How Dubai's approach to customer-centric public services sets the 'gold standard'

Excellent customer service in the public sector in Dubai is not accidental, it is striven for year-on-year by government entities, driven by The Dubai Model for Government Services (DMGS) – a system which underpins a continuous cycle of improvement.

Dubai, excellent customer service in the public sector is viewed as the main driver for the Dubai Government’s other strategic pillars, with leading public services seen as the backbone of the economy.

The DMGS sets out the public service criteria which government entities should strive to meet. Supporting this on the ground is the role of the Dubai Model Centre (DMC) of the General Secretariat of the Executive Council of Dubai. The DMC oversees and supports the annual cycle of continuous improvement in service delivery of Dubai’s public services and focuses on researching, documenting, and disseminating best practices in the field of public service competitiveness at local and international levels. It offers smart strategic tools and systems to research and document the reality of public service delivery in Dubai and improve it for the better.

It aims to motivate government agencies to upgrade their services using its methodologies and encourages cooperation and exchange of knowledge among different government agencies in this field. Now in the tenth cycle of applying the DMGS improvement criteria to customer service, many Dubai government entities are providing truly innovate cross-governmental and customer-centric solutions.

Eman Al Suwaidi, Senior Director of the DMC, said: “The methodology of DMC is composed of two main pillars: increasing government services efficiency, and fulfilling customers’ needs and expectations; it ensures customers receive extraordinary experience that exceeds their expectations. This is achieved by developing innovative ideas and initiatives that enhance the quality of services and contribute to maintaining Dubai’s position as the best city in innovation in government services.”

She added that since 2012, government entities have focused their efforts on a unified goal – the happiness of customers – and with the support of DMC more than 350 government services were improved by the end of 2019. “This commitment led to the inception of more than 1,000 innovative initiatives that significantly contributed to improving the quality of government services. The adoption of DMC’s methodology by government entities resulted in the reduction of the average time of service delivery by more than 50 per cent and assisted in reducing customers' visits and touch points needed to receive the service by 40 per cent. By the year 2019, the accumulative financial savings were approximately 700 million Dirhams as a result of improving the efficiency of governmental services,” she said.

The DMC celebrates the achievements of the government entities in striving towards these standards through its annual Hamdan Hub and Hamdan Bin Mohammed Programme for Government Services (see box on page 4 more information).

A panel of international jurors sit on the awards panel. In 2019, iESE’s Chief Executive Dr Andrew Larner sat on the panel – you can read about his experience on page 2 and read what another four long-standing jurors think of the process on pages 5-8.

About The Dubai Model for Government Services (DMGS)

The four guiding principles of the DMGS are: innovation, reasoned spending, connected government and customer engagement.

There are three main components that serve as an integrated system which government entities use on a continuous annual improvement cycle. These are: The Model Government Service Delivery Criteria, three unified assessment tools and the Government Services Improvement Methodology. More information on the three strands can be found below.

Strand one: Government Services Improvement Methodology

The DMGS Government Service Improvement Methodology provides a multi-phased structured approach to identify and measure the levels of improvement needed to make positive change in a scientific, disciplined manner. This multi-phased approach consists of five interrelated tiers that must be completed to ensure each entity has a clear understanding of its current core competencies, customer expectations, service improvement objectives, resource capabilities, and a strategic, actionable service transformation roadmap. The five phases are:

• PHASE ONE: Current State Assessment - Study the current performance of the services to be improved and customer expectations regarding these services.

• PHASE TWO: Planning Service Improvement - Determine how services will look after improvement and how to achieve that.

• PHASE THREE: Implementation - Transform the plan for service improvement into reality with specific improvement initiatives.

• PHASE FOUR: Monitoring and Follow-up - Ensure the improvement plan implementation is proceeding in the right direction and as planned.

• PHASE FIVE: Continuous Learning - Finalise the improvement initiatives implementation, facilitate collective learning within the government entity and ensure continuity of the improvement.

Strand two: Model Government Service Delivery Criteria

There are six key perspectives for improving the quality of government services set out by the DMGS, each backed up by numerous criteria points they should strive to meet. The six perspectives are: Customer Insights, Service Charter, Service Realisation, Customer Experience, Service Delivery Stars and Service Improvement Culture.

Strand three: Service assessment tools

Three service assessment tools benchmark government entities and assess progress against the improvement efforts.

1.) The Self-Assessment Tool enables self-assessment against the criteria set out in the six perspectives. It allows the entity to assess its internal capabilities and ability to deliver highquality services by showing the implementation degree of each one of the criteria between 100 per cent and zero per cent. The assessment frequency can be bi-annual or annual, depending on capabilities and needs. After assessment a future target is set according to several factors including:

• the government’s vision and goals in service delivery

• the service centre’s performance in previous years

• the government entity’s internal capabilities and available resources

• local, regional, and international benchmarking.

2.) A Unified Customer Experience Tool assesses the customer experience at all touch points with the government entity upon obtaining a service and measures their satisfaction with that service. This tool gathers operational indicators related to customers’ usage patterns, adoption rates, preferred channels - usually originated from internal systems. Perception indicators related to service quality or customer satisfaction are also generated from questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, customers’ council and suggestion and complaint systems in the form of quantitative or qualitative data. The main results are input into a tool log.

3.) The Efficiency Tool is used to measure and document the increase in service efficiency in government entities because of improvement efforts.