ABU DHABI, 31st August, 2015 (WAM) -- The Abu Dhabi City Municipality has launched a new e-service involving the activation of the online Infrastructure Designs Approval System (IDAS), which epitomizes the plan set by the municipal system and Abu Dhabi City Municipality for the automation of procedures and municipal services with the aim of delivering modern services matching to customer expectations and at the same time living up to the vision of Abu Dhabi Emirate in continuously upgrading services and responding to the requirements of performance improvement and sustainable development .
The service was unveiled during an induction workshop held by the Municipal Assets and Infrastructure Sector, and attended by hundreds of representatives of consultancy offices, developers and operators of the system. In accordance with the new online IDAS, the consultant will be able to communicate directly through online channels with the concerned sections as regards approvals of designs submitted to the Municipal Assets and Infrastructure Sector. The transaction progresses over a simple approval line starting with the submission by the consultant, receipt by the Design Section at the Municipality where a reference number is assigned, then it is referred to the Design Manager, followed by the Technical Audit at the Design Section, before being referred to technical specialists for multi-faceted reviews covering traffic studies, traffic safety, street lighting, rainwater drainage, geotechnical studies, landscaping & irrigation, and construction design & pavement. The transaction is then prepared for the electronic approval by the Design Section, after which it is passed to consultant who will be communicated by e-mail and SMS upon the final processing. The new system enables the linking of projects using the GIS, and ensures the effective communication with consultants through several channels; which will lead to positive results such as the absolute transparency, increased efficiency, low errors, and remarkably expedited transaction processing. The workshop presented a statistical comparison between paper and online transactions in terms of average time taken in submitting one transaction by the Municipality . It was pointed out that the preparation and signing of the application by the concerned officials takes 240 minutes using paper transactions including the typing of documents & layouts, endorsing them by the concerned staffs through the Consultant, and delivering and registering them in the Municipality 's archives. However, according to the new system, this process takes two minutes only, and the preparation of paper attachments requires about 10 minutes. All-in-all, the conventional style of paper-based transactions requires 24 folds of the time needed for the online application. The paper transaction costs about 1171 dirham, whereas the online transaction costs about 30 dirham only, i.e. the paper application costs the consultant 38 times the cost of the online application. The comparison of the carbon footprint of paper transactions means that each transaction requires the planting of two trees to make for the resulting carbon emissions. Since January this year, the Municipal Assets and Infrastructure Sector has processed 1410 transactions. Under the conventional paper processes, the time taken to submit these transactions by consultants is 408,900 minutes i.e. 6815 hours; equivalent to 852 working days. However, processing the same transactions online requires 16,920 minutes i.e. 282 hours; equivalent to 35 working days. The financial cost of applying for the same number of transactions using papers is about 1,651,110 dirham whereas the cost of the same online will be 43,428 dirham only. The carbon footprint of the traditional method is 109,839 kg of carbon dioxide, whereas the electronic format will result in 3977 kg of carbon dioxide, requiring the growing of about 3000 trees to counter the impact of carbon emission. At the end of the workshop, the Municipality called on consultants & developers to benefit from the potentials of the new system for endorsing the designs of infrastructure and expressed readiness to overall difficulties encountered. It also called for improving & streamlining procedures in order to deliver services living up to the expectations of customers, and at the same time contribute to nurturing an advanced infrastructure to keep pace with Abu Dhabi Vision 2030.Copyright Emirates News Agency (WAM) 2015.
