Governments around the world will increasingly pursue “Sovereign AI” solutions to ensure control over data and compute resources within their borders, driving the creation of national AI ecosystems and regional data centers.

– Vrushali Sawant, Data Scientist, SAS Data Ethics Practice

In 2026, we will see identity management become the backbone of inter-agency agreements to ensure lawful, fair, and secure data exchange. This will promote cross-agency data sharing, enabling more contextual fraud, waste and abuse risk detection and mitigation.

– John Stultz, Principal Solutions Architect, Risk, Fraud & Compliance

With more EU AI Act deadlines approaching and regulators preparing for the first enforcement actions, as well as the emergence of more AI regulatory frameworks globally, in 2026, organizations will increasingly be looking at AI governance to ensure compliance but also as an innovation driver.

– Kalliopi Spyridacki, Chief Privacy Strategist, EMEA & Asia Pacific

Public agencies will capture institutional knowledge by training retrieval augmented generation (RAG) systems on the documented expertise of senior staff, creating AI mentors that provide junior employees with on-demand access to decades of accumulated wisdom and best practices. Unfortunately, this will also lead to more instances of AI sabotage where workers, concerned with being replaced by AI, purposefully produce poor content to contaminate the training.

– Steven Tiell, Global Head, AI Governance Advisory