Dubai Municipality (DM), recently appointed a representative delegation for the prestigious Public Services Summit 2005, held in Stockholm and Oslo from December 8-11th, 2005. The summit discussed best practices with leaders in healthcare, education and government from around the world, emphasizing the role of the Internet and networking technologies in increasing productivity, supporting economic development and innovation, and improving learning and healthcare environments, with the aim of increasing citizen satisfaction with municipal services.
DM’s three-person delegation to the important Stockholm and Oslo events includes Abdulhakim Malik, Director of information Technology Department, Abdulla Ali Al Madani, Head of Operations & Network Services and Ahmed Bahrozyan, Head of eGovernment Services. The delegation outlined DM’s strategies for improving customer support to attract global industry to Dubai, and also highlighted its innovative online communication technology initiatives.
DM’s e-governance initiatives have played a key role in the public services organization outperforming its regional counterparts. DM encourages investment by boosting turnaround and eliminating request processing latency by re-engineering its transaction processing and providing higher accessibility via its online portal.
Abdullah Al Shibani, Director General for Technical Service, stated, “Dubai Municipality is committed to raising the bar on customer care. Our emphasis is on the provision of quick and easy access to accurate information around the clock, and efficient resolution of complaints, issues and requests via electronic document exchange. We seek to reduce the need for the customer’s physical presence, reducing the opportunity costs of availing municipality services.”
DM’s online infrastructure allows it to compete successfully with other regional governments by reducing the costs of government services provision to the end-user. DM’s advancements were lauded at the recent UAE Contest for eContent, the pre-selection contest for nominations to represent UAE in the World Summit Award (WSA), where it was declared the winner in the ‘e-Government category’.
“Dubai Municipality has already achieved several noteworthy milestones, and is exerting our efforts to leverage this momentum to provide integrated consumer services. Till date, we have implemented 149 information and 37 transactional online, including engineering services for contractors, laboratory testing, services for food traders and food handlers and public services such as parking fines payment, all allowing for online payment via credit and e-Dirham cards,” added Al Shibani.
In an attempt to enhance customer involvement, DM has introduced email and short text message based communication channels. Its bilingual portal services are used by 9,000 registered business users, amounting to 1.3 million online transactions. Till date, DM has collected in excess of Dhs 12 million through is e-payment services.
“The next set of DM strategic initiatives focuses on integrated customer-centric service provision. We are looking to harness the potential of our information communication infrastructure to launch a consolidated platform for the provision of planning permits, environment approvals for industrial projects and waste management and product testing services,” said Abdulhakim Malik,.
“Dubai Municipality is looking forward to the Public Summit, which will allow us to showcase all our achievements and also pick up pointers from participating world class public service organizations,” he concluded.
