“The race for excellence has no finishing line,” stated H.H Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid AlMaktoum – Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai. These visionary words continue to inspire us as at  Smart Dubai Office – the Government office charged with facilitating Dubai’s monumental city-wide smart transformation.

Dubai’s trailblazing Smart City project was launched to facilitate round-the-clock access of government services, which in turn would make Dubai the happiest city on Earth. The ambition was bold – using advanced technology to interconnect government departments, to provide faster services and information. Since its launch, we, at the Smart Dubai Office, have relentlessly pursued this ambition, by launching more than 130 initiatives and 1100 smart services.

This was made possible in close collaboration with key stakeholders in both public and private sectors, thereby creating an enviable ecosystem. Customers are at the heart of what we do, and therefore we continue to engage with them in the designing phase of our services by hosting representative groups and individuals in the Smart Dubai User Experience lab, where we conduct user-based research that focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

The results of all these efforts can be seen in our landmark initiatives, which include, the Dubai Data Initiative; the Dubai Blockchain Strategy; the Happiness Agenda; the Dubai AI Roadmap and the Dubai Paperless Strategy. It is fascinating to note that none of these have any precedence, anywhere in the world, which makes Dubai a pioneer in this respect.

As per the UN Deputy Secretary-General's remarks at 42nd annual UNIS-UN conference, Rapid technological advances are profoundly changing how we live, work and interact. In acknowledgement of this fact, we led in creating ‘The Smart Dubai Global Network’ - an international collaborative network of smart city stakeholders, in 2018. The initiative aims to bring together partners around the world that share a passion for advanced technology, smart living and spreading happiness in the community.

While we have made rapid strides already, many more exciting things continue to take shape. Our push to digitalise Dubai’s infrastructure continues, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to transform Dubai into the ultimate smart city in the world.