Dubai, Nov. 20, 2007 (WAM) -- Dubai Municipality (DM) and the Dubai e-Government have agreed to boost bilateral cooperation between them to successfully put into action the directives of Dubai leadership for the complete transformation of Dubai departments to electronic system.
"In total cooperation and continuous coordination with the Dubai eGovernment, Dubai Municipality is putting into action the Dubai strategy to make it a reality on the ground. We are working to ensure total conversion of our services to electronic system, to ensure all divisions of the municipality process all their transactions online," Engineer Hussein Nasir Lootah, DM Acting Director General, said.
He added that the cooperation was clearly visible when the Dubai eGovernment hosted the www.eweek.ae
during the "Technology Week" campaign launched by Dubai Municipality from September 23.
Mr. Abdullah Al Shebani, DM Assistant Director General for Technical Services highlighted areas of cooperation between his outfit and the Dubai eGovernment. He said: "Dubai Municipality is in total coordination with Dubai eGovernment. The municipality gives serious attention to Dubai eGovernment's priorities, particularly the achieving of 90% conversion of its services and processing of transactions to the electronic system. God's willing we hope to achieve 100% conversion by the end of the year.""Regarding the use of e-Services in processing the municipality's transactions, we currently process 97% of our transactions electronically, beating the Dubai eGovernment demand of 50% timeframe," he added.
He cited some of the services being provided to the Dubai Municipality by the Dubai eGovernment in recent time as including eHost, which, he said, hosted the municipality's eServices website www.eweek.ae
during the "Technology Week" campaign which the municipality launched on September 23 and will last until December 13.
He said through the eHost service, the Dubai eGovernment provided for the municipality's website excellent and high quality technical services which enable visitors to the website to process their transactions easily and rapidly, adding that the strong coordination between the Dubai eGovernment and the task force of the eWeek led to the release of regular reports about the significance of the system to clients, having been providing for users the basic services needed through the 700040000 contact number.
He pointed out that Dubai Municipality is primarily using the ePayment gate provided by the Dubai eGovernment, which also bears the extra cost accrued from the use of the service. "Dubai Municipality is also actively participating with its task force in all committees set up by the Dubai eGovernment, including the Marketing Committee, ePayment Activation Committee, eDelivery Committee, which oversees the direct delivery of transactions to owners by post to minimise visit of clients to the municipality premises," he said, adding that other areas of coordination and bilateral cooperation between the two sides include the DM's active participation in conferences and forums organised by Dubai eGovernment. "This include Dubai Municipality's participation in the Middle East eGovernment Conference which was held in Dubai in April 2007 and a similar one held in Jordan earlier in March 2007, in addition to the municipality's regular participation in the annual GITEX Conference under the pavilion of Dubai eGovernment," he explained.
Al Shebani further explained that areas of cooperation between Dubai Municipality and Dubai eGovernment are many. He cited some of these areas as including the unified identity project (eJawaz), the "askDubai" service for which a customer service centre was set up in Ajman, activating of technical network with other Dubai departments, DM's use of the "mDubai" service to notify its clients about the status of their transactions through SMS service.
"The municipality also uses the ePoll service being offered by the Dubai eGovernment. We are using that service in the ongoing Technology Week campaign," he said, adding "So far, the 781 respondents in the opinion poll conducted on the eWeek services have expressed their views with 92% expressing satisfaction with the electronic services being offered during the Technology Week campaign."He said the municipality had conducted six polls in the past two years using the ePoll service. He added that the municipality continues to be in close contact and coordination with all related divisions like the Information Technology Division, Administrative Development Division and the Public Relations Division to promote its services.
It's worth mentioning here that Dubai Municipality has won a number of international and regional awards in recognition of its outstanding e-Services. The United Nations honoured in New York in June 2006 the Dubai Municipality for having won the UN Public Services Award (e-Government category). Dubai Municipality also won in May 2007 the Middle East Institute Award for the Best Arab e-Services Provider. The municipality?s website also won the Emirates eContent Award (eGovernment category) and was also adjudged the best Arab government website at the World Summit Award (WSA) which was held in Tunisia in 2005.
