UAE upgrades e-participation in revamped federal portal

uaeinteract.com

The UAE Government has launched its new federal portal, redesigned to offer many eParticipation channels, include advanced practices such as Open Data, and be a better unified gateway to access many online services provided by the UAE Government.

The highlights of the revamped portal are Open Data and eParticipation, through which the government aims to build new bridges to reach to the people.

The UAE Government has engaged multiple platforms like forums, blogs, chats, surveys, polls and social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to reach to the general public and engage them in active communication with the government with regard to their opinions and experiences on government services, policies etc.

H. E. Salem Khamis Al Shair Al Suwaidi, Emirates eGovernment Director General, said at the launch of the revamped portal, “The aim of the advanced portal is to provide more and better online services to the people of the UAE and also involve them in the government’s policies, laws, and public interest initiatives with the ultimate goal of achieving transparency.”

Under Open Data, information is made available to the public for further re-use by them under no copyright restrictions; people can now have access to economic data, population statistics, traffic reports etc.

Citing the reasons for the changes to the portal, Al Suwaidi explained, “We have improved the portal as per the directions of our leaders who always stress on the importance of delivering quality government services to all segments of consumers.”

The UAE federal portal also has an improved section for eServices for individuals, businesses, and visitors. It also contains a section on the offline channels for accessing government services. The portal also provides adequate information on the various services that are available through mobile devices and how to avail them with the help of specially developed short codes and mobile applications.

“We did a lot of research to identify the users’ needs; we conducted polls and surveys, held discussions, and considered user feedback and comments. Possible improvements were analysed against the international standards and best practices of web content. The result of all these efforts is the revamped government.ae portal,” Al Suwaidi added.

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