Questions/Answers

‘Smart Statistics’ initiative is considered a steering wheel for all other government entities in Dubai, which in return will reflect on the growth, sustainability and development of the society. It focuses on providing insights for all decision makers instantly to assist in shaping the future of Dubai ‘Smart Statistics’ is a suite of integrated statistical eco-system designed to provide insights and enhance accessibility to information, benefiting the government, businesses and public. A thoroughly investigation and analysis stage has been conducted to identify the challenges and obstacles. The lack of statistical data and limited scope and efficiency of statistical analysis hinders the proper decision making and impacted negatively on the sustainability and development in the emirate of Dubai. The realization of the increasing importance of information especially statistical in decision and policy making, driven by the increasing demands of information and ambitious strategic plan of Dubai, invoked the need to a comprehensive and innovative solution. It includes set of sub-systems in which a centralized repository is allocated to provide instant information to all segments of the society. ‘Indicators’ sub-system is designed for senior officials and decision makers through a state-of-the-art visualization tools with mobility access. In addition ‘Interactive Statistics’ is designed for planners and specialized experts with interactive mechanism and self-service capability to build reports and conduct analysis for business insights. The centralized repository is fed by different means to gather data in various industries, either by administrative data with an integration of more than 25 government entities and more than 1,900 source of information in the private sector such as hospitals, schools, etc. Moreover, ‘Polls’ sub-system focuses on questionnaire and surveys conducted on behalf of other government entities to measure community and public society indicators such as happiness, standard of living. Other sub-system ‘Geo-Stat’ enables user to access information through interactive maps. The initiative is provided to the public, business sector and government entities for business insights, while the decision makers rely heavily on it for strategic planning and development of Dubai, whether economic, social and demographic, supporting sustainability, happiness and improving the quality of life.

The objectives of the initiative can be summarized as follow: 1. Understanding and catering for the needs and requirements for statistical information in Dubai. 2. Providing easy and instant access of information whether economic, social or demographic to all segments of the community/ public society. 3. Provide information to promote awareness through sharing the public society in shaping the development and sustainability of Dubai. 4. Promoting and enhancing the way of life of the individuals through endorsing happiness, safety and healthy public society. 5. Elevating transparency and collaboration between the government and the public to encourage and gain trust, increase happiness and elevate standard of living. 6. Swift decision making to ensure high level of services for the public society through continuous development and maintaining sustainability. 7. As the initiative includes and embrace all activities, providing indicators on health, education, standard of living among others, enabled the decision makers and strategic plan to improve performance which its impact on the public society is recognized.

The main objective of the initiative is to focus on people in the society by enabling the government and decision makers to provide better and swift services. The availability and instant access to information allow to execute plans which benefits the citizens, as the data coverage extends to all aspects of life, the added value is remarkably recognized on the human development whether economically, culturally, humanly or even ethically. The initiative exceeds providing information only, as it allows decision makers to see patterns, correlations and build simulations to monitor the indicators performance in all areas, thus, allow for accurate decision making and executing the project which reflects on the society. Moreover, the initiative will allow each member of the society to participate in those projects through sharing their opinions and feedback on the services provided encouraging the engagement from the people toward Dubai development and sustainability. As the initiative also gather and produce indicators focusing on human factors such as women participation in society, heath, education, facilitating breastfeeding for working women, standard of living, inflation and family/child welfare, the initiative is not concerned on the city infrastructure but also on the welfare of the people.

The initiative is the source and backbone Dubai Strategic Plan 2021 (DSP2021) initiated by the Executive Office. DSP2021 is aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. More than 650 indicators are provided through the initiatives which are summarized within 6 themes and objectives aligned with the SDGs. The themes are ‘The People’ promotes a city of happiness, creativity and people-empowerment. ‘The Society’ focuses on the culture and enabling a cohesive society. ‘The Experience’ to provide the facilities to be a preferred place to live, work and visit. ‘The Economy’ promote Dubai to be a global hub for business and trade. ‘The Government’ to emphasis on making Dubai a pioneer in providing services, justice and equality. ‘The Place’ to enable sustainability, focusing on environment, health and safety. The objectives and indicators focuses on education, health, environment, safety standard of living, Unemployment among others, covering all aspects of society (citizens and government). The initiative empower decision making extending the insights of the aligned indicators by planning target performance till 2021, moreover, allow benchmarking with other cities globally for comparison and evaluation.

