UAE looks at open data to promote e-government

Dubai: The federal government has urged its ministries and departments to publish more open data on their websites to enhance e-readiness and help promote the concept of open government, one of the pillars of a knowledge-based economy.

Publishing open data is also one of the United Nations' criteria for measuring online presence and e-government readiness. The UN is expected to issue its 2012 e-government survey later this month.

Open data involve the idea that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions by copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

Emirates e-government has allocated a special section on the UAE federal government portal (government.ae) for open data. The section includes data from all federal government entities.

Dubai is the first emirate to implement e-government by bringing all services online.

It is currently moving towards mobile-enabled services by issuing apps for various mobile platforms.

Ahmad Bin Humaidan, director general of Dubai E-government, told Gulf News that although most of the required data are available on the websites of the government bodies, the government plans to publish more data to add to the existing online information and services through a centralised portal to increase awareness and access.

Key service for citizens

"Open data on the government websites accelerates the transformation of an administration-centred government to a service-centred government and significantly improves the efficiency of the government," Bin Humaidan said.

"It is a key service for citizens and businesses."

Therefore the government agencies are sparing no efforts to optimise their e-government platforms and increase the flow of information.

"Developing a code of practices for data gathering and its use for statistical purposes helps the government facilitate improved use of data for decision-making, planning and service delivery," he said.

Bin Humaidan added that developing consistent identification data across a central government system is critical, subject to compliance with data protection laws and principles.

He added that e-suggestion and e-complaint options are available on all government websites within Dubai E-government to help communicate and engage with the public in order to improve service delivery.

Salem Khamis Al Shair Al Suwaidi, Emirates E-government Director-General, said: "Since we publish open data on the official portal of the UAE government, we urge government entities to make more documents available as open data so that we may publish them on the open data section on the portal."

He said Emirates E-Government intends to dedicate a special portal for the government's open data but this depends on the volume of open data available on government websites.