Dubai Government Departments set up joint committee to synchronize training programs

The establishment of the training committee following close on the heels of the Advisory Board for Community Outreach and Marketing, emphasizes Dubai e-Government's commitment to integrate the various government departments under one umbrella and ensure that the e-services are utilized effectively by all sections of society.

"His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Crown Prince of Dubai and UAE Defence Minister has given us a mandate to educate the people and businesses about the e-Services provided by government departments through the single easily accessible Dubai e-Government portal. His farsighted vision incorporates the concept of e-learning where every individual and professional user can benefit fully from the electronic services. In order to this, we must necessarily merge and congregate our activities at all levels and this includes providing consistent and cohesive training to all current and potential users of the portal," said Salem Al Shair, Director e-Services, Dubai e-Government.

"The formation of this committee is the first step towards this educational objective. This committee will work towards ensuring that user segments at all levels of government and private sector will be exposed to extensive and systematic training schemes and educational programs in order to encourage the widespread use of these services. Hence it is imperative that all departments co-operate closely to set up detailed and unified training programs," he added.

The Training Committee, which is expected to meet on a weekly basis, will comprise two sub-committees to concentrate on two crucial aspects - the curriculum development and the delivery of training courses. The curriculum and course materials will be developed by a professional training institute under the supervision of the Curriculum sub committee, which will work towards identifying similar e-Services currently offered by various departments and co-ordinate with all relevant departments on periodically updating the range of e-Services on offer. Dubai e-Government has already begun negotiations with several professional training institutes in this regard, most of which have expressed their readiness to handle the training programs.

The services will be listed under separate packages according to customer needs, priority segments and high-on-demand services like payment of bills and fines or application for visas and trade licenses. The Training Delivery sub committee will be responsible for delivering training directly to certain segments and will also participate in events and educational seminars related to training.

"Our singular mission is to ensure that 70 per cent of all government transactions will be conducted electronically through the single gateway of Dubai e-Government portal www.dubai.ae by 2005. While marketing and creating awareness about the e-Services is important, the task is incomplete unless the users are made competent to use the e-Services effectively," said Yousef Khalili, Community Outreach and Marketing Manager, Dubai e-Government. "It is to ensure optimum use of the online services with considerable ease and facility that we have embarked on this unified and organized plan of education and training. This program will be offered as a full fledged course with well-designed course materials, tutorials and follow ups so that users from all walks of life will be thoroughly competent to use these services."

In order to systematize and streamline the training, the target audience will be carefully categorized into groups according to the various criteria. These include the internal community of government employees and the external communities of small and large business enterprises and individual, professional or personal users either resident in the UAE or overseas. Additional categorization will focus on the computer literacy of the target groups, further channelizing the means of dispensing information by Instructor-led training, Computer Based Training (CBT), or e-Learning modules. Dubai e-Government has been considering the services of several partners who provide these training modules in order to shortlist those who can ensure training of the highest level and quality with substantial value for the trainee.

In order to facilitate the formation of specific manageable groups, Dubai e-Government has also compiled detailed statistics about the citizens of Dubai categorizing them according to nationality, profession or trade in addition to other target groups like housewives, students, disabled persons and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

"Dubai Municipality currently offers selected customers online services for a trial period. The clients use designated codes and passwords to access services which gives us a chance to evaluate the system and remove all obstacles of usage before exposing the system to the general public," said Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, Head of Analysis and Design Unit, Dubai Municipality. "By offering training according to a fixed methodology and strategy, the integrated training program will greatly facilitate the various categories of users in utilizing the services offered by us."

"It is important to overcome the problems of the different systems and unify procedures for all users," said Omar Mohammed Saif, Programmer, Land Department. "In that way we can manage to reach out to a larger audience. Currently our department has 23 services only seven of which are offered online. The unified training program will help us in translating more services online faster because we will not need to educate and train the customers separately for each e-service."

"We hope to work under the umbrella of Dubai e-Government and conduct integrated training programs both for our personnel and our clients,"said Adel Ali Bin Tamim, Senior Network Administrator, Dubai Transport Corporation. "This will facilitate our clients in accessing the various services we provide for them and will allow us to serve them better."