Crowdsourcing to improve the website of U.ae

Subject

The official website of the UAE Government (www.U.ae) is running a campaign to engage users in assessing the features, content and overall performance of U.ae. 

Purpose

The purpose of the consultation is to develop U.ae in a way that meets the needs of its current and future users and to enhance the website’s competitiveness and ranking regionally and globally.

Decision- making

The portal management will measure the customers’ satisfaction about the efficiency of the website, and all other aspects which impact the users’ overall experience. It will take your experience and suggestions into consideration to draft its revamping plans.

Outcome

Crowdsourcing to improve the website of U.ae

2019 was the second consecutive year in which the crowdsourcing model was applied to enrich the content of the UAE’s official portal, U.ae.

Focus

In 2019, the survey focussed on the following areas:

Content

information about the services that could not be found on the portal

spelling mistakes, broken links or any other errors on this portal

information that could not be found on this portal, but was found on another UAE government website

Search engine

experience on the effectiveness of the search engine on U.ae

Accessibility

user-friendliness for the people of determination

Technical features

the trending features that could be added

eParticipation

experience of participating in the Your Voice (Sharik) section

Promotion on social media

The campaign was promoted heavily on the UAE mGov’s official accounts on social media such as Twitter and Facebook. #ParticipateandGetaReward was the hashtag dedicated for this purpose.

On the portal U.ae, the campaign was promoted through a pop-up that appeared when a visitor spent 15 minutes on the portal.

Number of participants

More than 17,000 people participated in the survey and shared their experience using the portal while sharing inputs on enhancing the portal. Here is a detailed split of number of responses (together in English and Arabic) per month:

Sorting feedback and honouring winners

At the end of every quarter, all feedback was carefully read and sorted based on its practicality, relevance and importance. Names of participants whose answers were shortlisted were entered into a computerised raffle and names were drawn. Lucky people were awarded a smartphone each.

Crowdsourcing, a successful model for content generation

The successful run of the crowdsourcing campaign to improve the U.ae portal for two consecutive years largely points out at the following:

eagerness of the public to contribute to the portal

enthusiasm of the public to be a part of the crowdsourcing model

desire of the public to see the portal grow as the only authentic resource for information about the UAE.

Next steps

Feedback relating to content was addressed. The shortlisted suggestions in the areas of search engine, accessibility, technical features and eParticipation are being discussed internally to be converted into business requirements and then to be sent to the management for approval before being implemented.