Page 71 - Enhancing innovation and participation in smart sustainable cities

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Enhancing Innovation and Participation

1.2 Challenge and response

Dubai’s rapid development in various economic sectors meant that traditional processes needed to be
continuously enhanced to ensure efficiency and speed. Government effectiveness became increasingly important
especially in Government to Consumer (G2C) and Government to Government (G2G) services.
In particular, the growth of the business, construction and tourism sectors saw the Government needing tighter
controls over activities such as permissions (e.g. permits and No Objection Certificates (NoCs)) and transaction
verification and tracking. Simple processes were getting ever more complicated with the addition of activities that
were now in demand by the city’s new businesses and residents. It was clear that Dubai needed an agile solution
to streamlining its growing Government processes.
Dubai saw the potential in blockchain as the solution. Blockchain is the technology that utilizes open distributed
databases of transactions involving value. Its coding method allows for secure record keeping in distributed online
ledgers where members share and confirm information with no central authority (see Figure 11).

Figure 12 How blockchain works: Money transfer example

Moreover, the blockchain economy is witnessing rapid growth with 600 new companies active in blockchain today,
$1.1 billion invested in blockchain by the private sector in 2016 alone and an expected market value of $290 billion
in 2019 (see Figure 12).

U4SSC series 69