Questions/Answers

"Basher - Invest in UAE Ease of Doing Business ""Basher"" initiative is based on the UAE vision and is part of the directives of the supreme leadership highlighting the need to shape the future to ensure sustainability, and enhance the business environment to build a competitive, knowledge-based economy. As a result, it focuses on the UAE becoming the economic, touristic and commercial capital for more than two billion people by providing and developing specific world-class initiatives with international standards and a stimulating regulatory environment that attracts investments. This initiative accelerated the process for setting up businesses in the country to be quick and easy and will override any cumbersome procedures. The initiative operates on a comprehensive, nationwide scale, involving federal and local actions, thus reflecting the scale of partnership in the delivery of the same between various federal and local government entities, especially economic development departments in the UAE, and made a global paradigm shift in terms of licensing economic activities to investors at any emirate level BASHER is a government platform that provides services to establish and conduct business, through an integrated package that has been developed as one of the initiatives of the Proactive Services that offers a unique digital experience to explore the market, register your business in minutes and get approvals and business documents for doing business in simple steps, allowing investors to begin running their business immediately. Usually availing a license needed more than 10 visits to various government entities, and around 5 to 8 days to issue the license, now through Basher the investor issues the license in 15 minutes with zero visits and without applying any document and signing through the digital signature. Basher is a step in the UAE’s plan for smart Transformation of government services. The initiative aims to save 10 million waiting hours, 1,011 tons of carbon dioxide and 45,600 working hours, which can be allocated for innovation activities. Goals: •Building a competitive, diversified and sustainable economy •Strengthening regional and international investors' confidence in the country • Registration and licensing of business in record time (15minutes) •Raising the state ranking in international reports •A unified and accurate data •Legislations keep pace with targets and stimulate the digital economy • Sophisticated smart procedures • Government Savings and • Supporting entrepreneurs and SME's through attractive offerings and access to incubators and financial institutions

Basher is a government proactive service bundle raised the efficiency by improving the quality and efficiency of public services through developing a proactive smart platform connecting and integrating more than 182 systems in 62 government entities to offer a one stop shop for all investors Basher provided attracted foreign investment to the UAE, in order to translate the leadership aspirations in building a competitive, diversified and sustainable economy enhancing the confidence of regional and international investors in the UAE. Enabling users to establish a new business 100% online, generating a bundle of 5 business documents……allowing investors to begin running their business immediately” Utilizing innovatively the emerging technologies and Smart government enablers, such as the government service Bus, UAE Pass (Digital ID and Signature) , in addition to national NCRM to create a one stop shop unified federal services platform. Basher facilitated Investing in the UAE and getting digitally the trade license and business and documents from 5 government entities within minutes from anywhere in the world, In addition to unleash potential investment opportunities for exploring the UAE market based on real time data, registering and managing business, instant bank opening, ecommerce platform listing, and exclusive offers for utilities and more. "

GOAL 8: Basher is designed to support the SME's productive activities, entrepreneurship, creativity ,innovation, and encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, SME’s enterprises, through access to financial services; through creating a proactive Journey of planning, executing and managing their services, Basher journey, reflected the audience's expectations , offered competitive offers, facilitated bank opening and other services Goal 9: Basher is an investment hub for official economic and business information, reports and news in addition to a proactive services design and multiple stakeholder integrations to ensure sustainability, inclusive of all investment requirements and based on innovative real time data, simulating adequate planning, registration and managing business to the investor through the Basher business Navigators and smart tools GOAL 11: Support positive economic, social and environmental, as the initiative aims to expedite the establishment of business in an environment completely free of paper, errors, hassles by simplifying the registration process, reducing manual procedures and paper transactions, reducing the number of customer visits that require registration with other entities before starting the business, thus achieving customer happiness. Basher coordinated actions on several pillars: Legislative: Developing, amending and activating laws and legislations to keep pace with technological developments and meet the goals of smart government, Technical: Technical systems, data quality, digital interconnection and data exchange between entities Procedural: Re-engineering procedures and shortening the steps and time for establishing business GOAL 17: Multi-stakeholder partnerships The fruitful cooperation and true partnership between all the federal and local government and private Sector agencies stakeholder has resulted in improving the quality and efficiency of the services provided

