| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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1. Unique & pioneering housing application process: Abu Dhabi Housing Program is a unique, “One Stop Shop” initiative where up-to-date / accurate citizens’ data is centralized in one data pool and used to prioritize citizens’ applications & define their eligibility. This centralization also prevented citizens from requesting multiple benefits from various departments.
2. Levering the Technology: ADHA has gone an extra mile in leveraging Abu Dhabi’s advanced ICT infrastructure when it decided to add a geospatial dimension to the citizens’ data.
ADHA’s “Complete Emirati Communities Dashboard” is a GIS-enabled platform integrated with other government departments portraying plot ownerships, communities, districts, facilities & infrastructure offered, providing a clear overview of supply and demand for housing. It is mainly used for:
• Coordinating with other government departments so as to provide the needed community facilities (schools, telecom services, health care providers, etc.) This also helps in allocating lands & units for citizens in proximity to their bigger families and relatives “Fareej concept” realizing the social requirements of citizens.
• Ensuring that only lands with infrastructure are allocated to citizens.
• Verifying the utilization of granted houses so as to withdraw those houses not utilized by citizens within a defined period, granting them to the neediest.
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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 Housing Authority implemented the initiative. A Steering Committee led by Director General, was formed comprising of Executive Director-Policy Development & Strategic Planning, Executive Director-Support Services, Executive Director-Housing Benefits & Allocation, Director - Housing Services and ADHA’s Legal Advisor.
The housing benefits program launched affects all of Abu Dhabi Emirate’s citizens. As of 2016 end, 77 % of the Emirati families in Abu Dhabi are living in house provided by the government. This is very important, due to the very high cost of attaining land and building your own house in the UAE. As per a study conducted by Strategy & Co. in 2013 titled “Public Housing & Community Development in the GCC”, a UAE citizen in the age bracket of 30-34 years requires 18 years of income in order to own his / her own home, compared to 10 years in Norway and 5 years in the U.S. This brought about the significance of Abu Dhabi government providing housing to a large percentage of its population, while prioritizing those citizens who are most in need.
Fundamental to the programs’ design was the stakeholder engagement process throughout the initiative’s planning and execution. To plan for the initiative of introducing and implementing the new housing policies, the process entailed a series of meetings, interviews and workshops with the concerned government and semi-government agencies in addition to a range of private companies and management consultancies.
Since the launch of the policies and the integrated housing benefits system, over 75,000 applications were processed (around 15 % of total population).
The percentage of females served to date is approximately 15% of received applications. This is a significant improvement over historical application success rates for female applications mainly attributed to measurable and tangible eligibility criteria.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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ADHA adopted a systematic approach to define and implement its strategy; starting with assessing housing sector’s challenges, defining high-level goals followed by setting the implementation plan, as follows:
1. Review existing policies: This was carried out with the aid of an independent legal consultancy firm, studying existing legislations and meeting all concerned stakeholders to understand their interpretation of these legislations.
2. Study key challenges faced by the Housing Sector based on the current ecosystem, starting from accepting & processing applications, approval & handover of benefits up to maintenance of houses and disbursement of loans. Followed by setting a “change agenda” to combat those challenges in the short- and long-term.
3. Understanding & Integrating stakeholders’ aspirations: Achieved through workshops conducted with stakeholders to agree on key areas for improvement, forming cross-functional teams to carry out data integration projects.
4. Lessons from best-in-class benchmarks: Conducted detailed benchmarking studies, covering countries that have particular housing challenges similar to Abu Dhabi's socio-economic profile, in addition to countries that represent a “positive peer” from which Abu Dhabi can learn.
Countries benchmarked with were Brunei, England, Turkey, United States of America & Singapore on the scope of their legislative framework, the supply and demand factors considered, urban planning process, housing development models, etc.
Further benchmarking was conducted with other UAE social housing departments such as Mohammed bin Rashid Housing Establishment, Sheikh Zayed Housing Program and Sharjah Department of Housing.
5. A two-step deployment was planned for launching the housing programs & legislations. First stage included Loans & Grants, following its testing, a gradual release and implementation of the other programs such as swapping land for land “Complimentary Services”.
6. Internal feedback and testing: Provided by a sample of ADHA employees in light of their previous experience with the Housing Program as well as their understanding of the Emirati culture and citizens’ aspirations.
7. Final draft resolution scrutinized by ADHA’s Board of Directors & the General Secretariat of the Executive Council of Abu Dhabi prior to sign-off and being published in the official gazette of government of Abu Dhabi and published in media.
8. Effective Stakeholder Framework: ADHA took on the task of updating sourcing agreements with the financial arm responsible for disbursement of loans, in addition to developing Service Level Agreements and Memoranda of understanding with 30 stakeholders clarifying roles and responsibilities, agreeing on key deliverables and unifying the interpretation of the legislations.
9. Transferring approx. 300,000 earlier applications from Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Crown Prince Court and Loans Authority to ADHA. A massive “cleaning of data” was conducted including a massive communication exercise with citizens resulting in around 64,000 of final applications. These have now been saved under the newly created central housing database.
10. Assessment of effectiveness through listening to customers and strategic partners: Assessment of effectiveness of the initiative at defined intervals through continuous “listening mechanisms” with citizens & partners and implementing corrective action plans resulting thereof.
As ADHA’s policy development & legal affairs’ team were in charge of developing legislations and Policies Manual. As it was carried out internally, no financial resources were needed.
