Dubai Municipality announces landmark IT development project

The project is aimed at streamlining processes and simplifying administration within Dubai Municipality, allowing it to keep pace with Dubai's rapid growth and provide more efficient service to its customers.

Dubai Municipality has evolved a strategy to identify key challenges and develop a road map for the next three years, which covers the entire set of internal and customer-facing applications. The strategy involves data collection from all departments of Dubai Municipality and organizing of workshops targeted at specific internal departments. A comprehensive study of business objectives as well as a cost-benefit analysis will be carried out, besides an evaluation of organizational and operational impact.

The Information Technology Department of Dubai Municipality is holding a workshop on November 27, 2005 to identify core requirements and develop appropriate strategies ahead of the project's implementation. The workshop, the first in a series of targeted workshops to be held in the coming months, will be attended by key officials of the Municipality's eGovernment Services Department and the System Development & Support Section, besides engineers and technicians involved in the implementation and supervision of the project.

"The implementation of the IT project will significantly contribute towards enhancing the efficiency of Dubai Municipality, benefiting both the Municipality and its customers,"

said Abdulhakim Abdulkarim Malik, Director of Information Technology Department, Dubai Municipality. "While Dubai Municipality already boasts modern systems and applications, the new project will build on existing capabilities to provide a truly state-of-the-art technology foundation. The project will be implemented in a way to accommodate future requirements, and will ultimately contribute towards improvement of customer satisfaction for end-user departments and facilitate timely delivery of projects within the IT Department."

"The workshops will enable us to assess the demand for IT applications and systems across all departments and develop a clear perspective on ways and means to contribute to the overall strategic direction of Dubai Municipality. This will allow us to develop a blue print to be communicated to all key stakeholders within and outside Dubai Municipality.", Malik added.

Yousif Shams, Head of System Development & Support Section, Information Technology Department, Dubai Municipality, said, "Our strategy involves major upgrade of internal IT systems and applications, in order to streamline processes and simplify administration. This will lead to increased efficiency and productivity, and facilitate faster and better service to customers. We are in the process of identifying the core requirements, so we can develop an approach to address them comprehensively."

As part of the project, Dubai Municipality has also announced plans to launch new e-services and move 90 per cent of existing services to an online platform, in adherence to the directive of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Defence Minister and Dubai Crown Prince, to ensure that 90 per cent services of all government departments are made available online by the end of 2007. Dubai Municipality already provides a number of e-services, and aims to achieve near-complete e-enablement of services with the implementation of this strategic initiative.

"Dubai Municipality is committed to help realize the vision of Sheikh Mohammed for a paperless environment in government departments," said Ahmed Behrozyan, Head of eGovernment Services, Dubai Municipality. "While we already have e-enabled a host of services, the sheer size of the Municipality and the scope of its activities meant that a total shift to an online platform required sufficient time and meticulous planning. Through this electronic transformation project, we seek to step up the pace of our drive towards complete e-enablement of our services. We are certain that we will be able to transform 90 per cent of our services into electronic services within the prescribed timeframe."