International Cross-Collaboration Could Save Years Of Learning

Welcome to our first country-focused edition of Transform which looks at Dubai’s public sector. In 2019, I had the privilege of sitting on an international panel flown in to judge the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Programme for Government Services. The level of innovation I saw blew me away. From my deliberations with other judges I saw a huge opportunity to learn from each other and collectively skip through years of learning.

In Dubai, the public service model is driven by customer service. A central organisation called the Dubai Model Centre (DMC) works with local government organisations to help them meet unified standards. This central hub allows knowledge-sharing on a greater scale than we see in the UK and provides a level of consistency. Each year the DMC hold its Hamdan Hub and annual awards where it brings in an international judging panel to evaluate the entries. The initiatives being judged varied in resource and manpower, but even the very small teams held themselves to the same high standard as the largest teams. You can read more about the Dubai Model Centre on pages 3 and 4.

The vigorous judging process I took part in took place over two days, including looking through detailed written submissions and going on site visits. Once the judges had created their overall shortlist these were presented to officials before going to a public vote. The overall winner holds the ‘Flag’ of the Hamdan bin Mohammed Programme for Government Services for the year until the programme runs again.

Every submission showed a dedication, commitment and imagination which was Premier League. There were no boundaries in their thinking of what was possible around customer service or technology. We have plenty of fantastic leaders in the UK, but in Dubai the level of ambition for innovation was seen across everyone we met, it wasn’t reserved to a cadre of digital or innovation teams, it went right through the management of these organisations.

Technology in Dubai is being used for the every day. Drones using Artificial Intelligence (AI) can identify pests and automatically notify the appropriate response team – the Internet of Pests! Residents can also identify a pest or its droppings via an app which sends an automatic notification to the authorities. One evening during my visit we saw a car cut into the queuing traffic. We asked our taxi driver why no-one was irate, and he showed us a police app into which he entered the registration number, informing me that the driver had now been fined. Freight does not have to be inspected because AI is used to verify what is in the containers. Through human-centred design the technology drops into the background.

I regretted there had to be one 2019 winner but the one which did triumph - The Department of Economic Development (DED) Instant Licence - was an entry I thought was superb. The DED Instant Licence reduces the time taken to start a business from multiple days to five minutes, including bank account setup, establishing a tax account, and paying fees to up to 14 government entities. The way in which the DED looked at the whole customer journey, not just the element that they dealt with, was phenomenal.

What we are starting to see in the UK is local authorities building vibrant communities that support themselves rather than look to public services for every solution. Dubai public service has started from a different point but is seeing the customer journey so holistically that it will start to move that way.

By looking at how other countries address their public service challenges there is an opportunity to level up globally. While many of the projects I saw in Dubai would knock the UK ‘out of the park’ in terms of technology and whole public service design, we have plenty to share, and the progress made in our leading authorities is as good as the best anywhere.

We hope you enjoy reading the issue. Please send any international views and news for future inclusion to enquiries@iese.org.uk.