Arab League-affiliated Arab Administrative Development Organisation (AADO) along with officials from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Civil Service participating in AADO's training programme on eGovernment have recently visited Dubai eGovernment to be familiarized with its advanced experience in electronic transformation and make use of its successes in this domain.

The participants as well as an AADO representative attended a special presentation by Dubai eGovernment about its process of development and achievements which received world recognition. The presentation was part of Dubai eGovernment's ongoing programme to boost cooperation  with related authorities in the GCC countries by sharing accumulated expertise and knowledge.

The presentation focused on the stages of development of eGovernance in Dubai, particularly the establishment of Dubai eGovernment as an independent government department and the recent upgrade of its portal (www.dubai.ae) in terms of common look & feel and content.

During the presentation, Dubai eGovernment discussed the latest innovations that have been incorporated in its newly enhanced portal, which was launched during its participation at GITEX Dubai 2009. The restructuring process of the portal involved adopting a new approach called "life-events" wherein information and services are classified based on the specific needs of individuals.

Commenting on the event, HE Ahmed Bin Humaidan, Director General of Dubai eGovernment said: "Part of our strategy is to contribute to developing eGovernment initiatives in the region. This can be achieved through conducting meetings and seminars with other entities to share experience, knowledge and ideas, which will enable the participants concerned with eGovernance to learn about the latest developments in the provision of eServices to customers in the easiest way in implementation of the directives of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, considering that Dubai's experience is the property of all Arabs."

The topics covered by the presentation included adequate explanations of Dubai eGovernment's role in providing a number of synergistic services to help government departments to provide their services to the public. These included online payment platforms such as ePay and mPay; eComplain, which is a unified complaint system for all government departments; eHost, which offers a centralised hosting facility for various government departments' websites and portals; AskDubai, a unified call centre that allows the public to inquire about the services of Dubai government departments; mDubai, the government SMS service; eSurvey, an online tool  used by government departments for surveys and to generate feedback; eLibrary; and GeSS, a system that analyzes the progress made in eTransformation in Dubai.

In addition, there were discussions focusing on the role of Dubai eGovernment's GRP systems in providing a common infrastructure of software and centralised systems to all Dubai government departments with the aim of serving the drive towards a stage of electronic integration among these departments. Moreover, the presentation explored the opportunities to collaborate with Dubai eGovernment in various projects and further enhance the process of exchanging expertise and knowledge.

The official portal of Dubai Government allows citizens, residents, visitors and businesses to access more than 2,000 electronic services provided by the local Dubai government departments. These include among others payment of municipality fees, visa applications for relatives, health card renewal, company registration and  payment of Roads and Transport Authority fines.

Global Arab Network