Social: • Supporting entrepreneurship, providing information proactively as an economic guide intelligently • Achieving 2030 agenda by focusing on engaging students, youth and startups in establishing business • Customer happiness and improving living standards Economic: • Government savings annually estimated at $11 billion, 389 billion document savings and 45,600 government employees working hours • Attracting foreign investments, reflecting the aspirations of building a diversified, sustainable competitive economy. • Enhancing confidence of investors Environmental: • Achieving the 2030 agenda through focusing heavily on engaging students, youth and startups in participating in innovation • Saved 10 million waiting hours, 1.6billion KM, 1,011 tons of carbon dioxide A well-defined plan with expansion and sustainability paths has also been defined

The challenge of a future accelerators project "Start your business in 15 minutes", of the development of innovative integrated services, with the aim of providing a one stop shop for investors to plan, establish and run their business without any visits or submitting any document within minutes. Starting a business in the UAE needed more than 8 visits to different government entities in addition to submitting the documents more than once to each entity which may take up to 8 days If not more. This required to coordinate with 54 federal/local entities in addition to private sector service providers on key axes, including: building a unified trade name register, re-engineering procedures, standardizing registration processes, issuing licenses/certificates/documents to do business electronically, developing legislation concerning the registration of companies. Therefore, the UAE government implemented the following sub projects as an associated project: - Utilizing the existing Digital signature: activating digital signature in the UAE as a secured means for transactions - One-time application: centralizing personal information of the customer with privacy protection and making it available for government entities concerned - Dissemination and exchange of data in the federal government, in coordination with local governments The project program had a robust governance, a high competencies teams from all the entities and the leadership support

In 2018, the United Nations Human Development Report found the UAE to have the highest level of gender equality in the GCC, with a significant growth of women in the workforce and more women continuing higher education. The initiative encourages all citizens ( both men and women ) without any discrimination to take part in the business world, get support from incubators and equally the same opportunities and offers In addition to the above, and taking into consideration the Emarati ladies conservative society, basher offered listing of a specialized corporate banking unit dedicated exclusively to providing bespoke banking solutions to Emirati businesswomen. Women in the UAE participate actively in the private sector in various roles. They have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws and this cascades in all national projects. • Women business-owners account for 10% of the total private sector in the UAE. • 23,000 Emirati businesswomen run projects worth over AED50 billion, and occupy 15% of the positions in the boards of chambers of commerce and industry nationwide.

The overall target groups are listed below: - Foreign investors outside the country - entrepreneurs inside and outside of the country, - All citizens and residence in the UAE interested in the business world - Business Registrations agencies - SME’s - Incubators - Business support providers - Students and Researchers Hence Basher was developed based on the priority information and study outcomes of the current situation, the stage of in-depth understanding of the global trends, opportunities and challenges of each target. Therefore, Basher journey, reflected the audience's expectations, and offered competitive offers and facilitated bank opening and other services fulfilling the customers wish lists and overcoming the pain points in planning, establishing and running a business proactively

Basher was developed over a period of 7 months in its first phase, and 4 months in a comprehensive new design through a number of stages, the most important of which are: 1. Research and preparation phase 2. Governance phase: 3. The stage of studying the current situation 4. Common Design Stage 5. Identification phase 6. Development phase and model design 7. Technical implementation phase 8. The stage of designing the visual identity of the package 9. The stage of preparing the package operational document 10. Testing phase 11. Expansion and sustainability phase: After the launch, the team developed an expansion and sustainability plan Implementation and Monitoring was done through agile project management, throughout the development there was three active teams structure as below: - Leaders Team - Executive Team - Legal Team A tight governance of weekly, by weekly and monthly meeting were set, targets and KPI’s were discussed and approved and the status was reported to the leaders accordingly After the launch the monitoring are set by signed service level agreements, as automated reports from the portal and from the National Customer Relations systems are generated to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness of the service In addition to that regular investors voice workshops are done to capture the customers feedback to improve the service in addition to include there concerns in the expansion plans

