Dubai eGovernment showcases key achievements at ITU Regional Symposium on eGovernment and IP

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The event was organized by the Arab Regional Office of International Telecommunications Union (ITU), in association with Etisalat and eCompany.

Over 250 participants, including top officials from Arab administrations, experts in egovernment and IP, as well as representatives from multinational companies and international organisations took part in the four-day event.

Addressing the attendees on the first day of the symposium, Mahmood Al Bastaki, Business Process Re-engineering Consultant, Dubai eGovernment, briefed them on the outstanding progress made by Dubai eGovernment in just three years. He outlined the accelerated measures being taken to achieve the new milestone of conducting 90 per cent of government services through innovative channels by 2007.

'The key to quick migration to eServices in Dubai has been provided by the centralised implementation of commonly used tools of eService and the decentralised implementation of various departments' core services,' said Al Bastaki. 'This has led to cost savings, reduced time to market for government departments, high quality standards across all departments and sharing of best practices.'

Al Bastaki informed the gathering that over 1,500 eServices are being delivered by Dubai government departments through the Dubai eGovernment platform. Around 1,200 of these eServices are transactional services and the remaining are informational. He also said that 56 per cent of them were government-to-consumer and 44 per cent were government-to-business services.

Launched in 2001, Dubai eGovernment has reached the ultimate 'transactional' stage in egovernment evolution and is on the way to attaining the final 'seamless' stage. UN studies have placed Dubai eGovernment high on the list of countries with a high degree of automation of government services. One study concluded that the online availability of basic services in Dubai was higher than in Europe. A more recent study by Rutgers University ranked Dubai eGovernment 9th in the world in Privacy and Security and 18th in the world in Digital Governance

Al Bastaki also outlined the different initiatives and marketing campaigns undertaken by Dubai eGovernment in increasing the adoption of eServices in Dubai, including e4all, eLearn, eEmployee and eCitizen.

Several other speakers from the Arab region and international organisations addressed the event. The speakers and delegates came from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.

Representatives from The League of Arab States, Universal Postal Union, The Saudi Fund for Development and the Cairo Regional Centre for International Commercial Arbitration attended the event.

The e-government topics covered at the symposium were: Enhancing Communication between Government Entities; Developing Government Information Systems; Transaction-based Government Services and Regional Strategies. In the field of IP, speakers touched on IP matters and the outcome of Phase I of the World Summit on the Information Society and Policy & Migration Strategies.