Page 21 - Enhancing innovation and participation in smart sustainable cities

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Enhancing Innovation and Participation

ƒ Business intelligence and decision support: One of the benefits of ESS is that its associated information
has been made readily available through the data stored in government-wide centralized systems (data
and information repositories). This has provided decision-making support to various central government
entities responsible for policy formulation. For example, GRP ESS contain various human resources,
financial resources and supply-chain management data, both at the government level and also at the
entity level. This allows the generation of consolidated government-level reports, entity-level
benchmarking of performance indicators, etc. Availability of such data enables informed policy making,
as well as easier and faster monitoring of the implementation of such policies at the government and at
the entity levels. In the absence of ESS, obtaining and aggregating such data would most definitely
require more time and effort from each individual entity.
ƒ Ease of government-level policies enforcement: ESS have also enabled easier implementation of
government-level policies in certain areas such as human and financial resources management. For
example, Dubai Government issued a Human Resources Management Law encompassing various areas
of HR management. In the absence of ESS, each entity would have to make significant changes to their
decentralized HR systems to ensure compliance.
The centralized GRP ESS has enabled unified implementation of the HR Management law, saving
significant efforts and resources in terms of time and money. However, there have been amendments to
the same law over the years which may necessitate further changes. GRP ESS have handled such
amendments again through the unified implementation of each amendment. Similar examples apply for
financial resources management (e.g. budgeting), supply-chain management, etc. ESS have certainly
increased the capability of the government to implement and to enforce government-wide policies
through a single unified system.
ƒ Reduced administrative overheads: ESS are implemented to provide a single point of contact for
government entities in terms of customer issues, incidents and support. If this were not the case, each
entity would have to replicate such efforts to deal with ESS customer issues in a decentralized manner,
thereby making the implementation process for ESS more complicated. Additionally, ESS entail forming
partnerships with private sector solutions and service providers. These partnerships were formed on
behalf of the entire government and all the entities leverage these partnerships by utilizing ESS. This is
exemplified by electronic payments in Dubai for which Smart Dubai Government has formed alliances
with the following stakeholders in UAE:
(i) banks: to handle credit card transactions, direct debit or account transfer transactions;
(ii) Ministry of Finance to utilize its eDirham prepaid payment method;
(iii) American Express to handle AMEX payments, etc.

It is also noted that a single service can require multiple partnerships. Entering into these partnerships
would involve the handling of all related complex contractual and legal issues. In the absence of ESS,
every entity would have to replicate these relationships and handle the legal agreements and contracts
management processes separately. This poses significant administrative overheads when considering the
number of entities involved.
ƒ Knowledge sharing across the government: ESS provided a concrete platform for sharing and exchanging
ideas across the government. Through this platform, business requirements, recommendations and use
cases are shared openly across government entities. In this regard, when an innovative idea conceived
by one entity is implemented, it would also become available to all the other entities. There are various
such innovative ideas for services which originated in one entity and were then subsequently adopted
by all the others. In fact, almost all the enhancements and subsequent releases of ESS are based on this
concept of sharing ideas.

U4SSC series 19