global peers, and 79% expect AI-centred services.
Preference for AI handling simple services and people handling complex ones rose 9 points to 50% in two years, the highest of any region. Only about 4% of GCC respondents want human-only service, against almost one in ten globally.
Job loss (about 33%) and accuracy (about 28%) are the top concerns. GCC citizens worry less than global peers about ethics (down 4 points) and transparency (down 6 points). More than 10% report no concerns at all.
BCG recommends six actions: rethink services with AI at the core, learn from the private sector, address citizen concerns, build hybrid service models, expand agentic services early, and invest in AI literacy. Expert AI users are about four times more confident than non-users.
[Written and edited with the assistance of AI]
Source: BCG
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