Dubai: It’s all about smart government at this year’s Gitex Technology Week, which opens today.

Dubai Smart Government will occupy the largest exhibiting space with 70 entities at the 33rd Gitex Technology week. The event runs until October 24 at the Dubai World Trade Centre. About 31 Dubai Government Departments are taking part while the Federal eGovernment has nine entities.

Dubai is leading the charge as the region is set to expand on its e-government credentials to embrace mobile in a big way. Dubai Smart Government will showcase the latest eServices and apps as the growing influence of e-government and the shift to mobile are gaining traction.

The platform will include the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Environment and Water, General Authority of Islamic Affairs & Endowments, and the Ministry of Labour.

The participation of federal government entities aims at introducing e-Services provided by these entities in order to increase adoption of these services, and enhance communication and interaction between the departments of the federal government for the mutual benefit of best practices.

Innovative plans

Mohammad Nasser Al Ganem, Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of UAE, said that TRA will present its innovative plans to advance the nation’s cutting edge ICT industry.

His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in May announced the launch of the Middle East’s first mGovernment service. The service is set to be fully accessible across all government departments in the country within 24 months.

“The UAE mGovernment Initiative is well underway and fantastic progress has been made by all UAE Government departments ahead of the project deadline in 2015. The provision of core government services through mobile platforms is essential when you consider that the UAE has the largest smartphone penetration rate in the world and Gitex will be an opportunity to publicly demonstrate the success of the project to date,” Hamad Obaid Al Mansouri, TRA Deputy Director General of Information and e-Government, said in a emailed statement.

According to the United Nations “2012 Global E-Government Survey”, UAE recently witnessed the highest jump in the world e-government development ranking from No 49 in 2010 to No 28 in 2012.

ePay transactions grew from 1.89 million in 2010 to 3.32 million in 2012, and mPay transactions from 19,433 in 2010 to 36,325 in 2012, according to government statistics.

“E-Government allows the delivery of services in a much more efficient way than traditional government offices and government service counters. It has been at the forefront of every government agenda in the GCC, and the UAE in particular over the last decade,” Fady Kassatly, a specialist on technology in the public sector for consulting firm Booz & Co, said in a statement.

“Since Dubai’s m-government announcement, there has been an unprecedented momentum created across all government levels in the UAE to support this vision. This has not only affected the UAE government, but other governments in the region are also very seriously evaluating the mobile channel to offer their government services,” Kassatly said.

Optimism

The five-day event attracts top leaders and decision makers from some of the largest information and communication technology companies in the world. About 130,000 conference attendees from 150 countries are expected to take part.

Gitex Technology Week is widely regarded as one of the world’s top three international information and communication technology (ICT) events and biggest in Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

The event organiser’s optimism comes as the regional information technology market continues to go from strength to strength; the latest forecast by Gartner suggests that IT spend in the Middle East will hit $192.9 billion in 2013, up 5.5 per cent from last year.

The biggest spending is coming from devices (mobile phones, media tablets, PCs, and printers) which are expected to grow by 7.7 per cent this year to $29.6 billion, followed by 7.1 per cent growth in software spending to $3.4 billion.

The software segment will be driven by security, storage management and customer relationship management sectors. Next year, markets aligned to big data and other information management initiatives, such as enterprise content management, data integration tools, and data quality tools will begin to see increased levels of investment.

Companies

The largest spending market still continues to be the telecom services, representing 77 per cent of the total spending this year.

“The total leased space to the exhibitors stands same as last year at 76,000 square metres despite adding new sectors this year. We are utilising the space to the maximum,” said Trixee Loh, senior vice-president of exhibitions and events management at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

She said that more than 3,500 companies from 61 countries are taking part. The new participating countries are Belarus, Brazil, Finland, Kenya, Lithuania, Serbia, Slovenia, Tunisia and Ukraine.

More than 816 new firms are taking part this year.

This year, Canon, Fujitsu, Google Enterprise, Hitachi, Juniper, Siemens Enterprise, Palo Alto, AMD and Trend Micro are the new companies taking part.

Thirty-six Indian companies are taking part under Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council of India banner and around 12 Pakistani firms are taking part.

Loh told Gulf News that around 30 per cent of the total companies are from the UAE.

Gitex has witnessed an increase of 26 per cent in international companies this year.

Gitex Technology Week has been structured around three comprehensively defined segments: Gitex World with 12 dedicated sector-based industry platforms; Gitex Edge featuring a range of new competitions, networking and knowledge-sharing forums; and Gitex Trends addressing the most pressing ICT issues on the planet.