He said the Dubai Municipality web portal has accomplished recently the 800,000th online transaction since it was launched in October 2001.
“We have carried out 543,000 e-transactions through the Municipality website during the year 2004. That means we carry out an average 45,250 online transactions a month. When we launched the project three years ago, this was just 48 transactions a month,” noted Mr. Sultan.
He said the Dubai e-Government initiative, a brainchild of General Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Minister of Defence, has yielded several positive results for the government departments in the emirate, particularly Dubai Municipality.
“We have now reduced the number of visits our customers make to the municipality offices and saved time, money and energy for both the government as well as the customers,” said Mr. Sultan. About 50 per cent of the online transactions were being carried out during the evening hours – an indication of the high popularity and usability of the civic e-Services, Sultan pointed out.
“This was one of our objectives when we started the e-Govt initiative. Customers can do the transactions 24 hours a day without bothering about the working hours of our offices,” said Mr. Sultan. He noted that 25 per cent of the transactions involved electronic payment which eliminates all kinds of physical visits of the customers to the municipality. “This facility wasn’t there in the beginning. So despite the e-Services customers used to visit the offices at least once during their transactions to pay for the services. But now, that even is not required,” he said.
As many as 4,000 companies are registered users of the municipal e-Services. Altogether, these companies have a total of 10,000 authorized staff who have been provided with a user name and password. In addition, 2,500 persons have been registered as general users.
Meanwhile, listing the accomplishments of the Information Technology Department in Dubai Municipality during the year 2004, AbdulHakim Malik, Director of the Department, said that other than the e-Government services, the department has 88 information systems in use until the end of 2004. “We have accomplished 44 technical projects during the last year. We have a total of 93 servers until the end of 2004,” he said.
Malik said the Municipality website had 453,587 hits last year. He said the number of external websites that could be accessed through the network has reached 105. Malik said that 1,148 employees enjoy the services of the internet pages of the Municipality and the number of employees who enjoy external e-mail services has reached 933, whereas the internal e-mail services are accessed by 3,660 employees.
He said the Information Technology Department hosts nine websites. “Until the end of 2004 the total number of desktop as well as laptop computers used by Dubai Municipality employees has reached 3,013 and the total number of printers 932. By the end of last year 168 scanners have been in use in different departments of the Municipality,” said Malik.
“We have also conducted 168 training courses last year for the staff of different departments in the Municipality. Around 2,000 employees benefited from these courses. Also during last year, the Information Technology Department has attended 22,247 requests for technical support.
Quelle: Strategiy, 04.01.2005
