Dubai eGovernment launches roadshows at educational institutions to heighten e-awareness among student community

A key highlight of the programme is a presentation on Dubai eGovernment's vision, mission, targets, achievements, future challenges and long-term strategies.

Students of Dubai Women's College, Higher Colleges of Technology, were recently given the opportunity to learn more about eServices at a roadshow that was organised by Dubai eGovernment in February. This followed a similar successful event held at Zayed University recently.

'While Dubai eGovernment has made significant progress placing over 1,600 government services on electronic platforms, and is on track to achieve its goal of delivering 90 per cent of public services electronically by the year 2007, it is extremely important to win the support of the student community by introducing them to the benefits of eServices and familiarising them with our basket of user friendly eServices,' said Mahmood Al Bastaki, Acting Director, eServices, Dubai eGovernment.

'Today's students will be the leaders of tomorrow, therefore it is imperative that we involve them in the various aspects of e-government,' said Al Bastaki. 'The series of roadshows at colleges and universities form the core of our community outreach programme, and are being staged at a critical time for Dubai eGovernment as it is poised to enter the ultimate 'seamless' stage in e-governance when physical counters will be eliminated altogether.'

The roadshows are designed to give students the opportunity to learn more about Dubai eGovernment's core services and deliverables. In addition, the programme focuses on three key initiatives of Dubai eGovernment: eLearn, eLibrary and eJob.

eLearn is a project aimed at delivering online training services to government departments, residents and businesses through the portal www.elearn.ae. It presents learning opportunities that are an integral part of each participant's learning experience, in which everyone has the chance to learn and improve his technical and business capabilities, irrespective of skill levels.

eJob is Dubai eGovernment's centralised recruitment system that brings together job-seekers and government departments on one electronic platform through an online link on the portal www.dubai.ae. More than 25 government departments have registered with the service.

eLibrary is a programme that encourages the use of new technology to make public libraries more effective in providing information and knowledge to larger sections of the community. It allows quick browsing of information resources at Dubai libraries through online access to books, periodicals, audio-video tapes and compact discs. This can be accessed via elibrary.dubai.ae.

'As e-commerce is going to become pivotal to the new world of business, Dubai eGovernment is keen to sow the seeds of electronic transaction among the student community through these roadshows,' said Al Bastaki. 'We would like to familiarise students with the secure systems we have created to allow easy online transactions. We believe this will be the first step in the students' education on e-commerce.'