Page 15 - Enhancing innovation and participation in smart sustainable cities
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United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Enhancing Innovation and Participation
2 The smart project(s)
2.1 Vision and content
The Dubai Government ESS initiative was launched as part of the Dubai eGovernment initiative, which
subsequently evolved into Dubai Smart Government, and more recently into the Smart Dubai initiative in 2014,
all under the leadership of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime
Minister of the UAE and The Ruler of Dubai. ESS forms a key pillar under Smart Dubai, which is Dubai’s smart-city
initiative, and implemented through an extensive programme.
Strategic goals and objectives of ESS: The overarching strategic goals of the ESS initiative were to achieve
operational efficiencies and higher returns on ICT investments by providing customer-focused shared services,
while capitalizing on ICT-related synergies across the city government entities. Accordingly, ESS would strike an
optimal balance between operational efficiencies and enhanced customer satisfaction by simultaneously
achieving high levels in both (i.e. operational efficiencies will NOT be achieved at the expense of customer
satisfaction).
Customer objectives of ESS were identified as increasing customer satisfaction and trust, saving time and money
for customers and increasing the adoption of ESS by customers. The customers of ESS are the government entities,
the public, the businesses and other organizations in Dubai utilizing the ESS. Internal objectives of ESS were
determined as:
(i) innovating jointly with government entities to enable new ESS and to enhance the existing ones;
(ii) rolling out ESS to achieve high levels of penetration in government entities;
(iii) enhancing the customer relationship for ESS;
(iv) leveraging private sector alliances and partnerships for the implementation of ESS; and
(v) implementing and enhancing ICT infrastructure for providing reliable and high performance ESS.
The learning and growth objectives of ESS were to attract, develop and retain key skills for ESS provisioning and
provide requisite skills training to local government entities in order to utilize the ESS effectively and exchange
knowledge to improve ESS usage. The financial objectives of ESS were identified as achieving operational
efficiencies through synergies and increasing productivity for the activities conducted by the Dubai Government.
Actual services: Smart Dubai ESS initiative has implemented and delivered more than 60 shared services utilized
by more than 50 entities in Dubai. The following gives an overview of available ESS categories:
(a) Government Resources Planning (GRP) ESS: This category of ESS enables an extensive range of back-
office support functions such as human resources management, financial management, supply-chain
management, projects management, self-services management (employees, suppliers), enterprise
assets management, business intelligence, etc., implemented through an enterprise resources planning
(ERP) system. There are more than 30 ESS in the GRP category which can be implemented individually
based on actual business needs of a government entity.
(b) eServices Enabling ESS: This category of services helps government entities to host their websites for the
following functions:
to enable mobile messaging via SMS for their core services;
to enable electronic and mobile payments for their core services;
to enable unified digital authentication;
to enable electronic information exchange among government entities;
to have a unified repository of all the government entities’ services.
(c) Infrastructure Enabling ESS: This category of shared services includes secure government information,
network connectivity, secure Internet connectivity, shared email services, shared mobile email, intranet
solutions and shared collaboration across entities through portals.
(d) Public and Businesses ESS: This category of shared services includes the one-stop-shop official
government portal and mobile app of Dubai Government, recruitment portal, electronic suggestions,
electronic complaints and electronic survey systems for public and businesses, and electronic
procurement for suppliers.
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