Dubai Customs implements a number of leading initiatives to benefit from IT in its business development

Speaking on such occasion, Mr. Ahmed Butti Ahmed, Director General of Dubai Customs said, "Dubai Customs takes part in Gitex this year with lots of leading achievements relating to IT sector, the most prominent of which are the 80 e-service delivery making Dubai Customs the leader customs administration in the area, through totally depending upon the most recent technology worldwide and dedicated it for customs business development and acceleration as well as securing a paperless environment".

Mr. Butti affirmed such development being experienced by Dubai Customs is attributed to the organizational staff self-capacity declaring that Dubai Customs is ready to face the projected operational growth challenges.

The launch of the customs transactional processing system, constituted a quality shift in the customs business particularly it was the first time of its kind at the regional customs administrations level.

Such initiative contributed to creating a paperless work environment where customs clients are able to clear their transactions from within any area worldwide without visiting any customs office.

This would contribute to accelerating business and save both clients and Customs time and effort.

To this end, Dubai Customs signed MOUs with major world shipping companies in respect with benefiting from the new service being delivered by Customs especially B2B service.

The singing of the MOUs comes to underline the success of the plans being adopted by Dubai Customs aiming to increase the number of transactions submitted for e-clearance.

The Customs statistics show that about 6000 transactions are being electronically cleared each day.

The total number of transactions for e-clearance reached 710 thousand during the first half of the current year representing 43% of the total cleared transactions in the period.

The MOU signatories would benefit from the facility of e-exchange of information and processing 51 declarations without sending their representatives to customs offices saving them time and effort formerly required by customs documentations.

The system would also be beneficial in obtaining and tracking information relative to cargos from the time being shipped at the country of origin passing through all destinations on route to Dubai via advanced electronic systems and in liaison with major shipping companies, signatories of the MOUs.

One of the unprecedented achievements of Dubai Customs included its adoption in collaboration with Etisalat the e-signature pursuant to its strategy that derived from Dubai's vision.

Such system would allow registered clients to process their transactions electronically.

Dubai Customs developed this system internally relying on its own capabilities in conformity to the respective Federal laws.

The outstanding achievement made by Dubai Customs in the business context as to benefit from IT was the launch of IT Software Test Laboratory to deal with IT design and development, which has been recently established at the customs main building to be a full fledged center for Customs business process software development.

The IT laboratory functions focus on ensuring the system proper performance in connection with the business process, validating electronic products that meet the business and users requirements, ensuring software development in accordance with highest quality standards and avoiding costs of software repairing when produced.

In preparation for encountering growth over the upcoming years, Dubai Customs developed tools for using and designing the organizational planning process re-engineering within the framework of the Reform and Modernization programme.

The most prominent growth challenge is the lengthy coastal area (Palm and World Islands) as well as the opening of Jebel Ali Airport and Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport.

The customs operations are expected to increase from 4 million to 12 million transactions by 2010 representing a growth of 300% to cater rising demand for customs service.

Following the application of the enterprise architecture system, Dubai Customs became one of the successful customs administrations worldwide.

The customs processes, mechanisms, performance and human resources have been efficiently linked to the organizational strategy.

The new architectures have secured an effective mechanism responding to WCO requirements and standards.

Dubai Customs obtained an International recognition from many international organizations like Gartner Research and Telelogic in view of its effort and excellence in the enterprise architecture programme worldwide.