From Muscat to Salalah: UTAS Rolls Out AI Staff Training

While much of the coverage of artificial intelligence in Oman focuses on data centres, national platforms and billion-rial zones, a quieter kind of AI rollout is happening inside government offices and lecture halls. This week it was the University of Technology and Applied Sciences (UTAS) Salalah branch, which put its own managers and administrators through a structured course on using AI in day-to-day office work.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• UTAS Salalah ran a three-day, 15-hour training titled "Employing Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Administrative Work" from August 24 to 26, 2026, according to Oman Observer.
• The course targeted managers, department heads and staff from HR, planning and development, IT, and digital transformation units, covering process automation, smart dashboards, AI-assisted recruitment and CV screening, and AI ethics.
• It is the second AI upskilling course UTAS has run for internal staff in 2026: a July session in Muscat focused on AI in accounting and financial auditing, per Oman Observer.
• Both sessions were organised by UTAS's Training and Qualification Section, part of the university's Human Resources Department, rather than by an outside vendor.
• The push sits under UTAS's 2026-2030 strategic plan, which names digital transformation as one of six structural pillars, according to Oman Observer.

🎓 What Actually Happened in Salalah

According to Oman Observer's report published on August 29, 2026, the Qualification and Training Section of UTAS Salalah's Human Resources Department delivered the course over three days, August 24 to 26, for a total of 15 training hours. The stated goal was to familiarise participants with core AI concepts and their applications in administrative work, tying the effort explicitly to Oman Vision 2040's digital transformation goals.

The curriculum was organised around three themes: AI fundamentals and institutional digital transformation, AI applications in administrative processes and decision-making, and AI use in human resources management and productivity. On the practical side, participants worked through process automation, report generation, data analysis and performance indicators, smart dashboards, AI-assisted recruitment and CV screening, performance management, meeting management with automated minute-taking, and a session on AI ethics and information security.

The audience was deliberately cross-functional: managers and department heads alongside staff from human resources, planning and development, information technology, and digital transformation departments, according to the same report.

📊 Two Sessions, One Pattern

This is not UTAS's first internal AI course this year. In July 2026, the university's Muscat campus ran a similarly structured programme focused on finance and audit staff, titled "Artificial Intelligence in Accounting and Financial Auditing," held at the City Seasons Hotel and reported by Oman Observer on July 7, 2026. That session covered AI fundamentals, digital transformation in financial operations, AI applications in accounting and auditing, and financial automation and data analysis.

Commenting on the Muscat session at the time, Jasim bin Mohammed al Qaydi, Senior Training Officer, said the programme reflects UTAS's commitment to developing human capital and equipping employees with the knowledge and skills needed to leverage emerging technologies, as quoted by Oman Observer.

🧭 Why Now: The 2026-2030 Strategy

Both training sessions sit under a wider institutional plan. UTAS unveiled its 2026-2030 strategy in February, built around 18 strategic objectives, 63 sub-objectives and 122 key performance indicators, with digital transformation named as one of six structural pillars, according to Oman Observer's coverage of the launch. Vice-Chancellor Dr Said bin Hamad al Rubaie described UTAS under the new framework as functioning as "both an academic institution and a national platform for translating technical knowledge into practical solutions," the same report noted.

Read against that backdrop, the Muscat and Salalah AI sessions look less like isolated workshops and more like the operational rollout of that pillar: training the people who run the university's own back office before asking the same institution to produce AI-literate graduates for the rest of the country's labour market. UTAS is Oman's largest public higher-education provider, with branches spread across governorates including Muscat, Salalah, Nizwa, Ibra and Ibri, so how it upskills its own administrative staff is a reasonable proxy for how seriously public institutions are treating practical AI adoption, distinct from the many AI and tech courses already open to the public across Oman.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Oman's national AI ambitions, from the AI Special Economic Zone to sovereign AI platforms, tend to dominate headlines. But Vision 2040's digital economy targets also depend on the unglamorous work of getting existing public-sector staff comfortable with AI tools for recruitment, reporting, dashboards and compliance. A university system training its own department heads to screen CVs with AI or automate meeting minutes is a small but concrete data point on whether that adoption is actually reaching the middle layers of Oman's public institutions, not just headline projects and pilot programmes. If UTAS continues rolling this course out to its remaining branches, it could become one of the more measurable, if under-reported, workforce-readiness stories of the year.