Artificial intelligence is entering prosecution. This Office is adopting it under its own rules: governance before deployment, Dhivehi from the start, and every charging decision in the hands of a qualified prosecutor.
The 2028 Vision
“By 2028, the PGO will operate as a sovereign, fully digital, ethical, and transparent prosecution service, with human rights protected at every step.”
Every prosecutor working with an assistant built into Mafini. Every item of evidence carrying a record that cannot be secretly altered. Every decision auditable, fair, and accountable. AI and digital infrastructure are the means, not the purpose. Progress is judged by what changes for prosecutors, victims, and the quality of casework, not by the number of tools delivered.
What PGO 2.0 Is
PGO 2.0 is this Office's own AI strategy and delivery programme. It completes Mafini, our case management system, and builds eight governed capabilities into it, developing the two together rather than one after the other. It runs for 24 months, on infrastructure the Office controls, under the Office's own AI Governance Framework.
What it is
- A complete, intelligent Mafini. One case system, made intelligent as it is completed, rather than a system with tools added on afterwards.
- Eight capabilities built in. Legal analysis, identity checks, a prosecutor assistant, summarisation and charge drafting, tamper-evident evidence, a document exchange ledger, case intelligence, and citizen guidance.
- A governance-first model. No live use before the Framework, the Policy, and the Tool Register are in force.
- Sovereign control of prosecution data. Live case data, and the systems that work on it, stay under PGO control in the Maldives.
- Dhivehi from the start. Text recognition, transcription, guidance, and citizen access are built in Dhivehi, not translated in later.
- Human prosecutorial authority. The tools support prosecutors. They never replace the judgement of one.
What it is not
- Not automated prosecution. The programme does not remove people from the process. It removes groundwork from their day.
- Not AI deciding charges. No machine decides to charge, to clear, or to discontinue a case.
- Not public AI tools handling case data. Case information is never placed in publicly available tools.
- Not vendor-controlled infrastructure. The Office is not building a dependency it cannot exit.
- Not a digital-only service. Assisted and non-digital routes remain for those who need them.
- Not a plan for other institutions. This is a strategy for the Prosecutor General's Office, written by it, and binding only on it.
Why Now
The question was never whether artificial intelligence would reach prosecution. It was whether it would arrive under our rules, or on terms set for us by others.
AI is already entering justice systems
Tools are reaching courts, investigators, and legal practice faster than most institutions have prepared for. An office that waits does not avoid the decision. It only makes it later, with less control.
Prosecution affects liberty
A charging decision changes a person's life. Anything used in that process must strengthen due process rather than quietly weaken it, and must be open to challenge.
The Maldives has particular realities
A small population raises the risk that data can be traced back to individuals. Dhivehi is an afterthought in most tools built elsewhere. An archipelago of more than 800 kilometres makes distance a barrier to justice.
How PGO 2.0 Is Built
PGO 2.0 has one structure. Three pillars carry the programme, each through two enablers, which are the practical building blocks of the work. Eight capabilities sit across them as the delivery portfolio, built into Mafini rather than bought as separate products.
Three Pillars, Six Enablers
Capability and Delivery
Complete and strengthen Mafini while building governed capabilities into it.
People and Access
The people who use the system, and the people it serves.
Governance, Data, and Trust
The safeguards around all of it.
Eight Capabilities, One System
The capabilities span the main tasks of prosecution work, from analysing documents and evidence to answering citizens' questions. Each has a single home among the enablers, and each is separately risk-classified and approved before it is used on a live case. Two of the eight — tamper-evident evidence and the document exchange ledger — are digital integrity capabilities rather than artificial intelligence.
Legal Document Analyser
Analyses statutes, precedents, and case materials; flags missing elements and inconsistencies in charging files. Risk-classified before use.
Prosecutor Assistant
Contextual research, daily briefings, and natural-language queries in Dhivehi and English, inside Mafini. Outputs are human-reviewed.
Summarisation and Charge Drafting
Turns investigation files into structured summaries and draft charge sheets, human-reviewed before any use.
Identity Analyser
Verifies identity documents against case records, building on eFaas, the national digital ID; flags aliases and links across matters.
Tamper-Evident Evidence
Maintains the chain of custody from intake to court, with Dhivehi and English transcription and OCR, validated before operational use.
Document Exchange Ledger
An append-only audit ledger replaces the paper signature book, so accountability becomes automatic and every exchange is logged.
Case Intelligence and Risk Insights
Assesses evidentiary completeness, raises procedural and compliance alerts, and supports prioritisation. It informs prosecutorial judgement and never determines a charging decision.
Citizen Agent
Provides rights information, procedural guidance, case status, and guided access. Victim, witness, or case-related submissions use secure authenticated channels.
