4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The transparency of laws project started in 2012 in collaboration with the world bank and Thomson Reuters Corporation. The different stakeholders involved in the project met different time to agree on the topics and lay out of the portal. The parties agreed to work on 3 years plan, first stage will focus on commercial and employment laws, 2nd stage will focus on criminal and judicial procedures, 3rd stage to cover family and civil law.
The workload was divided as follows:
• ADJD to propose the legal topics that will be covered in each of the portal
• Thomson Reuters to recruit of team of 4 legal writers to summaries and write the legal guides ( 150 guides per year ). Each guide to cover one specific topic in law for example ( maternity leave in the UAE etc. ). The guides are written in simple language and easy to read style for people with no legal background. Thomson Reuters also recruited a linguistic writer with the role of simplifying the style of the guides. Afterwards, the Arabic guides are translated into English.
• ADJD legal team to review and approve the guides and forward them to ADJD technical team in order to upload the guides online.
• Thomson Reuters in London to produce 15 learning objects ( Videos ) explaining the laws via audio visual materials. For example a video explaining the court procedures or a video explaining how to protect a patent or a copyright or a TM in the UAE.
Once the videos and the guides are approved, the technical team transform the written legal material into a visual one by producing animated videos in both Arabic and English.
During the 1st phase of the project, ADJD decided to attach an additional service to the portal specifically targeting the most vulnerable members of the labor society as blue collar labor and domestic servants ( maids ) . As the audience of this portal might not be able to read and write, this portal is exclusively videos, it explains the rights and obligations of the low income laborers in very simple language that enable them to understand their rights which helps protects them from mistreatment and abuse. This also came in light of the different accusation fro the HRW regarding the status of the low income laborer in the emirate and the HRW comments on the abuse of maids. This portal will be attached to the main legal advisor and will be available in buses commuting blue collar laborers and in public transport in order to reach the targeted audience. The videos, in addition to explaining the rights and obligations, will also be a legal shield for the vulnerable members of the society by guiding them on how to take action against their employer in case of abuse or mistreatment and who to contact and how.
Everything stated above is also available inside the mobile court.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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• Abu Dhabi Judicial Department
• World Bank
• Thomson Reuters London ( Project Management )
• Thomson Reuters Dubai ( Legal Writing )
• Hub TV production UK LTD ( video production )
• Other vendors involved in the upload and technical work
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The project was funded by ADJD, the cost was around 1.5 million USD
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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• The willingness of ADJD management to change the status quo and assist the public in better understanding their legal rights and obligations
• The world Bank effort to contribute in the Emirate legal development thru transparent of the legislations
• Collaboration with Thomson Reuters legal teams in London and Dubai
• Support of Abu Dhabi Government with the funds and budget which helped the initiative to expand.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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ADJD appointed a team of around 6 employees to monitor the progress of the work and to manage the project in cooperation with Thomson Reuters. This includes a legal team responsible of approving and reviewing the accuracy and quality of the guides, a technical team in charge of auditing the videos produced in London, a communication team to monitor the overall project management side and collaborate with Thomson Reuters in terms of delivery and deadlines
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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• To summarize the laws: tons of legal materials ( legislations, regulars, orders and court decisions ) had to be reviewed and summarized by the legal writers. This was tackled by creating a min team of legal writers from Thomson Reuters and supervised by ADJD legal department, the legal writers had a team leader whose responsibility was to create a work plan of legal research of materials using the Westlaw gulf website and ministry of justice legislation portal in addition to ADJD legal library, this helped the legal writers to have all required legal materials needed to write the legal guides.
• To visualize the legal texts into animated videos. In cooperation with Thomson Reuters, ADJD suggested 45 topics to be tackled by videos in addition to the legal written guides, ADJD choose the most demanding topics in each legal field , Thomson Reuters was in charge of preparing the scripts and creating the animation in cooperation with Hub TV LTD in London. The expertise of each stakeholder involved in the video process helped the overall project to produce high quality videos in few months.
• To meet deadlines: As the project has 3 stages, the deadline for each team was tight and this added more pressure on everyone especially that some teams work overseas ( London - Abu Dhabi ), appointing a senior project manager who travel daily between Dubai and Abu Dhabi and monthly to London was the best solution in order to smoothly meet the deadlines and coordinate between the different teams.
• To reach vulnerable audience: One of the obstacles was how to reach the most vulnerable members of the society who mostly need legal assistance, whether maids or blue labor workers, ADJD decided to not only make the legal assistance available online, but also to expand its coverage to public transport , shopping malls and the mobile court as it visit most of the regions and areas in the emirate.
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