UNESCO delivered AI literacy training for civil servants through a train-the-trainer workshop at the 3rd Global Forum on the Ethics of AI in June 2025. As of October 2025, over 70 countries have engaged with UNESCO’s AI Readiness Assessment Methodology. The programme targets government officials specifically, on the premise that those responsible for governing AI systems must have sufficient understanding to do so effectively.
Published by: UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), international institution.
Key finding: Over 70 countries have engaged with UNESCO’s civil servant AI literacy programme — a programme that exists because governments deploying AI governance frameworks had not trained the officials responsible for applying them. UNESCO is filling a capacity gap that national governments have not addressed through their own policy.
Context: When an international body needs to run emergency training for government officials because those governments haven’t done it themselves, the scale of the preparedness deficit becomes concrete. The programme covers 70 countries; it represents a floor, not a ceiling, on how widespread the gap is.