As for digitization of citizens’ data and application system, ADHA has utilized the existing ICT infrastructure provided by Abu Dhabi Government, consuming financial resources for the usage of the software needed to manage the applications. Yet, ADHA has built its team’s capacities, and is currently running the system with internal capabilities to ensure sustainability and business continuity.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Since its inception, the initiative has been planned & implemented in active collaboration with all stakeholders involved in the delivery of housing services. This is divided into four key milestones:
1. Development, issuance & communication of transparent & clear legislations and eligibility criteria was carried out by ADHA in consultation with all stakeholders involved in the value chain at Federal and Emirates level Government departments. ADHA’s board of directors, which comprised of leaders of the key concerned departments involved in the housing eco-system, were consulted prior to sign-off.
2. Data integration for fact-based allocation of benefits to the most deserving: 18 federal and local entities were integrated in one system, enhancing integrity and objective decision making. Among these were: Abu Dhabi Financial Department (Income Data), Sheikh Zayed Housing Program (Housing benefits attained by applicant from the federal housing program), Ministry of Social Affairs (Cases with special social status, among others.
3. GIS-enabled maps for enhanced efficiency & accuracy in planning housing communities: Six departments’ systems were integrated to enhance efficiency of the housing projects, elevating the quality of life in integrated communities & taking allocations’ decisions based on up-to-date and accurate information. Entities involved included Municipalities (feeding in plots allocated for community facilities, built and non-built plots), the Urban Planning Council (providing Community Facilities Calculator Guidelines, which analyzes the need for facilities within each of the Emirate’s housing communities) among others. In 2015, ADHA won a prestigious GIS award for “Excellence in GIS Implementation” by GISWORX.
4. Equal accessibility to services: As to reach out to all eligible citizens, ADHA has teamed up with the all the three Municipalities of Emirates of Abu Dhabi to offer housing application services through more than 15 of their service centers widespread across all remote areas within the Emirate.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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1. Enhanced transparency, fairness & integrity of housing legislations leading to citizens’ satisfaction and trust in the government housing program: Following the issuance and enforcement of housing programs, policies and clear eligibility criteria, customer’s satisfaction with “Clear and understandable Housing Policies” resulted was 79.5 % in 2015 and then improved to 82 % in 2016. Policy, Programs and eligibility criteria for each of the services were made public and readily available for all citizens via various channels including public newspapers, a service catalogue, website, mobile app. (downloaded 6738 times in 2016), social media announcements, participation in exhibitions, TV appearances etc.
2. Allocations made to the most deserving / those in need: Since the issuance of policies in 2015, Abu Dhabi citizens have been granted 9,361 plots of residential lands, 1,253 ready-made houses and 3,652 housing loans using clear eligibility criteria and in an objective process-based framework.
3. Enhanced efficiency in the application process, a more convenient & accessible registration process: Customer’s journey was dramatically improved from 8 months to 11 minutes. Overall customer satisfaction achieved was 88 % (in 2016). Plus increased accessibility led to enhanced convenience to citizens living in remote areas. 16,959 applications were received through service centers across the Emirate during 2016. Plus 650 applications were received via the recently launched mobile apps & corporate website..
4. Optimal utilization of government resources, leading to more citizens benefiting: Through the utilization of GIS technology, ADHA has improved utilizing of government budget. ADHA has teamed up with other government departments such as urban planning, education, health care to create a detailed GIS-enabled map with status of infrastructure and community facilities at district level. Through this, ADHA first assesses the “Livability” in the communities before allocating plots and houses thereby making the best use of resources. More than 3,000 beneficiaries who had attained housing benefits prior to 2015 were relocated from poorly serviced areas to comprehensive communities.
5. A better match between demand and supply of housing: Through the utilization of GIS-enabled dashboards, Abu Dhabi government was in better position to invest in infrastructure & community facilities in locations where demand is high and where communities were least-serviced. E.g. in city of Al Ain, there was an oversupply of ready-built houses. ADHA developed innovative policy and program for Citizens having plots but not enough funding and reached out to them to exchange the plots and accept ready built houses instead.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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1. Transfer of backlog of applications: A large number of paper-based outdated applications were transferred to ADHA from existing government departments, which made it difficult to assess applicants’ eligibility in light of the new programs & criteria. Solution: An automated system was developed and was directly integrated with data source providers, thereby updating applicants’ data on real time basis. For those applicants whose Emirates ID was not on the database, ADHA communicated with them via sms to approach its service centers to update their application.
2. Data Integration: Sharing data is always a challenge especially when it comes to citizens confidential data such as social and financial information. In order to make well-informed decisions, it was necessary to have all stakeholders on board to build shared vision and gain support which is essential for successful implementation and sustainability of integrated system. This was done through shared planning, consultation and continuous communication with stakeholders to update their database & enhancing integrity of overall data quality. Written approvals were attained from customers to access their data.
3. Fragmented Ecosystem: The roles & responsibilities among stakeholders in delivering the housing services were not properly defined due to the fragmented situation earlier and the overlap between government departments ’ mandates. ADHA signed 29 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and Service Level Agreements (SLA) with stakeholders involved in the different spectrums of the housing ecosystem with clear roles, responsibilities, performance standards and deliverables. In addition, a cross Government committee has been constituted to address this issue.
4. Change management: Transition to a digital process was quite challenging. Workflows, structure, mind sets, etc must change and skills of dealing with technology must improve. This was accomplished through training capabilities within the stakeholders’ teams who were to deal with the system.
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