The Government Summit underlines role of innovation and public participation in enhancing service efficiency

The Government Summit, the first of its kind regional initiative, concluded in Dubai on Tuesday, underlining the definitive role that customer-centric innovation, an active engagement of the public in problem-solving, and partnerships with the private sector have in strengthening the efficiency of government service delivery.

In addition to a ministerial roundtable that presented the success stories of the region’s government service models, the concluding day of the Summit featured several knowledge-sharing workshops, in line with the mandate of the event to promote the exchange of best practices in government service delivery.

Three sessions were held that highlighted the UAE’s experience in providing government services, apart from special workshops on the UN Public Service Awards, and sector-specific overviews of the UAE’s healthcare, youth, education & employment, government excellence programmes, the private sector’s role in customer service delivery and social entrepreneurship.

The workshop on UAE’s Government Excellence Programmes was addressed by His Excellency Ahmed Al Nusairat, Coordinator General, Dubai Government Excellence Programme; Her Excellency Hessa Buhmaid, Coordinator General, Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Programme; His Excellency Yasser Al Naqbi, Coordinator General, Abu Dhabi Government Excellence Programme; His Excellency Mohammad Abdullatif Khalifa, Director-General of Sheikh Saqr Program for Government Excellence; and His Excellency Sultan Al Rumaithi, Coordinator General, Ajman Excellence Programme.

Moderated by Eisa Kazim, Chairman of Borse Dubai, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Dubai Financial Market and Director of Nasdaq Dubai, the interactive session discussed the development of structured modalities that improve governmental effectiveness.

His Excellency Ahmed Al Nusairat said that Dubai Government was the first globally to introduce a programme for government excellence, as well as a ‘mystery shopper,’ ‘customer satisfaction’ and ‘employee satisfaction’ programmes to evaluate government services. “People talk about the need for governments to learn from the private sector; here in Dubai, we tell the private sector to learn from the experiences of our government.”

The United Nations Public Service Award workshop on ‘Innovation in Regulatory Reform and Administrative Simplification for Effective Service Delivery,’ underlined the importance of involving the public in innovative approaches to further strengthen government service efficiencies.

The workshop, moderated by Colonel Aziz Al Ameri, Director of Strategy and Performance Development, Ministry of Interior, discussed the UN Public Service Award-winning initiatives of Mexico and The Netherlands, both of which had focused on engaging with the customers directly to address the challenges in government service delivery.

Colonel Al Ameri cited the experience of the UAE in promoting government sector efficiencies through the Sheikh Khalifa Government Excellence Programme, whereby various ministries share their collective expertise and knowledge to further enhance the quality of overall government service delivery.

Jose Manuel Sucre Ciffoni, Programme Manager of the Latin American and East Europe Programme of the Division for Public Administration and Development Management (DPADM), Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), United Nations, who participated in the proceedings, said the Public Service Awards aim at sharing the experience of various countries for potentially replicating it in other regions. He said that the Awards promote a culture of excellence, and urged the creation of a Public Services Award chapter for the Arab region with the support of the UN.

Uriel Marquez Carrazco, Former Secretary for Civil Service, Mexico, presented a detailed overview of the innovations and improvements in the country’s public service delivery, which fetched Mexico six UN Public Service Awards in 2011 and 2012. He added that the focus of the improvements was to involve the public, through a review of the government procedures with the active participation of civil society organisations, academicians and the media.

“To innovate and improve public service delivery, it is important to have a ‘whole government approach’ that covers every government office and its database, building it around the needs of the citizens,” he explained.

Rosalie Brasz, Director, The Informal Pro-active Approach Knowledge Center, Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, The Netherlands, presented the country’s UN Public Service Award-winning approach that focused on an ‘informal proactive method’ to encourage direct communications between government officials and the public to address their problems.

Explaining that one of the key challenges before the Ministry was to address the large number of appeals related to government procedures, she said the approach was to create a direct line of contact between the government official and the customer through telephone calls. “This resulted in giving a face to the government satisfying the human desire to be heard by public servants about their complaints.”

At the workshop on ‘Innovation in Public Governance through Networks and Partnerships,’ Dr Ulrich Graute, Inter-regional Adviser in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, observed that having standardised its services, the UAE is heading towards their individualisation. He said that country-specific policies are required to achieve effective delivery of services in the region.
 

Emirate:  Dubai

Date: Feb 12, 2013

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