Preparations for Smart Dubai’s pavilion at GITEX Technology Week 2020 are underway, as the event holds its 40th edition at the Dubai World Trade Centre on December 6-10 – the “only global tech show in 2020 to be held live and in-person”.
Smart Dubai’s display this year bears the theme ‘Inspiring New Realities’ and showcases the latest upgrades to its strategies, projects, and services. Bringing together 20 government entities, the display sheds light on advanced solutions to address the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are happy to be participating in GITEX Technology Week once again this year, marking its 40th edition as we also celebrate Smart Dubai’s 5-year anniversary,” said H.E. Younus Al Nasser, Assistant Director General of Smart Dubai, CEO of the Dubai Data Establishment. “GITEX 2020 comes amid unprecedented global circumstances, but the global COVID-19 crisis has clearly confirmed the utility and potential of advanced technologies in addressing global challenges and offering solutions to soften their impact on various sectors.”
Below are a few of the key initiatives and services Smart Dubai will be showcasing at the Smart Dubai Pavilion during the 40th GITEX Technology Week.
Smart Dubai 2021 Strategy
Smart Dubai announced an ambitious roadmap to prepare Dubai to embrace the future and emerge as a world-leading smart city by 2021, in celebration of the nation’s golden jubilee, by promoting technological advances that benefit the city’s people, its economy, and its resources.
Smart Dubai 2021 is the city’s roadmap to shaping the future of Dubai. The initiative structures its end-goals across a carefully crafted set of guiding principles: Efficiency, Seamlessness, Safety, and Personalization.
Government Resource Planning Systems (GRPS)
Built approximately two decades ago, as one of the first platforms by Smart Dubai, the Government Resources Planning Systems (GRPS) is an integrated, secure, and unified system of centralized back-office solutions, and implemented by more than 70 Dubai Government entities.
The GPRS consist of 40+ systems and over 71,000 employees. It manages 95% of the Government’s budget and more than 45,000 resources. With 7,000 core users employing it on a daily basis, the systems saved the government AED4.3 billion from 2003 to 2015.
GRP-powered services include the Smart Employee application, used by 65 government bodies and over 56,000 staff members, in addition to the Smart Supplier service, which allows suppliers registered in the GRPS to seamlessly access data and manage contracts, tenders, and financials of over 40 government entities.
Dubai Paperless Strategy
The Dubai Paperless Strategy has completed its fifth phase in 2020, enlisting nine new government entities and bringing the total number of participating government departments to 42. The Strategy was launched in February 2018 by H.H. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, to digitize internal and external government transactions, rendering them completely paper-free. It has so far led to savings exceeding AED725 million, as well as 7.7 million hours of labor, and 20,350 trees that would have been cut down to produce paper.
DubaiNow
DubaiNow is the go-to app for smart city services, offering over 120 services from 34 entities – 26 government and 8 non-government institutions – and reducing the number of required annual visits to customer service centers from 23 to 9, saving every person 28 hours.
The Application has so far processed 11.47 million transactions worth over AED6.03 billion and played an important role in Smart Dubai’s efforts during the COVID-19 outbreak to urge people to stay home and use remote services.
UAE PASS
The UAE PASS initiative is the first secure national digital identity platform allowing UAE citizens and residents to access online services, digitally sign documents and transactions, and request digital versions of official documents.
In September 2019, the UAE Central Bank adopted UAE PASS, allowing banks to use it in processing transactions. As of July 2020, UAE PASS can access services from 103 entities: 30 federal entities, 25 entities in Dubai, 8 in Abu Dhabi, 13 in Sharjah, 5 in Fujairah, 8 in Ajman, 2 in Ras Al Khaimah, 1 in Umm Al Quwain, and 12 private entities.
Dubai Pulse
Smart Dubai operates a collection of data initiatives and services; it has developed a strategy and a set of policies and standards covering elements of data use, sharing, and governance.
As part of its array of data initiatives – and serving as the backbone of the emirate’s digital transformation – Dubai Pulse is an integrated platform hosting the city’s most valuable and powerful datasets to help empower decision-making and solve challenges. It has so far identified more than 2,000 datasets from participating entities, ingesting 637 of them.
Dubai Registers
Smart Dubai launched the Dubai Registers initiative to build a network of accurate, reliable, and interconnected data records. The initiative uses reliable data available on the Dubai Pulse platform to identify potential registers and collect and store recent and accurate data. Dubai Registers allows Smart Dubai to utilize the vast amounts of data accumulated through other initiatives, classifying and presenting it in a manner accessible and useful to its partners.
This GITEX, Smart Dubai will unveil the first 5 registers to go live that have been built in partnership with various government entities.
City Simulation Dashboard
The City Simulation Dashboard, a new dashboard showcased to the public for the very first time this GITEX, is a data-powered use case designed to help estimate the potential growth or decline of COVID-19 cases in Dubai based on simulated interactions and mobility of people across different venues in the emirate, such as workplaces, schools, and shopping malls, among others.
With exhibitors from over 60 countries ana a host of seminars, workshops, and displays, GITEX Technology Week 2020 focuses on five promising trends set to make a significant impact in the near future, namely: 5G, Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Analytics, Future Mobility, Digital Economies, Cybersecurity and Resilience, and Cloud & Edge Computing.
