Dubai: Conference Highlights E-Government Initiative

Lorys Charambolous, Tax-news.com, Cyprus

02 February 2001

A three-day international e-government conference, held this week in Dubai, was attended by more than 20 international guest speakers discussing the issues surrounding an e-government programme.

The event, which also included an exhibition, concluded on Wednesday with general agreement that for an e-government initiative to work, i.e. providing public services and information online, there must be greater transparency in public services, more public awareness with community outreach and customer-friendly policies.

Salem Khamis Al Shair, Director of e-services in the Dubai e-government programme, said: 'The conclusions that we reached after the talks and presentations can be categorised into six main sections, namely, vision, approach of delivery, technology, community outreach, security and cyber laws.'

'In the case of vision,' Al Shair continued, 'it has to be lucid with achievable goals. There is a need for key performance indicators to measure the progress made. The driving force behind the e-government project should be the need for improving quality of services, increased transparency and customer care.'

The delivery of services should be 'customer-centric,' said Al Shair: 'Services delivered have to be prioritised according to customer need and readiness of departments delivering it. It is imperative to collaborate and have an active partnership with the private sector. We should learn from the private sector about customer service. Continuous interaction with the public and businesses we are delivering services to is essential.'

He added that views and experiences shared at the conference led to the conclusion that it is better for projects to be implemented in phases: 'As they say, it is easier to eat an elephant bite by bite, rather than in one go. All those countries which have presented their individual e-government initiatives have started with a pilot project,' he said.

The Dubai e-government pilot programme will be introduced in October this year and Al Shair said that the government has benefitted greatly from this week's conference. This is particularly in terms of technology. Measures to introduce a national electronic identification system are now underway. The Dubai project will comprise a network connecting all government departments, their databases and applications. This will result in a secure network said Al Shair who stated: 'This will create a single repository of information, maintaining the integrity of the data, along with preventing redundancy and duplication. One needs to take all measures of security that are necessary and it has to be a joint effort. Rather than just individual departments doing it, it would be more efficient to have one main fort. [Furthermore] I will not have to take a passport copy every time, or a whole lot of other papers. It saves time, effort and is easy for the user.'

As far as community outreach was concerned the conference concluded that training and introducing change to employees was 'imperative' in order for the initiative to be a success. Al Shair said of the Dubai project: 'The project has to be marketed as any other product to government employees, the public and even outside the country. We have to let the world know what we have to offer - because our drive is to bring in the business and tourism. If they [government workers] don't buy into it, we will not be able to provide services the way we want to.'

Finally, Al Shair said the service must be flexible to adapt to the changing needs of government and the general public: 'Speaking of change, there will always be people who resist it, so we have to encourage and urge them to join the effort. Everybody has to be involved.'

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