Page 206 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

Smart Dubai is implementing the Smart Dubai Platform,
the new digital backbone powering Dubai’s smart city

transformation.

IOT MANAGEMENT & OPEN & SHARED CITY GEO-LOCATION DATA DASHBOARD AND
DATA AGGREGATION DATA CATALOGUE SUPPORT ANALYTICS TOOLS

DIGITAL ID SERVICES DIGITAL PAYMENT PLATFORM AS A REAL-TIME / IN MEMORY
(DUBAIID) GATEWAY (DUBAIPAY) SERVICE (PAAS) APP ENVIRONMENT

Figure 1 – SDP Platform Initial Services

The principal role of the SDP will be as technical enabler for the interconnection of data throughout the city
and as technical incubator to new, seamless city-wide services.

Dubai targets the Smart Dubai Platform to be one of the globally competitive platforms operating in the
world today. Built through a collaborative and interactive process with all city stakeholders, the Smart Dubai
Platform is an embodiment of Smart Dubai’s efforts to reshaping the way government services are structured
to meet the needs of the customer. To deliver the SDP, Smart Dubai has pioneered a public-private
partnership (PPP) with its Strategic Private Sector Partner, namely du (a major integrated
telecommunications services provider in UAE). du contributed their expertise to build a collaboratively
designed platform that brings the most advanced technology innovations on the market to support smart
city experiences for all Dubai residents, visitors, business owners and city decision makers.

This new and integrated approach depends on interoperability and from the very outset it became apparent
that no single vendor would have the capability to entirely provide such a holistic and technologically
sophisticated digital platform. As a result, this demanded not only new budget models, but new thinking from
vendors whereby they would not be just service providers but instead ‘strategic partners working in harmony
with shared vision and goals.

The adoption of a unique public-private-partnership (PPP) model was therefore the most expedient and
efficient alternative of harnessing the potential of the public and private sectors in meeting the goals of this
groundbreaking smart city initiative. The risks and the rewards were jointly shared by partners in a well-
defined framework agreement.
Private sector partner brought extensive experience and skills in operating city-wide platforms and
infrastructure. It also provides requisite sophisticated ICT skills to implement and manage the large-scale SDP
platform and provide leading edge services (e.g. IoT, data, etc.).

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