In Dubai, people with disability has been redefined and renamed as “People of determination”. The Executive Council and part of its Dubai Plan 2021, has decided to merge the ‘People of determination’ in all aspects of life such as education, sports, and labor force. Accordingly, the Dubai infrastructure will be shaped to take into consideration to facilitate services as per their needs. The decision made due to the data provided by the initiative to the executive council through set of specified and targeted indicators concerning the ‘people of determination; with conjunction of Ministry of Community development in UAE. Another example, and based on the Initiative, The Executive Office issued new legislations regarding maternity leave as per the insights provided. The new legislation effectively and immediately implemented, increasing the maternity leave for breast feeding for working women. A third example, regarding the elderly and their distribution and active participation in the society, a decision made to provide entertainment elderly houses distributed across Dubai. Furthermore, a dedicated facility card called ‘Thukher’ which is an Arabic word means ‘Precious or Valuable’ has been initiated to provide social, welfare and financial benefits.

In realization to provide real life scenarios, The initiative provided distribution of population and their characteristics geographically with the expected growth and demands for health services, thus, Department of Health has redistributed and provided medical centers accordingly as per the demands and needs of the society. One of the areas that the initiative has impacted clearly is the social development for the youth in the society, in order to provide the means and opportunities to secure their future, ensure a healthy environment and provide awareness especially from hazards of drugs, smoking and crimes. The Youth empowerment policy has been established by the Community Development Authority to facilitate all the means and possibilities for the youth to secure their future and explore their potentials and their role in the society. Another example, the Federal National Council of United Arab emirates has decided to study the salaries and standard of living based on the statistical indicators presented by the initiative and has been discussed in their scheduled meeting on 4th April 2017.

The initiative supports the decision makers to overcome the challenges and reach the SDG’s Goals where at the same time contributed to the main goals of SDG, goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and goal 17 (Partnership). The initiative enabled partnership and knowledge transfer among other entities, promoting collaboration with the focus on the development and welfare of the society. As the initiative exploits emerging technologies and adopted state of the art infrastructure based on virtualization to ensure scalability and availability, while the architecture provided a comprehensive framework from data acquisition followed by ingestion and munging, to data discovery and finally dissemination and visualization. Dubai Statistics Center offered its framework to other government entities in a free of charge implementation and allowed reducing redundant costs, utilizing its infrastructure, platform and services in a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. The initiative is shared and implemented in other entities, and shared the experience with other Statistical Institutes in other countries as well. Subsequently, Dubai Statistics Center resources provide its consultation and expertise to other entities in how to deal with the deluge and influx of data with the ability to democratization in order to deliver insights to decision makers and public.

The initiative considered original as it enabled government entities, business sector and even the citizen to utilize the initiative as SaaS (Software as a Service). It is considered disruptive innovation as Dubai Statistics Center being a government entity provides SaaS to government entities and public free of charge, enabling the stakeholders to utilize our infrastructure, platform and software and customize their needs accordingly. The paradigm shift in technologies, transforms the mechanism and services provided, allowing a self-service dashboards and reporting online without any communication or interaction from DSC. The top officials and decision makers can benefit from a dashboarding solution with mobility, using their smart devices for business insight and indicators performance. The initiative is based on a Data warehouse solution with a business intelligence tool for self-reporting services and a visualization tool for insights. The initiative achieve a dramatic transformation on users’ experience, enabling user engagements on all levels from decision makers to the public. The users and the public can utilize the data repositories, building their own reports online, using their mobiles and saving it on their own devices. To encourage open innovation, the initiative implemented in Ajman Emirate, sharing our experiences and totally hosted on our environment.

