Dubai Municipality accomplishes 1.4 million e-transactions last year

Dubai Municipality accomplishes 1.4 million e-transactions last year



Dubai Municipality has accomplished a record 1,386,791 e-transactions last year, which is a proof of the thumping success of the e-government project of the Municipality.

Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality said this is an indicator of the increasing growth of the Municipality's e-government project. "It emphasizes that the customers of different categories of public and establishments have embraced the e-government services offered by the Municipality," he said.

"The Municipality portal issued about 1,300 building licenses last year online. The most popular e-services among the users include Issuance of Health Fitness Certificates by the Municipality Clinic, the Engineering Materials Certificates issued by the Dubai Central Laboratory Department and the Central System for Passing Financial Invoices," said Lootah.

"What is exciting is not the number perse, but the fast method adopted by the Municipality customers in the shape of electronic transactions instead of the manual paper transactions. When it took four and a half years (from October 2001 to May 2005) to reach the number of a million transactions, in 2008 alone there were more than 1.38 million transactions," he said.

Lootah pointed out that monthly rate of e-transactions accomplished by the Municipality portal has also been increasing constantly. "There were 26,670 transactions in a week whereas this figure was just 12,000 transactions in the first phases of the project," he said.

Lootah attributed this jump partially to the increase in the number of e-services provided through the portal. "When we started in 2001, the number of e-services was just 15, whereas now it has become 492. But, in my opinion, the most important aspect is the increase in the total number of e-transactions. In some cases, the rate of increase reached 100%," he said.

Lootah said the statistics released by the Municipality is an indicator for the growth in the number of people who use Internet for accomplishing their transactions with the Municipality. "Dubai Municipality is considered to be one of the biggest local government departments in terms of services provided. The section of people who use e-services has also widened indicating the expansion of the domain of the users of e-government services. There is an increased response towards benefiting from the features of e-governance," he said.

Lootah thanked the public who use the Municipality e-portal for their tremendous response and speed of adopting to the advanced methods, making a great impact on the success of this experience. He also thanked the employees of the E-Government Services Section and the Information Technology Department in the Municipality for their earnest efforts in creating this qualitative transformation in the method of work in the Municipality during a short span of time.

The rate of e-service accomplishments varies from department to department according to their nature of work. "The accomplished transactions are distributed in a number of areas such as issuing different categories of Dubai Central Laboratory certificates, Medical Clinic and Veterinary Clinic certificates, Health and Food certificates, No-Objection certificates, Building Demarcation certificates etc.," said Lootah.

These services can be accessed and transactions can be accomplished through the Municipality website, www.dm.gov.ae, without being personally present in the offices of the Municipality.

"Our efforts are focused on achieving clear results so that more number of e-transactions take place faster. We also contact our customers constantly to get their feedback about our e-services in order to meet their requirements," he said.

Lootah said that among the 492 e-services provided by the Municipality e-portal, 402 are main services and others are branch services covering information services and transactional services that facilitate easy access to a number of forms required for getting the Municipality services accomplished.