Page 16 - Case study: Smart Dubai Happiness Meter in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

trade facilitation, ports management, free zones services, etc. have all availed it as a customer
feedback mechanism.

• High levels of service delivery: Happiness Meter provides instant feedback and even in
some cases detailed feedback from customers for their happiness ratings. This has allowed
government as well as commercial entities to promptly address their service delivery issues
perceived by customers. Over time, several entities improved their scores by taking timely action
based on customer ratings and feedback.

• Transparency and Healthy Competition: Happiness Meter data stored in centralized systems
and repositories has enabled advanced analytics and business intelligence for various public and
private sector entities responsible for policy making, services delivery and decision support. It
also allowed advanced 4IR capabilities to be utilized such as data science, AI, blockchain, etc. due
to flexible design. Hence, entities could benchmark themselves with other entities in the city and
understand their relative position with respect to services delivery. This also enables a healthy
competition among city entities and provides an incentive mechanism to improve their relative
rankings and positions with respect to Happiness Meter.

• Leadership engagement: The city leadership has access to Happiness Meter results and
they are available across various digital channels including website and mobile app. This has
allowed monitoring results in cumulative as well as even real time by the various managers and
leaders in city entities, giving them the chance to intervene, if need be, for enhancement and
improvement of city services delivery.

• Knowledge sharing for happiness across the public sector: Smart Dubai has provided concrete
platforms for sharing and exchanging ideas across the public sector for services enhancement.
Entities shared their experiences and various techniques they used to improve their services
among each other openly. An innovation idea belonging to one entity becomes available to all
the other entities when shared openly. Collective knowledge capital in terms of enhancing city
experiences was enriched at the public sector level.

Environmental Impact:

• Enhanced Resilience: The centralized nature of Happiness Meter implementation as an ICT
service and its corresponding infrastructure enabled disaster recovery and resilience aspects to
be implemented as part of its overall shared services approach. Smart Dubai circular ICT services
and infrastructure (Happiness Meter being one) are resilient by design featuring redundancies,
automatic fail-over mechanisms, etc. Hence, it is designed resilient to various natural or man-
made disasters, etc.

• Reduced environmental impact due to consolidation: Shared implementation approach for
Happiness Meter undertaken by Smart Dubai has circumvented the need for other city entities
to replicate ICT infrastructures in their own premises. Consequently, Happiness Meter related
ICT services and infrastructure have significantly been consolidated due to economies of scale
and also scope, resulting in less number of overall ICT equipment (IT assets such as network

10 Smart Dubai Happiness Meter | Dubai, UAE