DSC used its own resources in developing the initiative, it is crucial to mention that learning process were considered through a roadmap to develop a maturity level from technical and business aspects. All resources were in-house without any reliance on outsourcing, however certain aspects of the initiative deployed off-the-shelves software. The financial aspects mainly considered only for the software and hardware utilized to implement the project. In order to maintain and build a competence team to run and support the initiative, certain financial investments were allocated for training and knowledge transfer. This allowed to build an effective and efficient initiative with a proper allocation of resources internally. The OPEX mainly covers the support and maintenance to ensure availability and continuity of the initiative.

Yes

Dubai Statistics Center has initiated several workshop sessions to other government entities locally and regionally to investigate the possibilities of transferring the initiative. Dubai Customs, Dubai Police and ministry of finance are among several government entities adopted the initiative to enhance its operations. A subset of the initiative focuses on questionnaires designated to gather opinions and feedback from the society in several aspects. Many government entities in the region were interested in adopting the same initiative; the Statistical Center in United Kingdom of Saudi had visited Dubai Statistics Center, where a comprehensive and extensive workshop has been conducted to investigate the possibility to implement the same initiative in their organization. Moreover, and as recommended by the ESCWA, The Libyan Statistical Center has also visited us to learn from our experience and for adoption the same initiative to build a centralized repository and providing decision makers with the tools and capabilities for business insight. Additionally, and based on a request from the Emirate of Ajman, The initiative has been provided to them as a service, utilizing Dubai Statistics Center hardware, platform and even software for the emirate of Ajman.

Due to Dubai Statistics Center role, information covers all aspects of society; the initiative ensure continuous and diverse flow of information provided to the decision makers empowers for a transparent and knowledge based society. On the other hand, the information provided to business sector and public promote transparency, trust and as well participations from the citizens. The initiative also focus on private sector and business sector to empower it through transparent regulations to facilitate the businesses. As the initiative promote collaboration, it enables the optimization of resources whether in decision making or execution of projects. Indicators in environment whether pollution, energy saving or water consumption, allow for better utilization of resources and identifying the areas for improvement. The initiative vision considered the continuity of the services provided by the government departments, covering their demands as well the needs of the society. Furthermore, taking into consideration the increasing demands, business evolving and future generations. The initiative support Dubai Strategic plan 2021 in the development of the entire society, especially in a dynamic city as Dubai. Additionally, the initiative provides comparison with future targeted indicators on all vital sectors as well benchmarking with best practices internationally to improve the society welfare with the focus on the new generation.

The initiative takes into consideration the increasing demand and the influx of information, as a result of that, a scalable environment has been provided to ensure its continuity and availability depending on our internal resources. The multi-cultural society in Dubai where more than 170 Nationalities are living in harmony, drive the demands, raising challenges on the government to meet such diversity of demands taking into consideration their variances. The initiative not only focuses on short-terms and tactical indicators, but also strategic indicators to ensure continuity and durability of the services provided. From technical perspective, the initiative is scalable enough to consider future requirements and fast evolving society, as such government is in demand for efficiency and elasticity to ensure continuous availability of the initiative, thus the ability to achieve people expectation. Accordingly, the initiative also focuses on each indicator and its futuristic targeted performance to measure performance and identify the gaps when occurred. In return, decision makers invoke related initiatives and projects to improve human life for the long run. As mentioned earlier, the initiative empowers Dubai Strategic Plan 2021 which focus on vision of Dubai till year 2021, however, the expected new plan after 2021 will proceed relying on the initiative as well. The durability of the initiative is not limited to time frame, but would evolve as part of Dubai developments and evolvement.