Challenges are opportunities for inspiration and creativity Difficulties and differences in policies and procedures & Variation of technical systems was overcome by: •Prototyping and Service Redesign capitalizing on the Smart government components, emerging technologies and innovative tools resulted in Process Alignment & Unification across all Emirates and integrating 182 systems Personal attendance for manual signing Accuracy and reliability of data was overcome by: • Key change to the company law was done by amending an article in the law allowing digital signature on MOA and eliminated the need to be present at the notary UAE Federation (Governance) challenge was overcome by: • The UAE Government's Annual Meetings aim to unify all government entities at the federal and local levels to discuss current challenges, strategies and initiatives that would lead the country on the path to achieve the Centennial 2071 Plan. • Government Accelerators Methodology which is a platform for cross-sectoral government teams to address challenges and achieve ambitious goals • One National Team of 350 employees in 7 emirates • 22 MOU’s signed with Stakeholders • Leaders Group Support in decision-making

Basher aims to facilitate procedures for establishing business and doing business for new companies by providing an integrated bundle that was developed as one of the initiatives of the Proactive Services in the United Arab Emirates. Business Package Platform in Numbers: • 15 proactive services • 60 participating parties • 29 workshops and meetings to design and approve requirements • Services for investors inside and outside the country • More than 182 connections between the systems of different entities

The initiative drew interest in the gulf region, and communications with a sister gulf country commenced in how can this platform may be developed to serve more than one country in the GCC, in addition to many enquiries from other governments who requested UAE to exchange experiences in the field of digital government, strengthen cooperation in IT, and promote mutual efforts in digital transformation, and demonstrating Basher as one of the proactive bundles in the UAE,

Basher capitalized on the current frontier technologies used in the UAE smart government as below: • Government Service Bus: to exchange real-time data through API’s between the stakeholders to ensure the service quality and accuracy • UAE Pass (official digital ID): used for the invertor authentication process and availing his ID information. • Digital signature: associated with the Digital ID to allow the investor sign the Memorandum of Association • eDirham payment Gateway: payments were consolidated and collected through the UAE federal payment gateway. • National Customer Relation Management system: the customer happiness and customers enquires, suggestions and complains are captured and analyzed by the Federal UAE NCRM, to enhance the platform accordingly • Artificial intelligence & Data analysis: used in the market intelligence feature was based on real time big data provided on the UAE market, and displayed through various data visualization tools such as tableau

The success of Basher , has motivated the entities to work on proactive services bundles, such as the Family Bundle and Work in UAE bundle (Recruitment bundle)…etc.

The success of Basher , has motivated the entities to work on proactive services bundles, such as the Family Bundle and Work in UAE bundle (Recruitment bundle)…etc.

"Governance: Based on the evaluation and study outputs of the main roles of the entities from federal ministries and economic departments and looking at the customer’s journey, and in the list of procedures and data required for each step, we have identified the main concerned authorities from federal and local agencies to form 3 main teams, the procedures re-engineering team, the legislative team, and the team These teams are led by a team of leaders with the membership of decision makers from these federal and local government agencies. from the financial prospective the intuitive was financed by the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority capitalizing on the Digital transformation initiatives such as the payment gateway, unified Digital ID, government Service Bus and National Customer Relation Management systems"

The knowledge transfer will make the initiative more sustainable and proactive services and service by design are being used for all the new bundles in the country, in addition the initiatives saved 10 million hours of waiting time and 45,600 hours of employee time, which could be redeemed for innovative tasks, in addition to 1,011 tons of carbon dioxide.

