The 2021 edition of the Government AI Readiness Index -recently published by Oxford Insights -looks at how ready governments around the world are to implement artificial intelligence (AI) in the delivery of public services. The USA, Singapore, the UK, Finland, and the Netherlands are the top five countries in the index. East Asian countries -Singapore (2nd place), South Korea (10th), Japan (12th), China (15th), and Taiwan (18th) -make up one quarter of the top 20 ranked countries. The index also shows that there are strong inter-regional and intra-regional inequalities in AI readiness. Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and South Asia are the lowest ranked regions, at the opposite pole from North America and Western Europe. Within regions, the greatest range of scores was found in East Asia and Middle East and North Africa. Out of 160 countries included in the ranking, 30% have a national AI strategy, while 9% are working on one. The index measures 10 dimensions across 3 pillars: vision, governance and ethics, digital capacity, and adaptability in the government pillar; size, innovation capacity, and human capital in the technology sector pillar; and data availability, data representativeness, and infrastructure in the data and infrastructure pillar.