Page 218 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

 Innovation Potential:
Reliable platform services and rich city data are catalysts for innovation, opening new insights to
government and business leaders to enhance existing operations and service delivery; identifying
new areas of opportunity for growth from all sectors; and establishing a level playing field for
entrepreneurs to discover, design and deliver new products and services addressing areas of unmet
needs across the city. The Dubai Data initiative has made efforts to enhance innovation through
putting minimum restrictions on the use and reuse of open data through the open data license.
Additionally, to encourage the full exploitation of the value of open data, efforts are also taken to
address concerns about quality, reliability and the lack thereof ongoing support through Dubai Data
Standards. The combined impact of insights unlocked by open and shared data, and the
development of skill-sets to orchestrate and analyze data, will propel Dubai from a knowledge
economy to an innovation economy, as individuals and entities take the leap from generating data
to applying data for the benefit of all through the Smart Dubai Platform.
 Measurement of Impact:
From the inception of Smart Dubai initiative, there was a strong drive to estimate and start
measuring impact. Efforts are currently underway to estimate the social and economic impact of
Smart Dubai Platform and opening and sharing of data, to develop logical models to determine the
levers to achieve intended impacts, set a baseline and put appropriate measures in the future to
rigorously measure and track the economic and social impacts of both initiatives. Robust methods
and tracking mechanisms are being put in place to determine just how much value Dubai has
generated from both initiatives.
The sustainable growth and a steady momentum of Smart Dubai Platform and Dubai Data initiatives
will be maintained in the next 5 years with plans to implement new services, and to release new
datasets on the Smart Dubai Platform and through active engagement with stakeholders. Both
initiatives are sustainable in the long run since the innovation potential multiplies as more services
and data become available. Both public and private sector will reap substantial benefits in planning,
designing and developing new products, services and processes.

 Transferability:
This unique experience of how Dubai is driving its smart and sustainable city initiatives - through
establishing a city-wide platform, data teams, unifying standards, collaborating with data providers,
incentivizing participation and tracking the impact - can be transferred to other cities. The
particulars of some of those may vary based on each city context (e.g. specific policies and related
direction setting statements, implementation specifics, etc.). However, the overall framework,
processes and the issues identified in Smart Dubai Platform and Dubai Data initiative in terms of
law, policies and standards, and skills building aspects are very much applicable to other cities which
intend to undertake similar initiatives.
The SDP as a concept and the PPP Agreement as a framework are both transferable to other cities.
Particular aspects of Dubai has determined the actual scope of services in SDP; however a good
majority of these services would be applicable to other cities since they entail commonly needed
aspects of IoT, data management, digital transformation needs, etc.
The smart financing aspect of SDP is also easily expandable and transferable to other cities. Smart
financing model through PPP identified various issues around the partnership model and
incorporated a flexible framework addressing innovation in terms of platform and services
expansion in the future with well-defined contribution from partners as well as risks undertaking
transparently. Hence, the particular context of Dubai played a relatively minor role, rendering
transferability viable to other cities.

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