To make mTransformation of a country successful, it is important that there is no digital divide there. The UAE aims to achieve 100 per cent mTransformation and promote an electronic lifestyle in the UAE. Following are the UAE’s efforts in bridging digital divide.
In May 2013, the UAE initiated an ambitious journey to move from eGovernment to mGovernment within two years. A new government vision was announced following a meeting of the government officials. The target was set at 100 per cent to make priority services available online through two channels: websites and mobile phone applications.
In 2015, the UAE had achieved a remarkable rate of mobile governance. 96.3 per cent of the UAE government’s most used 337 services made the transition to mGovernment and mServices within 730 days and with the support of 41 government departments. The most important change that was taking place over those two years was the change of mentality and the culture of the government services’ management. Today, delivery of services no longer relies on physical offices and thousands of employees, but on advanced systems and innovative minds because of which, the rate of smart transformation increased dramatically as 98.18 per cent of the federal government services are available online.
Smart phones
According to TDRA’s report for the second quarter of 2017 on the use of smartphones in the UAE, it is revealed that 81.5 per cent of phones registered on the UAE’s networks were smartphones.
Useful usage
More than 90 per cent of the UAE federal government services are available online. Every government entity in the UAE has a website with electronic services section. This portal is a one-stop shop for federal and local government services. This encourages the UAE’s population to visit the government entity websites and take full advantage of ICTs to complete their government transactions online.
Another aspect where ICT is applied is the eParticipation. The UAE national portal has a large section for eParticipation under the name (Sharik). Sharik provides several eParticipation channels which include consultations, forum, blogs, etc. In addition, each federal government entity has such eParticipation section, where users can participate in government decision and policy-making online.
The official portal of the UAE is also a handy resource for information about the UAE’s government, future, history, culture, economy, touristic sites or geography of the UAE and much more. Some of the other UAE government websites include:
Federal government websites
This portal
The UAE's portal for the Sustainable Development Goals - UAESDGs
The UAE's environment portal - Beeatna
The UAE’s portal for government data
Local government websites
TAMM – Abu Dhabi Government Services
The official portal of Dubai Government
The official portal of Sharjah Government
The official portal of Ajman Government
The official portal of Umm Al Quwain
The official portal of Ras Al Khaimah Government
The official portal of Fujairah Government
Visit Abu Dhabi
Visit Dubai
Quality of coverage
Quality of applications
Quality of voice services
Quality of data services
The UAE is one of the world’s most connected countries. According to World Bank Data, internet penetration in the UAE was at 99.15 per cent in 2019.
There were 3,269,359 internet subscribers and 17,075,188 active mobile phone subscribers in the UAE as of March 2021, according to the Market Statistics report (PPT, 40.4 KB) published by the UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TRA).
The UAE is ranked 2nd globally for mobile speed and 27th globally for fixed broadband speed as of December 2020 according to Speedtest Global Index.
Illiteracy is not an obstacle to internet use in the UAE, as it is less than 1 per cent. Emirati schools are increasingly being connected to the internet and equipped with eLearning facilities, and many of them encourage tablet computers for student use. The Mohammed Bin Rashid Smart Learning Programmewas launched to establish a unique learning environment in schools through the introduction of 'smart’ classes.
One of the objectives of the UAE mGovernment enablers is to raise the level of satisfaction of the public with regard to digital services. Since 2017, the user satisfaction with government’s digital services has increased significantly. The reasons behind that were the increase of public awareness about digital services and increase in the quality of government websites and service quality. The below table displays the rate of user satisfaction with government digital services from 2017 to 2022:
Satisfaction with online mobile services
|
Year |
Satisfaction (in %) |
|
2017 |
70 |
|
2018 |
79 |
|
2019 |
81 |
|
2020 |
87 |
|
2021 |
87 |
|
2022 |
88 |
The UAE Government launched telemedicine services for people living in the rural areas. Telemedicine services include: Virtual Doctor for COVID-19, international telemedicine service and Doctor for every citizen.
TDRA launched the Federal Websites Guidelines (version 2020), which gives clear instructions and set valid rules for writing web content. According to that guideline, the website content has to be in two languages (Arabic and English), free of grammatical and spelling mistakes and properly segmented (that is no English text in the Arabic version and vice versa). The guidelines also cover domain and hosting, site architecture and design, user experience and usability, accessibility, eParticipation, social media and open data among others. Read the Summary of Web Content Guidelines for UAE Government Entities.
According to Federal Websites Guidelines, a government website should have a software to read texts and alternative texts for the visually impaired people. In addition, all audio and video files on the website should have descriptive captions to assist those with hearing problems. The TDRA website is one of the federal websites using such language to help the people of determination (special needs’ people) to browse its pages easily.
The National Policy for Empowering People of Determination (people with disability) aims to provide people of determination (people with special needs) with easy access to various information, depending on their individual abilities. According to the policy, entities are required to provide information about services to people of determination and their families in all the emirates, ensuring that all services are easily accessible. The entities are also required to make information accessible using modern technology to people who suffer visual and hearing disabilities.
The UAE’s Ministry of Community Development launched the ‘With Sign’ initiative under the theme ‘towards an open world with sign language’, targeting people of determination especially those who with hearing impairment, to help them communicate with community members through text interpretation with sign language. The text translation is performed by a smart 3D character on the entity’s website. The service enables the hearing impairment categories to ask questions through the website and record their messages through the computer’s camera to be translated.
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