Together, the three pillars set the discipline of PGO 2.0: the technology serves prosecution, prosecution stays in human hands, and the Office keeps control of its data, its language, and its decisions.
PGO 2.0
Institutional AI Strategy 2026 to 2028
Six Commitments That Govern Every Capability
Ethics and human rights
Human rights, fairness, and due process come first. A case is handled just as carefully whether or not a computer helped prepare it.
Human authority
Every charging decision belongs to a qualified prosecutor. A machine never decides to charge, clear, or drop a case. A person always does, and answers for it.
Fairness
Tools are checked for bias and error before and during use, so that they do not treat people unequally or single anyone out unfairly.
Sovereignty
Case information and the systems that work on it stay under Maldivian control, on the PGO's own infrastructure.
Transparency
Where AI has helped prepare something used in court, that is disclosed, and the work can be checked and challenged.
Inclusivity
Where a person lives should not decide the service they get. Someone on a distant island can reach the prosecution service as readily as someone in Malé.
What We Will Never Do
Some uses are prohibited absolutely. They may not be authorised under any circumstances, whatever the technology can do and whatever efficiency it might promise. Setting them out in public is itself an assurance to the courts, to those we prosecute, and to the people we serve.
- No automated charging, prosecution, or discontinuation decisions. Every such decision requires review and sign-off by a named qualified prosecutor.
- No use of public AI tools with PGO case information.
- No AI-fabricated evidence, witness accounts, legal authorities, or court material.
- No use of AI to circumvent, narrow, or obscure disclosure obligations.
- No deployment of any unapproved AI tool on live PGO matters.
- No AI assessment of guilt, truthfulness, credibility, or intent from facial expression, voice, demeanour, or biometric features.
How AI Is Governed at This Office
Governance is the first thing built, not the last. The rule underneath all of it is straightforward: AI may assist prosecution work, but it must not replace prosecutorial judgement, and every material use must be capable of being explained, verified, recorded, and stood behind by a named official. What follows is the substance of that governance, set out on this page so that it can be read without downloading anything.
Nine Principles That Apply to Every Use
The Framework sets nine objectives that governance protects and nine principles that state the tests always applied in practice. They reflect the ethical commitments in the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the prosecution-specific obligations identified in international guidance. The Policy gives them operational effect.
- 01Human authority is not delegated to AI
- 02Confidentiality is protected
- 03Court-facing transparency
- 04Accuracy and verification
- 05Fairness, objectivity, and non-discrimination
- 06Recording and auditability
- 07Contestability
- 08Proportionality and risk-based governance
- 09Institutional learning and continuous improvement
Where Case Information May Go
Every tool carries a deployment category, which governs whether PGO case information may be processed through it at all.
| Category | Case information |
|---|---|
| AApproved PGO tools | Permitted within registered use cases and conditions. Includes the capabilities built into Mafini. |
| BEnterprise tools | Permitted only where the register entry confirms enterprise data protections, and only for approved use cases. |
| CPublic tools | Never. No PGO case information may be entered into a publicly accessible AI tool under any circumstances. |
How Much Oversight Applies
Every tool also carries a risk category, which sets the assessment required, who may approve it, and the oversight applied in use.
| Category | Approval and oversight |
|---|---|
| 1Low risk | Administrative and productivity use with no case information. AI Lead review and registration, user guidance, annual review. |
| 2Moderate risk | Research, drafting, and case preparation. Full assessment with data, security, and legal sign-off. A person reviews every output before use. |
| 3High risk | Prosecution, evidence, disclosure, court-facing, victim and witness, or identity use. Committee review and Prosecutor General approval before deployment, strict human review, full audit logging. |
The Instrument Set
Each instrument has a defined role, and each type of content has a single home. A principle lives in the Framework, an operational rule lives in the Policy, a step-by-step procedure lives in a guide, and a tool-specific condition lives in the Register. Three instruments are in force at launch. The rest are produced during implementation and issued as they are approved.