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The initiative is evaluated by the Prime Minister Office in addition to the World bank in regards to the ease of doing business; An Estonian experts as well evaluated the projects as part of the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority Excellence evaluation

"We monitor our achievements locally and globally through international reports (World Bank, World Economic Forum) Government Readiness index which measures the extent to which governments or economies are equipped to deliver various governmental services online. Global Innovation Index from 38th to 36th place UAE ranked in the ease of establishing business from 21st to 16th place in the world and first in the Arab world In the World Bank's 51st to 17th Start-up Index. In pursuit of first place in 2021 for the Global Index of ""Smart"" Electronic Services, ranked 6th in the world, and ranked second in the TII globally, It was also based on the reports of the authorities and the World Bank's Easy To Establish Business Report for each emirate, and what is being issued in the local and Arab media around the UAE, to see the expectations, actions, challenges and opportunities for improvement. Another objective of the project is to raise the state's position in national indicators by optimizing the use of smart government possibilities at the federal and local level. It has also attracted more investors to the UAE, and the UAE has been ranked in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business report.

"Partners Harmony The project was carried out more than 60 local, federal and private An administrative, technical and legislative working group has been formed from key entities and cooperation of expertise for proactive development in all areas of the project and the development of governance among partners A matrix of roles and responsibilities has also been identified from each side and a signature of the memorandum of understanding and agreement of the level of service. A unique team has been formed from all strategic entities and has cooperated to implement the initiative with a qualified and diverse staff. Big data Utilization A detailed study of the services has been prepared to identify the required data and documents as well as the sequence and interconnection of services. The services have been developed in a coherent and integrated form with the exchange of data seamlessly between the systems The data are analyzed from different sources and reflected in market surveys and economic indicators provided to the investor for the labor market study and cost Capitalizing on the Smart government projects for the infrastructure of the platform such as payment gateway, digital ID Corporate agility The client's journey was initiated and reflected in the expectations of the public and the vision of the authorities, and delved into the challenges of electronic connectivity, data exchange and data quality, and reviewed every procedure, demand, document and visit. Digital ID has been relied upon to access the service and the government link to exchange data in addition to the user's lab The project managers were also rotated according to the work and recycling tasks of the team house to gain the skills and knowledge of more than one employee in the management and enrich the project through the management of its various stages by the competent employees.

To implement the concept of interconnected shared services, within the Future Accelerators Challenge, the authority implemented the project ""Start your business in 15 minutes"", as an example of developing new innovative integrated pioneering services, with the aim of developing the company registration service within a single platform. And in coordination with 54 federal / local entities on major axes that include: building a unified trade name registry, re-engineering procedures, standardizing registration processes, And the issuance of licenses / certificates / documents to do business electronically, and the development of legislation related to the registration of companies. To develop the service, a system layer and digital signature were created with (UAE PASS) the unified national identity and the Memorandum of Association Nonrepudiation feature

"The stakeholders were heavily involved in developing Basher in addition to the future plans, from the start to the end and some changes were already implemented along the way Future plans are already in place and being implemented and evaluates periodically The engagement took place through the government Accelerators & Annual meeting in addition to the project Management Governance, the out come was: - Establishing businesses paper-free environment - Providing an accurate and timely database of the National Economic Register - The results of the Strategic Partners Satisfaction Survey 6 months after the launch of the initiative were 95% - The results of the customer satisfaction questionnaire 6 months after the launch of the initiative resulted 82% - Increase the query in the national economic register to 118% - The notary's acceptance of electronically signed documents by the notary - The Award of the Sheikh Salem Al-Ali Al-Sabah Award for Informatics, the victory of ten Arab technology projects with the information technology award in its 19th session - We monitor our achievements locally and globally through international reports (World Bank, World Economic Forum) - UAE rank in the ease of establishing business from 21st to 16th place in the world and first in the Arab world - In the World Bank's 51st to 17th Start-up Index. - Global Innovation Index from 38th to 36th - The UAE achieved the first place in the Arab world in the maturity of e-government and mobile services - Achieved the first time in the Arab, 12 the globally with five positions in the Digital Competitiveness Index for 2019 - A high quality of life for citizens, residents and visitors to the UAE land.

Currently the possibility to share the platform with sister countries in the future is being studied. As for the lesson learned the main message would be there nothing impossible, with a robust Governance and visionary leadership the most complex projects are achievable. We monitor our achievements locally and globally through international reports (World Bank, World Economic Forum)