Government-sponsored conferences are often insipid affairs, best noted for bureaucratic harangues made in opulent venues, but making little sense to most present there. Pretending to play the devil’s advocate, participants don’t lose any opportunity to shoot down anything that involves change, or shifting of the arena from within the confines of their high-domed offices.

The just-concluded Government Summit in Dubai was the opposite to all this. The proceedings — attended by top functionaries of the UAE government as well as corporate luminaries, including Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, World Economic Forum chairman Claus Schwab, X-Prize founder. Dr Peter Diamandis, etc. — could easily be mistaken for a session from top technology events such as the CES or an apex international science gathering.

The themes included leaner and more efficient governance, the threat of a large number of Fortune 500 companies going under and how the spirit of innovation and enterprise will change the lives of people, opening up an array of new businesses in the process.

From the tenor of discussions, it was obvious that the future role of governments would be to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship rather than do everything by themselves and that the top brass of the UAE government were clearly in agreement. In fact, local governments already have a reputation about their approach towards change, which shows up in the numerous achievements the country and its people have made over the years.

The UAE government has been widely commended for this approach, which is quite unlike the style of functioning ruling establishments are typically credited with.

 

Drones plan

The announcement of the UAE government’s plan to launch a pilot project to develop drones that may be used to deliver time-sensitive documents and services at people’s doorsteps or deployed to undertake difficult tasks such as firefighting has created a sensation in the international media.

Online retailer Amazon has been developing a fleet of delivery drones called ‘octocopters’, which it wants to use for delivering packages to customers. There have also been attempts in the US and UK to test the delivery of cakes and pizzas by drones, but these have so far not achieved commercial success.

There is an animated discussion progressing in the international media on whether Dubai would manage to upstage Amazon and the other players. The feeling seems to be that the contest could go the UAE way as the Amazon project or the one by Domino’s Pizza in the UK has been deterred by a number of regulatory and logistical challenges. While the UAE plan has to tackle issues of extreme heat and dust, it is thought to be easier in terms of regulatory controls.

A breakthrough by the UAE would by no means sound outlandish.

A recent Accenture report ranked the UAE as the country with the third best digital governance in the world, with the first two positions going to Singapore and Norway. The US came only sixth on the list, followed by the UK. The ranking has been done on the basis of a number of criteria, which include service maturity, service delivery experience for members of the public and public satisfaction.

The UAE has already made significant headway in terms of e-governance and has most of the services covered under the plan.

Additionally, the Dubai government has announced the Dubai 2021 Initiative for ushering in the Smart City concept, integrating e-services and technologies in people’s day-to-day life and aiming to transform the citizen’s relationship with the government into one between a customer and the service provider. Under the plan, every person will have a personal account page, serving as a portal that provides access to all governmental services.

Against such a setting, drones delivering documents or essential supplies like medicines or even a meal packet within minutes of placing the order will create a perfect picture that can draw the world’s admiration.

 

— The writer is a journalist based in Dubai