| Layer | Instrument | What it governs | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direction | PGO 2.0PGO-STR-AI-001 | Why, where, and by when. Vision, pillars and enablers, capability portfolio, roadmap, baseline, and results framework. | In force |
| Umbrella | AI Governance FrameworkPGO-FWK-AI-001 | Objectives, principles, the instrument map, and the rules of authority, conflict, and amendment. | In force |
| Rules | AI Governance PolicyPGO-POL-AI-001 | The binding rulebook. Roles and decision rights, risk classification, prohibited and restricted uses, the approval lifecycle, data and confidentiality, evidence and disclosure, vendors, incidents, monitoring, and review triggers. | In force |
| How-to | Usage GuidesPGO-GDE-AI series | Task-level guidance for staff, derived from the Policy. Everyday use, evidence and court-facing work, incident reporting, and tool-specific guides issued as capabilities are registered. | To be issued |
| Live list | AI Tool RegisterPGO-REG-AI-001 | The live register of approved tools, with each tool's deployment category, the risk category of each approved use case, approved and prohibited uses, conditions, owner, approval date, review date, and status. | To be issued |
| Controlled forms | Controlled formsPGO-FRM-AI series | The fixed records the set depends on: the AI Incident Report Form, the Human Rights and Due Process Impact Assessment, and the AI Use Record. Further forms may be issued as supporting controls. | To be issued |
| Assurance | International Standards AlignmentPGO-ALN-AI-001 | How the set maps to international standards on AI, justice-sector AI, and prosecution practice, and where alignment is still developing. It records assurance and creates no obligation. | To be issued |
The three instruments in force are published in full below. The remaining instruments are internal controlled documents, and a public version of each is released where the Prosecutor General approves it.
PGO 2.0
Institutional AI Strategy 2026 to 2028
AI Governance Framework
Principles and the instrument set
Restricted Uses
A small set of uses is neither permitted as a matter of course nor prohibited outright. These include training a model on case data, AI-generated demonstrative material in court, and work touching suppressed material or vulnerable witnesses. They proceed only with the written approval of the Prosecutor General, after legal, technical, and governance review, and any approval is time-limited, conditional, and reviewed before renewal.
When Something Goes Wrong
Staff must stop using the tool, preserve the records, and report to the AI Lead, who records the incident in the incident log. A tool can be suspended pending review and does not return to use until the matter is resolved. The instrument set is reviewed at least every 12 months, and out of cycle after a major incident, before a new high-risk deployment, after a change in Maldivian law, or after a significant court ruling on AI.
A Missing Instrument Bars Deployment; It Does Not Permit It
The Policy makes registration in the AI Tool Register and assessed competency conditions of operational use. Until the Register is issued and a tool is entered in it, no AI capability may be used on a live PGO matter. Completing Mafini runs in parallel throughout the programme. What is sequenced is governance.
What Changes for the People We Serve
For most Maldivians outside Malé, dealing with the prosecution service today means travel, waiting, and limited visibility of what is happening in a case. Improvements will build as the internal platform matures, and the first ones are already within reach.
- Most formal engagement requires travel to Malé
- Limited digital channels for case status queries
- Limited Dhivehi guidance on navigating the process
- Digital channels open, so contact no longer depends on travel
- Rights and process information published in Dhivehi
- Secure channels for submitting documents
- Dhivehi-first guidance available across the atolls
- Every evidence movement recorded on an auditable ledger
- Assisted and non-digital routes retained for those who need them
Aligned Nationally, Owned by This Office
PGO 2.0 moves towards Maldives 2.0, the national digital transformation vision, and draws on shared national capability for compute, training, and resilience through the National AI and Data Competency Centre.
The Prosecutor General's Office participates as an independent constitutional office. Live case data, prosecutorial decisions, and the governance of AI within this Office remain under PGO control.
Grounded in International Practice
The programme's governance draws on the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and the UNESCO guidelines on AI in courts and tribunals, together with prosecution and legal-sector guidance from comparable jurisdictions and recognised risk-management standards. Where international guidance does not fit a small island state, the adaptation is recorded rather than passed over.
What the Programme Buys, and From Whom
PGO 2.0 is funded from public money, so the record of what is bought and who supplies it belongs in public view. Every procurement is announced and awarded through the ordinary public process, published in the Government Gazette, and listed here with a link to the notice.
Procurements
| Reference | Procurement | Type | Stage | Document | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (IUL) 196-C/1/2026/86 | Strategic AI Model Licensing, Sovereign Deployment and Consultancy ServicesEnd-to-end provision of sovereign on-premises AI systems, licensing, and consultancy from infrastructure planning and governance to custom PGO workflow co-development. Ensures fully owned, secure AI capabilities with complete data sovereignty, confidentiality, and operational control. | Services | Open for Bids | Gazette notice | |
| (IUL) 196-C/1/2026/93 | Supply of 2-in-1 Laptops for Prosecutors – Paperless ProsecutionProcurement of 120 2-in-1 laptops to support the Paperless Prosecutions Initiative, enabling prosecutors to access and manage case files, documents, evidence, court hearings, and prosecution systems digitally. This supports the PGO 2.0 vision of providing prosecutors with efficient, mobile, and digitally enabled workspaces. | Goods | Open for Bids | Gazette notice |
Notices and related documents are published in the Government Gazette.