Delegation from OECD visits DSG to get familiar with its smart government transformation experience

UAE, February 17, 2015 - Dubai Smart Government Department (DSG) recently hosted a delegation from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), who visited the UAE for its working group meeting concurrently with the recently concluded Dubai Government Summit. The delegation, which included representatives of the OECD member states and the countries participating in the 10^th meeting of the second working group, was received by H.E Ahmad Bin Humaidan, DSG Director General; Wesam Lootah, Assistant Director General, Marwan Bin Haider, Executive Director of Planning and Development, and the directors of various DSG departments. The visiting delegation was briefed on DSG's experience of shifting from eGovernment to smart government, its smart apps and services, its methodologies used for promoting the adoption of ICT on a large scale to increase the effectiveness and productivity of Dubai government entities, the DSG strategy 2014-2017and the results of various customer satisfaction surveys. Following the meeting, the OECD delegation had a hands-on experience with the customer user experience lab, which highlighted how smart services are choses and bundled based on a user perspective and with an eye on the future for enhancing customers' satisfaction and confidence in smart services, increasing time and cost savings, and raising the adoption rate of services. Finally, DSG reviewed the statistics of its major services which showed an increase in the collected amounts and a rise in the number of completed transactions over the past years including ePay, mPay, eSuggest, eComplain and eSurvey. H.E Ahmad Bin Humaidan, DSG Director General said: "The OECD multinational delegation  gave us an opportunity to showcase real life examples of the advanced level reached by Dubai in the shift toward smart government and the steps taken by us to bring happiness to our citizens in implementation of the directives of our wise leaders." Bin Humaidan added: "We are pleased to co-operate with OECD, which is keen on stimulating innovation in communities and underlines the importance of providing accurate scientific data and information that enables specialists to plan for efficient smart governments of the future, which put customers and fulfillment of their renewable needs on top, as highlighted by our strategy and what we are working to achieve.” Mr. Alessandro Bellantoni, OECD Open Government Project Coordinator, said: "Dubai has been the co-chair of the MENA-OECD working group on open and innovative governments, so it is always a pleasure to come here and discover the latest services that Dubai Government is implementing. Our visit here, gives us not only a glimpse of the future of government services, but also an opportunity to discuss with Dubai Smart Government, ways in which we can make such services a reality for our member countries. So, all in all, it has been a real pleasure to visit and also a very productive experience for all of us." It is worth mentioning that the OECD delegation held its 10^th meeting of the second working group in Dubai to see what has been achieved so far and optimize the best successful experiences and practices in the field of open and innovative government in the Middle East and North Africa as well as in the OECD member countries. To do this, the delegation held three sessions: the first was titled "Innovation in the public sector" while the second discussed the "open government" and the third focused on  "digital government and open data" and the designing of policies that would encourage innovation to provide government services and contribute to creating greater response to peoples’ desires.