Oxford Insights recently released the 2025 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Government Readiness Index in which it strives to provide answers to the extent to which a government can utilize AI to benefit the public. The index examines 69 indicators spread across 14 dimensions within six core pillars:

- Policy Capacity: the extent to which a government can design and implement effective AI policies in accordance with a clear, national policy vision for how AI benefits the country.

- AI Infrastructure: to what extent there is enough compute capacity and enabling technical infrastructure that the government can depend on over the long-term to develop and deploy AI.

- Governance: the extent to which a government has clear governance principles that it uses to shape how AI can be developed and adopted while safeguarding individuals’ rights and societal interests.

- Public Sector Adoption: the degree to which a government’s digital policy promotes testing of how AI can aid in solving public sector challenges.

- Development and Diffusion: to what extent there is a mature and available AI sector able to meet the needs of clients and promote long-term AI innovation.

- Resilience: the extent to which a government is able to tame the social, economic, and environmental challenges that result from the transition of societies towards a widespread AI adoption.

The 2025 version of the index highlights progress and identifies gaps in AI readiness, and provides “actionable insights” for governments looking to integrate AI into decision-making, policy-making, and public service delivery. The AI readiness index covers 195 countries around the globe, each assigned a score ranging between 0 and 100, with a higher score indicating that a country’s government is more ready to harness AI. North America was identified as the region with the highest AI government readiness index with a score of 79.75, followed by Western Europe (62.75), Eastern Europe (53.76), East Asia (49.14), the Middle East and North Africa (44.09), South and Central Asia (41.41), Latin America and the Caribbean region (34.00), the Pacific (30.39), and Sub-Saharan Africa (28.04). On a country level, the United States of America ranked first in the world with a score of 87.20, followed by the United Kingdom (score of 77.64), France (77.27), the Netherlands (75.57) and Germany (75.50). On a regional level, Saudi Arabia emerged as the country with the highest AI government readiness index, ranking 15^th in the world with a score of 69.79, followed by the United Arab Emirates (ranked 23^rd with a score of 66.87) and Egypt (ranked 51^st with a score of 57.53) among others. On the other end of the list came each of Djibouti (global rank: 153; regional rank: 17; score: 23.14), Syria (global rank: 163; regional rank: 18; score: 21.53) and Yemen (global rank: 191; regional rank: 19; score: 13.74). Locally, Lebanon came in 113^th in the world and 14^th in the MENA region in the 2025 AI Government Readiness Index with a score of 34.38. More specifically, Lebanon scored best in the policy capacity (42.00) indicator, followed by the AI infrastructure (39.62), governance (39.38), development & diffusion (35.97), resilience (25.76), and public sector adoption (18.65) indicators.