To foster a full transformation process, ADSIC actively provides support to ADGEs as they migrate their services online. Many government processes were reviewed, optimised and gradually upgraded to achieve the most efficient and effective delivery of services not only for customers, but for the Abu Dhabi Government as a whole.
Throughout 2008, ADSIC provided guidance and assistance to ADGEs that were modernising their services and led them in moving these services through the stages of implementation needed to reach high levels of quality and operational efficiency.
Major accomplishments for 2008 include the launches of Jobs Abu Dhabi, the Electronic Land Management System, and Building Permits—all services that are now operational. In addition, the Business Enablement Services project is progressively moving through implementation.
Business Centre Enablement
In line with the overall e-Government Modernisation Programme, a vision was developed to establish a “one-stop-shop”—known as the Abu Dhabi Business Centre—where businesses could obtain all necessary Government to Business (G2B) services. This would provide a common face for the Abu Dhabi Government’s support of businesses from inception to closure.
The objective of the Business Enablement Services project is to establish the Business Centre and simplify the process needed to establish a business in Abu Dhabi—streamlining the experience of business customers by requiring them to deal with one entity rather than several.
From the project’s initiation in May 2007, ADSIC defined the vision, strategy and operating model for the Business Centre to provide all G2B services and further detailed its organisational design and business processes from September 2007 through March 2008. Analysis and prioritisation of Business Centre locations and service portfolio have been completed, and the required organisational structure, financial, and manpower requirements have been detailed and complemented by an implementation Masterplan.
Following a thorough analysis of key technology solution providers, Accela—a global leader in commercial licensing automation—was selected as the Business Centre’s technology solution.
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Business Centre Enablement
In line with the overall e-Government Modernisation Programme, a vision was developed to establish a “one-stop-shop”—known as the Abu Dhabi Business Centre—where businesses could obtain all necessary Government to Business (G2B) services. This would provide a common face for the Abu Dhabi Government’s support of businesses from inception to closure.
The objective of the Business Enablement Services project is to establish the Business Centre and simplify the process needed to establish a business in Abu Dhabi—streamlining the experience of business customers by requiring them to deal with one entity rather than several.
From the project’s initiation in May 2007, ADSIC defined the vision, strategy and operating model for the Business Centre to provide all G2B services and further detailed its organisational design and business processes from September 2007 through March 2008. Analysis and prioritisation of Business Centre locations and service portfolio have been completed, and the required organisational structure, financial, and manpower requirements have been detailed and complemented by an implementation Masterplan.
Following a thorough analysis of key technology solution providers, Accela—a global leader in commercial licensing automation—was selected as the Business Centre’s technology solution.
Electronic Land Management System (eLMS)
The optimisation of land services is another Usage-related project defined by ADSIC in its 2006 governing Masterplan. Historically, land services in Abu Dhabi have been characterised by siloed operations and inconsistent business processes across the municipalities (e.g., Abu Dhabi, Al-Ain, Western Region). While the Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain municipalities had begun operating individual electronic land systems, each had substantial shortcomings in the areas of data storage capability, tracking and security attributes, and the absence of Geospatial Information System (GIS) integration. The newly established Western Region lacked an electronic land management system of any kind. A vendor was contracted when the Abu Dhabi municipality realised that it had outgrown its system’s capabilities—resulting in two unsuccessful upgrade attempts.
Against this background, ADSIC progressively increased its involvement with the design and setup of a new solution, taking a broad oversight role in the beginning and later moving to sponsor and field an implementation team. The project’s vision, developed in line with ADSIC’s user-oriented e-Government Programme, is to establish reliable, consistent land management services across the Abu Dhabi municipalities, supported by a centralised Electronic Land Management System (eLMS).
Such a unified land management system would address key challenges and negative business impacts—in particular, silo-ed operations with differing procedural requirements across municipalities, limited system functionality and usability, inconsistent data quality, and inconsistent or limited service delivery to customers.
Unified processes were seen as the basis of the target solution—i.e., unified process outputs, fee structures, and a common interpretation of land services rules and regulations across municipalities. The technological flip side of this approach is a distributed application architecture with configurable business rules and parameters. Further attributes beyond the legacy system(s) include a role-based security model with audit trails, and interoperability with GIS and other peripheral systems (in particular, the building permit system). The solution is scalable, and able to be adapted to volume growth.
To ensure governance across concerned stakeholder groups, a change control board has been established with representatives from each of the three municipalities. It oversees the suite of land services systems, including eLMS, GIS and cadastre systems.
Following release 1.0 of the eLMS system in December 2007, which covered 16 processes, release 2.0 was launched in August 2008 to address six additional services—and 46 change requests. By the end of 2008, allotment processes (six more processes) and an enhanced GIS integration (eight more processes) had been added, bringing the number of implemented workflows (services) to 36—and incorporating 212 change requests. Although “pioneer mode” development was conducted in the Abu Dhabi municipality, roll-out across the remaining municipalities has already begun.
Jobs Abu Dhabi
The vision for an Abu Dhabi virtual job market was originally developed as part of the overall Government modernisation effort in the Usage dimension. The original goals of this initiative are found in the following categories:
- Increase labour market efficiencies in Abu Dhabi.
- Assist ADGEs in their recruiting efforts.
- Assist with Emiratisation efforts.
- Increase traffic to the www.abudhabi.ae portal.
Following an extensive analysis, ADSIC decided to partner with a leading commercial recruiting site to develop Jobs Abu Dhabi. The purpose of this partnership was to cut the time to bring the site to market while leveraging the outside firm’s expertise in cyber recruiting. The partnership agreement called for the commercial site to provide the back engine for the site while ADSIC managed the front-end and operations.
The website was launched on 19 October 2008, and has provided encouraging take-up on four key fronts:
- Number of visits peaked at the time of launch, and has been maintained post-launch at substantial levels.
- Substantial international visibility, with visits from more than 70 countries—although UAE visitors prevail.
- Critical mass of large employers emerges, with significant ADGE interest.
- Critical mass of job seekers emerges, with UAE nationals adopting the site.
In addition to these accomplishments, Jobs Abu Dhabi (JAD) still has significant potential to grow and meet all of the goals it was set up to address. New opportunities to leverage the site have emerged as a result of interactions with various ADGEs (e.g. providing assistance to improve the job market in the Western Region through collaboration with the Western Region Development Council).
