India and Portugal agreed to establish a joint working mechanism on administrative reforms and digital governance to deploy artificial intelligence in public services. The understanding was reached in New Delhi during talks between Union Minister of State Dr Jitendra Singh and Portugal’s Minister for State Reform Gonçalo Matias, who had been attending the AI Impact Summit 2026. Both sides signalled intent to move from dialogue to structured cooperation.

Dr Jitendra Singh proposed a working group to identify priority areas including digital pension systems, grievance redressal platforms and AI-enabled document processing, and suggested training exchanges and technical sharing. He recommended starting with specific, scalable models that offer mutual benefit. Portugal welcomed the idea while outlining its own reform trajectory.

India has pursued administrative simplification over the past decade, scrapping nearly 2,000 obsolete rules, removing mandatory attestation by gazetted officers and eliminating interview-based recruitment for certain categories. The government has introduced single-page digital forms in place of multi-coloured, multi-copy paperwork and has digitised pension processing end-to-end. It has expanded biometric and facial authentication for life certificates, covering millions of beneficiaries annually.

The grievance redressal mechanism operates on a hybrid model that combines AI-led sorting with human oversight and has achieved close to 95 per cent disposal rates, with final decisions subject to human ratification. Portugal described its approach as simplification first and digitalisation next, revising core codes on public procurement, construction and licensing before embedding AI. Its aim is to accelerate document processing while retaining mandatory human approval of final decisions.

Portugal said it is investing public funds to help small and medium enterprises adopt AI after recent climate events damaged industrial units in its central region, aiming to rebuild stronger technological infrastructure by year end. On the multilateral front, India has introduced anti-corruption initiatives in the G20 that emphasise women-centric corruption risks and seek consensus on handling economic fugitives. The two sides agreed to expand cooperation in trade, technology and education and to expedite the next meeting under the existing memorandum of understanding on public administration and governance reforms.