National OSI Executive Team Holds its Second Meeting for 2019 in Dubai

In the second phase of the six-phase roadmap

Mobilk - The Executive Team of the National Online Services Index (OSI), one of the National Agenda indicators of the UAE Vision 2021, held its second meeting for 2019. The OSI Executive Team includes representatives of 11 federal and local government entities, headed by H.E. Salem Al Housani, Acting Deputy Director General for Information and eGovernment Sector and Leader of the OSI Executive Team.

This meeting aimed to review the achievements of the first phase of the plan according to the six phases concept (O6). The plan was divided into four phases, six weeks each, where the sub-teams are assigned with a list of tasks to be completed before moving on to a new phase of six more weeks. These tasks constitute a participatory work program among the relevant government entities.

The plan aims at enhancing the UAEs progress at the United Nations OSI, and achieving significant progress in the government entities commitment to the index requirements for the first six months of 2019.

The meeting was attended by the five sub-teams, which are e-content and e-participation team, e-services team, open data team, corporate and support websites compatibility team, capacity building support team. The sub-teams presented the accomplishment of the first phase, including many tasks such as reviewing Sharik.ae to increase public participation, providing tools and resources, implementing the e-participation training course, launching the unified application and website of the government services, launching the UAE Hackathon 2019 during the Innovation Month, reviewing and analyzing the gaps in corporate and support entities websites, and developing the plan forward, as well as implementing a UAE model survey of the maturity of the digital government on the federal entities.

The members of the sub-teams also presented their visions on the best mechanism for implementing the second phase of the plan, which includes the dissemination of participatory practices to all government entities, the development of the e-Participation Portal, the review of service cards, ensuring availability of all information of interest to the customer, training data ambassadors candidates on the use of data platform, linking the official data portal with the open data pages of federal entities with the addition of content indicates the proportion of open data published, and other functions that will strengthen the states position in online services.

Commenting on the meeting, H.E. Salem Al Housani, Acting Deputy Director General for Information and eGovernment Sector and leader of the OSI Executive Team, said: Our meeting today is in line with the O6 Action Plan. The OSI Executive team met for the second time this year to present what was implemented within the first phase of the plan, identify the gaps faced by the five teams, and to develop mini-plans to overcome these gaps. The meeting also discussed the requirements of the Action Plan, which extends to the end of March this year.

Al Housani praised the hard work of the sub-teams during the first phase, urging them for more to implement the tasks of the second phase. He said: The O6 plan consists of four interrelated and coherent phases, and it is not possible to proceed with a phase without ensuring that the work of the previous phase is completed. In the coming days, many tasks are expected to be carried out, and we are confident that the sub-teams will perform the required tasks. The teams now have a responsibility to promote e-participation, ensure that all updated data for 2018 is uploaded, increase the percentage of education sector data, develop design workshops on emerging e-government trends and activities, and other tasks. Our success in implementing Phase two requirements helps us in the implementation of the rest of the phases, and thus achieves the desired goals to reach third place globally in the United Nations OSI by the middle of this year.

The OSI Executive Team will meet for the third time in early April to study and discuss what has been achieved in both phases (one and two) of O6 Plan and the preparation requirements of the two remaining phases.

The O6 Action Plan represents a roadmap to reach the third position globally by the middle of this year, based on four pillars: simulating expectations at the local government level, addressing the challenges of the OSI, the impact of soft power, and implementing the innovation elements.

The OSI Executive Team contains representatives of 11 federal and local government entities. Its priorities includes providing a sustainable environment and an integrated infrastructure, in addition to achieving the planned objectives on the international level. The team uses the latest global trends in the e-government survey, i.e. bridging the digital gap, open data, enhancing the usage, several service channels, inter-connected government and e-participation.