Yes

The Dubai Government Excellence Program (DEDP) has evaluated every government institution in Dubai based on the best international standards. A team of experts in the field of Information Technology and Business Intelligence evaluated the Smart Statistics System at the Dubai Statistics Center on 2 February 2017. They expressed their admiration for the system. A sample of the evaluation points as follow • DSC has contributed significantly as an enabler to other Government Entities to deliver on their mandates by providing critical data to inform optimal policy creation. This includes collecting data from various sources and given the DSC's ISO certifications, all the mechanisms are in place and operational to ensure the data are accurate. This is important for achievement of the Dubai Plan 2021. • DSC has strong capabilities of smart systems which meet most of the stakeholders’ requirements and they successfully achieved many strategic objectives and align with the international best practices. • DSC provides a number of end users tools to different clients (government entities, corporate entities and individuals): data analysis and visualization tools for decision makers, survey and polling tools, as well as web based tools for the public. The data analysis and visualization tool (called "Indicator") is very impressive

As part of Dubai Strategic Plan 2021, a survey focused on individuals, considering their consumption and investment awareness. The survey results provided a clear understanding of the criticality of the advertisement campaigns on individual behavior and how it may impact on his cultural behavior especially the youth. Another survey focuses on the athletes’ usage of steroids and in order to provide awareness on its risks and its impact on human health. The survey results led to issuing new mandates and initiating several programs promoting awareness especially for the youth due to its fatal impacts. More than 75 questionnaires have been conducted on behalf of several government entities (free of charge). The scope of work covers the society, stakeholders, employees, business sector and even government entities strategic plans. As part of that initiative, collaboration between Dubai Statistics Center and the Executive Office has entitled yearly surveys to measure indicators and performance measures in education, urban community and even judicial sector, involving the society including the people with special needs. The objective is to ensure and enhance the services offered while considering the people feedback and guarantee their contribution at the same time.

Due to the enormous list of indicators measured in the initiatives, a selected and mixture list covering various areas such as people of determination ( disability) , women, elderly and education and family orientation 1. People of determination accessibility to various facilities through pedestrian pathways 2. Teachers Availability to support Students with special needs (People of determination) 3. Dubai suitability to raise a family rate 4. Public Transportation level of Safety 5. Breastfeeding Practice after delivery 6. Developing Reading Practice for children 7. Parents’ Involvement in Children education and development 8. Quality of Education It is crucial to mention that all community surveys/Questionnaires conducted in Dubai Statistics center and presented within the initiative include a specific section related to People of determination to promote their contribution in the society and the role they are playing accordingly.

The main objective of the initiative is to ensure stakeholder engagement as it is considered a service provided by Dubai Statistics Center to all government entities and decision makers. The requirements are driven by the stakeholders’ demands and are engaged through the whole process to ensure meeting their objectives. In order to provide efficiency, Dubai Statistics Center and part of its yearly plan, contact all stakeholders to list their demands to be able to prioritize and schedule the required surveys. Consequently, Dubai Statistics Center has established a formal community (Statistical Coordination Community) which its members formed from various government entities to ensure their engagements and at the same time promote commitment for providing quality services. Accordingly, Dubai Statistics Center issued an SLA with every stakeholder to guarantee the responsibility of each entity and ensure service delivery on an agreed time-plan project. The SLA states also the methodology implemented to ensure transparency and unbiased results and eliminate any overfitting the sample selected. It is crucial to mention that Dubai Statistics Center and due to excessive surveys conducted on behalf of different stakeholders through the previous years, and as a result of that, a comprehensive repository has been constructed and developed which is used to select the proper and suitable sample in various fields. It allowed allocating an accurate targeted sample, which in return provided more precise feedbacks from the society, allowing decision makers to provide better services to meet people expectations.

Due to the challenges faced through developing and implementing the initiatives. An iteration process followed to ensure learning and building a culture of collaboration between government entities, at the same time to gain the trust of the people and drive them to interact and participate in the development. The main lesson learned is to understand the people concerns, meeting their needs, and provide them with all the means to enhance their lives, taking into consideration the multi-cultural background especially in Dubai where more than 170 nationalities are living in harmony. Due to the role of Dubai Statistics Center, the initiative enabled decision makers to understand the people necessities, by providing the data and the indicators, assisting the decision makers to put plans to meet people expectation. The initiative itself is under improvement to utilize the advancements and the emerging technologies to enhance human life, currently, a development to rely on Big Data as sources of information and IoT will allow even faster and streaming line of data. It will allow exploring the social and sentiments of the public society in order to achieve better understanding to people problems and concerns with the ability for better prediction and patterns findings.