Page 41 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

2 The smart project(s)

2.1 Vision and content

Dubai Government ESS initiative was launched as part of the Dubai eGovernment initiative which
subsequently evolved into Dubai Smart Government, and more recently into 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, implemented through an extensive program.

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 adoption of ESS by the 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 on private sector alliances and partnerships for implementation of ESS; and
(v) implementing and enhancing ICT infrastructure for providing reliable and high performance ESS

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 the 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 with a
brief description:
(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 ERP (Enterprise
Resources Planning) system. There are more than 30 ESS in 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:
(i) to enable mobile messaging via SMS for their core services;
(ii) to enable electronic and mobile payments for their core services;
(iii) to enable unified digital authentication;
(iv) to enable electronic information exchange among the government entities;
(v) 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, shared collaboration across entities through portals.

U4SSC series 37