Artificial Intelligence presents a paradigm shift, offering unprecedented opportunities alongside novel and significant risks. Navigating this environment requires more than just policy; it requires a practical, scalable framework for governance. NAURA – National AI Utilisation, Risk and Assurance – is a national-level capability and risk assessment platform designed to help governments evaluate AI use across the public sector and critical industries. It provides the tools, templates, and clear processes needed to balance innovation with safety, ensuring AI adoption is strategic, ethical, and aligned with national priorities.

With NAURA, policymakers and regulators can:

• Catalogue and Assess AI Systems: Create a centralised inventory of AI deployments across government departments and critical national infrastructure, moving towards a unified national picture.

• Evaluate Maturity and Risk Exposure: Utilise structured, repeatable assessment criteria to evaluate the maturity, ethical implications, and risk profile of each AI application consistently.

• Anticipate Emerging Threats: Proactively identify and prepare for national-level threats such as deepfakes, automated disinformation, generative AI misuse, and potential adversarial attacks on AI-dependent systems.

• Ensure Policy Alignment: Verify that all AI use aligns seamlessly with national AI strategies, ethical principles, and international standards, including the OECD AI Principles and the EU AI Act.

• Embed Assurance into Governance: Implement robust governance with ready-to-use templates for impact assessments, audit trails, and regulatory guidance, streamlining compliance and oversight.

• Support Responsible Adoption: Accelerate beneficial innovation by providing public sector organisations with practical, clear frameworks for transparent and accountable AI implementation.

Closing the Governance Gap

AI is advancing faster than regulation, creating a precarious governance gap where governments risk both under-regulating harmful applications and stifling beneficial innovation with overly rigid rules. NAURA closes this gap. It provides the analytical backbone for agile, evidence-based policymaking, positioning adopting nations as global leaders in the safe, transparent, and effective governance of artificial intelligence.