The UK government is investing £12 million in Data Sharing Infrastructure Initiatives to help businesses access, manage and share data more effectively, according to a Government Digital Service blog post. Over the next three years, the programme will work with businesses and sectors to identify barriers to data sharing and develop practical approaches for use across the economy. The National Digital Twin Programme has spent four years developing the National Node Net, an open-source, Crown-IP data sharing infrastructure, which the National Energy System Operator has adopted.
On World Tourism Day India’s tourism ministry and the Open Network for Digital Commerce launched a National Digital Tourism Stack. It aims to bring 23,000 tourism experiences and homestays onto shared digital rails by the end of 2028, with a pilot from January to June 2027.
The Government Digital Service and the housing ministry are a month into “100 days of Digital Devolution”, which began on 1 September. On 9 September an Early Years Innovation Challenge day brought more than 100 people from local and central government, health and education together to work out how better data sharing could support earlier help for children and families.
More than 2 million people used the Pentagon’s GenAI.mil platform in a single week, a senior defence official said; about half a million are heavy users. ChatGPT and Grok were added to the portal, which already offered Gemini, at the end of August.
The UAE scored 76.66 and Saudi Arabia 73.64 in the 2026 Arab Digital Economy Index, leading the region. The index found the strongest progress in digital infrastructure, government services and cybersecurity, and the widest gaps in the data economy and research.
