DUBAI Smart Government (DSG) has won a prize at the United Nations Public Service Awards 2013. DSG was presented with an award in the category of ‘Promoting Whole-of-Government Approaches in the Information Age’ for the Western Asia region.

The presentation was made by Wu Hongbo, under-secretary general for economic and social affairs at the United Nations, at a ceremony in Bahrain on the occasion of UN Public Service Day. Receiving the award was a team from the communication and business development department. At an exhibition on the sidelines of the ceremony, the department made a presentation on DSG’s electronic shared services (ESS) and smart phone applications. The services are provided to government entities that also benefit from the official portal of the Government of Dubai (dubai.ae), which offers eServices.

EXAMPLE SET
Commenting on the award, Ahmad Bin Humaidan, director-general at Dubai Smart Government, said it was the fruit of co-operation with DSG partners in the eTransformation process. “We were also delighted to note that the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in his welcome message on the occasion of United Nations Public Service Day said the winners of the UN Public Service Award had set an example in improving delivery and promoting accountability and that our innovative approach to public governance was building a better future for all.”

Bin Humaidan added: “During our nomination process, we showed how our electronic shared services were adopted and used across 56 government entities in Dubai to achieve back-office operational efficiencies and significant cost savings for the government, which translated into streamlined and automated customer services that entitled us to gain the satisfaction and trust of customers.”

He said his organisation received delegations from brotherly Arab countries who wished to benefit from the ESS experience. ESS had helped to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from having a single highly utilised infrastructure for multiple government entities that operated in a smart government environment. 

The official said the DSG would continue to enhance the existing ESS and noted that the MyID initiative, recently launched in collaboration with the Emirates Identity Authority, allows customer unified access to all eServices provided by Dubai government entities via smartphones or the Internet and with just one identification required. The initiative becomes operational in October this year.