Mohammed bin Rashid views results of transition to m-Government

Vice President and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, at a meeting with government officials, has viewed a report on the results of the transition to m-Government.

H.H. Sheikh Mohammed said that an accomplishment rate of 96.3 percent was reported by the government's most important 337 departments providing services on daily basis to customers at the end of the two-year timeline set for shifting to m-Government and m-Services.

The report , be published in the media upon orders from Sheikh Mohammed, shows that the biggest 41 government departments succeeded in achieving the shift to m-Services within 730 days.

H.H. Sheikh Mohammed said, "Work teams managed to complete the shift to m-Services. The next stage is to link all services together, improve the quality of smart applications and achieve a high satisfaction rate for smart services. The report also explains that the low numbers of users of some m-Government services were attributed to low awareness of users and sometimes to the difficulty to use these services."

The meeting with H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid was attended by Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Gergawi, Minister for Cabinet Affairs; Mohamad Ahmad Al-Qamzi, Chairman of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of (TRA); Khalifa Saeed Sulaiman, Director General of Dubai's Protocol Department; Ohood Al Roumi, Director-General Office of the Prime Minister; Hamad Al Mansouri, Director-General of the UAE Smart Government and Director-General of the TRA.

"The target of raising the number of m-Service users to 80 percent by 2018 has been set. The report also shows varied degrees of quality and user-friendliness of the services... We want these services to be more streamlined, faster and simpler. We also want the customers to be happier than they were in the past years."

Sheikh Mohammed added, "The two-year deadline was not meant to be a scourge hanging over work teams. Rather, it was meant to be just like any other ordinary practice in administration and leadership where a timeline is set for fulfilling each target that we have. The aim of our government is not to keep pace with the ongoing technological and scientific developments in the UAE but to lead these developments. This is no easy challenge"

"A star rating system for all m-Government services will be put in place in the coming stage to inform customers about the quality of any service before they start to use it."

H.H. Sheikh Mohammed also said, "The most important change that was taking place over two past years was the change of mentality, the culture of government services and the archaic definition. Today, delivery of services no longer relies on buildings and thousands of employees, but on advanced systems and innovative minds. In the near future, we will see yet bigger and faster changes."

In May 2013, H.H. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced a new "government vision of the future" following a meeting with government officials.

The project, called m-Government, follows the e-Government initiative which was launched in 2000 and led to most government services being made available online.

Sheikh Mohammed tweeted, "The Government of the future works 24/7 and 365 days a year. "A successful government is one that goes to the people and does not wait for them to come to it."