Municipality e-government services, one of the first and the biggest online services in the region, is the subject of a doctorate degree for students from universities in the UAE and in other GCC countries.
"Apart from a number of students in the GCC, we have even received one student from a university in London who did a case study on Dubai e-government for his PhD degree," says Ahmad Hashem Bahrozyan, head of e-government services at the municipality.
Dubai's e-government also won the government Excellence Award in April.
Also, an online survey conducted in March using ACNielsen, online interviewing-operations technology based in Australia, was quite impressive. The overall Composite Satisfaction Score among users of e-services was reported to be 78 per cent.
According to the industry and regional norms, this figure represents a score between very good to excellent in terms of overall customer satisfaction.
Dubai Municipality (DM) online customers were asked to rate the various online services in terms of function, performance, ease of use and, finally, benefits derived from using the e-service.
The DM e-government project, which started its first phase with 15 online services in October 2001, offers about 400 online services to businesses and the public.
More than 8,000 companies are registered for conducting online business with the municipality. Only recently, DM has managed to cross the 550,000 mark in transactions completed online.
The number of transactions, Bahrozyan says, which were only 30 to 40 per week in the beginning, are now about 12,000 per week. "We are planning to offer 1,000 services by the end of this year to achieve our target of 90 per cent online transaction by the year 2007," he says.
Some 70 to 80 per cent of transactions are done online and fewer customers go to the counters. "The e-government initiative has changed the relationship between customers and the government because it has developed customers' trust due to its transparency," he says.
When it began, it was a major challenge to get people on board, Bahrozyan says. "We have to put forth a lot of effort to make our customers understand the facility because it was a new concept. We even provide them with free training to help them use the e-government facilities. Today, it is much less of a challenge because the number of customers are increasing sharply," he said.
Bahrozyan says the DM's e-government initiative tries to transform the provision of municipal services to businesses, citizens and residents of the emirate to provide benefits to its customers.
DM has sole responsibility for building and supporting all of Dubai's infrastructure, its rapid growth plans and its overall strategy to become a tourism, cultural and business centre in the region.
This expansion has resulted in DM becoming more customer-centric, to be focused on delivering quality services quickly and effectively while coping with a significant increase in its workload within time, resource and budget constraints.
The e-government initiative addresses these issues by introducing an online 24-hours service obtaining major transactional services for the business community within Dubai.
A number of project objectives and target measures were defined based on the stated problems and using input provided by key customers from various sectors of the business community.
The key objectives included the establishment of a new service delivery channel, which allows customers to apply for, track the status of service requests and enhance the provision of relevant information and reduce the time taken for the customer to obtain a service.
The e-government solution is based on a multi-tier architecture that enables DM to provide online services in a scalable, reliable and secure manner.
The integration of DM's online services with heterogeneous internal and cross-government systems has allowed DM to significantly shorten the overall processing time for transactions, identify bottlenecks and address key service delivery issues.
All the online services are free and businesses use online tools to control access to services within their own organisation.
Access to information is enhanced through the use of mobile devices, e-mail based government transactions, SMS updates on transaction status, use of information kiosks and online payment of transaction fees through major credit cards and standard smart cards.
Search capabilities
The advanced search capabilities allow customers to easily search for their transactions, check status and to use previous transactions as a template for creating new requests.
Although the project covers the requirements of the entire community residing in Dubai, the key target group for the project has been businesses operating within Dubai whose operations depend extensively on obtaining permits and approvals from DM. Apart from the business community, the various e-services also target residents and even tourists.
The municipality is responsible for the provision and maintenance of roads, public health, the environment, public parks and horticulture, public transportation, urban planning, waste disposal and the enforcement of all local public policies.
The e-government initiative has allowed DM to disseminate information to residents of Dubai on issues that directly affect them. Citizens and residents are able to take advantage of informational and transactional services through the DM portal, which allows DM staff to focus on value-added activities, thus supporting Dubai's rapid expansion.
The focus of DM's e-government services has been the business sector. The e-government services allow DM to bridge a perceived gap by allowing users to request services anytime, anywhere, thus resulting in a savings of significant cost as well as time, estimated at a more than 30 per cent reduction compared to traditional means of obtaining services.
"Dubai is a cosmopolitan city with a predominantly expatriate resident base and we believe that we have been able to overcome the cultural barriers through the use of both Arabic and English by reducing bureaucracy and bridging the divide between DM and the residents through the customer friendly e-government services," he said.
Some of the other strong points of DM's e-government services are: Customer involvement in the design and development of the various e-services has lead to high levels of services adoption.
Some of the services have managed to convert all their customers online, thus eliminating the need for traditional over-the-counter interaction.
Tangible benefits to customers, including 24 hours service availability, tracking service request progress, uploading and downloading of documents and certificates and the reduction or elimination of physical visits to DM offices.
Reduction in costs
A 30 per cent reduction in costs of service provision. Single sign-on concept that allows customers to access various e-services with a single user ID and password.
Automated online customer profile management allows customers to add new representatives, assign e-services to employees and request new services all through the internet. The use of various communication and service delivery to interact with customers including the internet, e-mail, SMS, information kiosk and call centre.
Free e-service training to customers to help encourage them to use the online services more frequently.
"Our aim is to convince more and more customers that the online services provide several key benefits over traditional service delivery channels. This, in turn, will increase e-service adoption to even higher levels," Bahrozyan said.
One-stop centre
From the cool confines of your home
* The e-services provided by the municipality includes clinical and medical services, Dubai Central Laboratory for projects and the products and materials related to it, the collection of fees, drainage and irrigation services, directory of public services, research studies that will allow the resident to access the list of published studies, status of fines, classification of land uses and hazardous waste disposal.
* Tangible benefits to customers, including 24 hours service availability, tracking service request progress, uploading and downloading of documents and certificates and the reduction or elimination of physical visits to DM offices.
* The e-government solution is based on a multi-tier architecture that enables municipality to provide online services in a scalable, reliable and secure manner.
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