DM aims to achieve 'zero visits' next year

Dubai Municipality officials have been asked to concentrate on e-government projects in order to acheive the civic body's objective of 'Zero Visit Municipality'.

Hussein Nasser Lootah, Director-General of Dubai Municipality called upon leaders to simplify procedures and provide services and complete the work within the specified time and in accordance with the objectives and plans formulated by the Municipality for its projects.

 He was speaking at a meeting with the higher leadership of the Municipality to review the functioning of the body.

Lootah focused on the timely implementation of e-government projects by utilising the possibilities provided by the Government of Dubai such as the strong e-government infrastructure, and the setting of objectives and applications that meet the Municipality's vision and its goal to achieve completion of transactions with zero visits during 2011.

During the meeting, Municipality's different sectors and its leaders presented performance indicators for the departments of the Municipality, which came under discussion and observations were also presented in regard.

Lootah called upon the leaders for the need to have direct interaction, cooperation and excellence in the provision of services in order to achieve the strategic objectives of the Municipality linked on a direct way with the strategic objectives which the city seeks to achieve.

"It should be recalled that Dubai Municipality has achieved more than six million e-transactions over the past year," he said and added that the Municipality has achieved this success in record time since the launch of the first bouquet of e-services in October 2001.

The Municipality recently started providing 100 per cent of its services electronically.

The increased growth index confirms the acceptance of e-services of the civic body by customers from various segments of the public and establishments. The Municipality portal has recorded an average of more than 47,000 transactions in a week. This service allows customers to complete and follow-up procedures related to the payment of bills for municipal services through innovative electronic channels.

When it took 18 months (from October 2001 to April 2003) to reach the figure to 100,000 transactions a month, this number doubled to 200,000 in less than five months.

This jump is attributed partly to the increase in the number of e-services available through the portal as the number increased from about 15 services in October 2001 to 488 services in 2010. However, the most important factor is the increase in the total number of transactions as in the case of some services the ratio was increased to 100 per cent.

Dubai Municipality has taken it upon itself to continue to attract and harness the latest systems and methods in the world in all fields supervised by it. This system will be popularised on all other services provided by Dubai Municipality.

The rate of e-transactions vary as per the nature of the tasks provided by the departments as completed transactions are distributed in several areas such as issuing certificates of Dubai Central Laboratory of different categories, certificates of medical and veterinary clinics, hygiene certificates for food, NOCs and building demarcation certificates, and other services that amount to a total of 488. Public can access these services and complete the transactions provided by the Municipality through its website www.dm.gov.ae without the need for personally going to its offices.

The Municipality portal currently offers 488 e-services registered in the Directory of Services, which provides easy access to multiple forms required to obtain Dubai Municipality services. The portal conducts 6,790,000 e-transactions with an average of 47,000 transactions every week, which is an increase of 98 per cent of the total number of transactions made. The value of e-payment transactions amounted to 1,067, 907 and the total number of companies registered are 20,678 and there are 74,033 representative for these companies, while the total number of individuals registered with the "public" has reached 27,543, while there 26 websites for Municipality.