Page 47 - ITU-T Focus Group Digital Financial Services – Executive Summary

• Operational Efficiencies through Automated Processes: ESS have enabled ICT-based automation
(digitization) of various business processes in government entities (e.g. human resources
management, financial management, supply chain management, payments processing,
correspondences, document management, etc.) from manual paper-based systems. Such
automation and digitization have improved end-to-end cycle times for business processes in
government entities. Expedited timelines were observed in terms of workflows and related
approvals in several business processes. These observations are supported and verified by
benchmarks, which indicate an average of 10 to 20% reductions in operational processes cycle times
in similar Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations. ESS have also facilitated improved
service innovation, service roll-out, and service delivery for government entities. Additionally, ESS
have enabled government entities to reduce service rollout cycle by 30-40% (compared to a stand-
alone decentralized model for each entity).
The GRP has enabled the Department of Finance (DoF) to provide Functional Shared Services
(through its Shared Services Unit) in the area of finances and HR services for 24 small size entities.
This is expected to improve operational efficiencies and enable newly established entities to start
operations in relatively short timeframes.
• Customer Satisfaction: One of the overarching goals of ESS was to attain enhanced customer
satisfaction, while achieving operational efficiencies in terms of cost savings for the Dubai
Government. In 2015, Smart Dubai Government handled 41,000 support calls/requests related to
shared services across all participating departments. It was noted that 98% of all requests were dealt
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within the given SLA compliance target time, thereby achieving an 81% customer satisfaction score .
In the same year, ESS received an 83% happiness rating on the Happiness Index, which captures
customer happiness across ESS touch points.
• Business Intelligence & 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 generation of consolidated government-level reports,
entity level benchmarking of performance indicators, etc. Availability of such data enable informed
policy making and 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.
• 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 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.

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8 These figures have been derived from detailed annual customer surveys

U4SSC series 43