Dubai The Model Centre, an entity under the General Secretariat of The Executive Council, announced that nine government initiatives have qualified for the final stage, competing for the honor of waving this year’s ‘Flag’ of the Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Smart Government. The final nine initiatives were chosen from more than 70 initiatives that were implemented by various Government entities.

The nine shortlisted initiatives were submitted by eight government entities in Dubai:

• E-Crime initiative by Dubai Police
• Nol Plus initiative by Roads and Transport Authority
• Tech Taxi initiative by Roads and Transport Authority
• Visual Communication initiative by Dubai Courts
• Smart Response (Water) initiative by Dubai Electricity & Water Authority
• Mollak initiative by Dubai Land Department
• Healthcare Professional Licensing initiative by Dubai Health Authority
• Instant License initiative by Dubai Department of Economic Development
• Al Munasiq initiative by Dubai Customs

Eman Al Suwaidi, Senior Director of Dubai The Model Centre, said that the ‘Flag’ of Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Smart Government reflects the voice of customers and a platform among government entities to compete between each other in providing best services, to achieve happiness for all and maintain the welfare of society, in line with the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

Al Suwaidi added: “The Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Smart Government Flag translates the continuing efforts of all government entities during the year, which work with the Dubai The Model Centre in improving and our t services as per best global standards that exceed customers’ expectations, in line with the directives of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, to develop government work to serve people and achieve their happiness as a priority, while supporting government entities in their programs focused on efficiency, customer happiness and optimal use of resources in delivering government services.”

Al Suwaidi said: “We thank all the government entities and innovation teams that have worked with us in this year’s improvement cycle, We congratulate all the candidates on their arrival at this stage, which is an exceptional achievement and we wish everyone success in the next phase.”

DEWA’s Smart Response (Water) initiative was nominated as a development initiative aimed at improving the quality of water services and reducing carbon footprint, as well as improving customer experiences by enabling them to report technical failures in water services. It is being addressed by simplifying and enhancing the accuracy of fault reporting, automatically notifying customers of any potential malfunctions and demand status, as well as enabling them to perform self-checking using DEWA’s Smart Application and increase responsiveness using AI and GIS technologies, virtual reality system and automated distribution of tasks. The initiative has succeeded in reducing the number of visits required for water communications by 56 per cent It also contributed to raising customer satisfaction with the service up to 91 per cent, while DEWA expects the service contributed up to AED 800,000 of savings annually.

The Mollak Initiative by the Dubai Land Department is an electronic system designed for landowners’ associations based on the property owners’ database of the Dubai Land Department, aimed at facilitating their relations with concerned parties without the need for intervention. The system has reported significant success as personal visits required to obtain the service is no longer needed and reduced the service delivery time as well to less than 24 hours. It gained 94 per cent in the customer satisfaction index and 100 per cent in the happiness index.

Among other initiatives include DHA’s Healthcare Professional Licensing System, which aims to develop licensing services for individuals and medical facilities using state-of-the-art technology, primarily Blockchain to enhance the communication between government and private partners, reduce service delivery time and increase customer satisfaction and happiness levels. The service has reduced the processing time from 20 days to 5 days. It also contributed to achieving 93 per cent in DHA’s customer happiness index as the number of beneficiaries reached to 38,959 individuals and medical facilities by August 2019.

The ‘Instant License’ of the Dubai Department of Economic Development was also selected as one of the final nominees, enabling businessmen and investors to obtain their business license in a single step, within five minutes and without requiring a leased office for the first year. The initiative has successfully helped the emirate jump to 25th rank in World Bank’s Doing Business 2019 report. The service marks the progress of the emirate in reducing the cost of government services and facilitating the process from six steps to one. It also contributed to achieving 98 per cent in customer satisfaction index compared to 95 per cent and is viewed to gain financial savings reaching up to AED 7.6 million in five years.

The E-crime initiative from the Dubai Police has been nominated this year. The e-crime platform helps the public easily report incidents via www.ecrime.ae. The initiative has an outstanding achievement of reducing service delivery time from 125 minutes to 5 minutes and achieving 92 per cent on the customer satisfaction index of the Criminal Reporting Service.

Other shortlisted initiatives include the ‘Al Munasiq’ by Dubai Customs, which is a smart application fitted with smart intelligence technologies to enable the user to take photos , use existing photos or simply enter short description to get customs-related details such as  ‘HSC Code’, duties and other information about customs regulations. The system has reduced the time needed to complete the transaction from 20 hours to 9 seconds, gaining a score of 97 per cent in the customer satisfaction index.

Meanwhile, the ‘Visual Communication’ initiative by Dubai Courts provides live broadcast that enables parties to become part of the proceedings and communicate verbally and visually without the need to come personally to the courts’ headquarters. The initiative has succeeded in reducing the time needed to complete the service with a score of 97 per cent in the customer satisfaction index in Hatta in 2018. The initiative is expected to contribute to government savings of up to AED 1.38 million within three years.

Two initiatives of the RTA have become part of the final nine, the first of which is the ‘Nol Plus,’ which was launched to enable Nol cardholders to gain points each time they use Nol services and convert these points as part of their balance in the card or buy certain products from RTA partner stores. This initiative has helped increase the speed of service delivery from 82 per cent to 91 per cent within six months and increased the number of platform users to 110,000 by the end of September 2019. Its customer satisfaction rating led to an increase of 92 per cent.

The Second RTA initiative is the ‘Tech Taxi,’ which mainly digitizes the services provided by Dubai taxis. The initiative involved providing free Wi-Fi in Dubai taxis and other digital services to passengers which can be accessed using their smart phones. The initiative has succeeded in reducing the average waiting time for taxis from 11.3 minutes to 3.7 minutes and led to an increased customer satisfaction of 90 per cent, amid plan to include more than 10, 800 taxis in Dubai in line with the initiative.

The Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Smart Government has received a total of 70 initiatives submitted by government entities aimed at improving 40 key services across the emirate in 2019. The International Experts & Jury members have shortlisted nine initiatives from eight government entities.  The Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Smart Government Flag will be awarded to the government entity that will achieve high scores from the customer focus voting and final jury round at the award this year.

Government entities who received the flag in previous years include Trakhees  for Shamil initiative, the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing on the e-ticket system, RTA for the ‘Smart Umbrellas’ initiative, Dubai Municipality for the ‘Montaji’ initiative, and Dubai Police, which currently holds the ‘Flag’ for its ‘Smart Police Station’ initiative.