Reportage
Experts attributed the importance of the
two elements to that the provision of ser-
vices or providing cities with smart tolls
cannot achieve its goal without human
awareness of its importance and how to
use it. Moreover, services smart transition
will not achieve its desired goal, unless the
state was able to produce the technology
needs by the transition and stay away as
possible from importing technology.
Dr. Eesa Bastaki, President of the Uni-
versity of Dubai, stresses that the govern-
ment’s keenness on offering its services
through smart apps is considered an un-
precedented leap and step that places the
country on the same level as European
andAsian countries with effective and suc-
cessful models. He stresses that this trend
needs important elements to support it to
achieve the goal of smart transition in the
desired manner.
He believed that smart cities are useless
unless such transition goes hand in hand
with human awareness of people who will
use it. Indeed, services are not success-
ful without the public who are going to use
them. I believe this aspect needs the gov-
ernment to exert great efforts by launching
campaigns throughout the UAE to explain
the objective of transition and its benefits
to the public. The spread of smart phones
among the mobile phone subscribers in
the UAE at 70% does not mean that all of
them are aware of the importance of smart
services.
The President of the University of Dubai
continued saying that we are in need of
specific awareness campaigns for the
public in a clear way because it is noted
that customers continue to largely use
manual transaction systems although the
services they need have been available
on the websites of government agencies
and organizations for three years at least
and recently through smart applications.
He mentioned that awareness campaigns
should mainly target people who still rely
on manual transactions. This can be done
by having specialized employees avail-
able inside the service centers, whose
role will be explaining to customers how
to complete their transactions in an easi-
er and faster way through the website or
smart app.
Bastaki pointed out that to ensure that
smart servic-
es maintain their
quality level
and success and
to ensure the
es t ab l i shmen t
of smart cit-
ies for real, it is
not enough to
develop human
awareness but there is another equally
important element; it is the need to work
on knowledge and technology production
locally and completely dispense with im-
porting them, keeping such import to the
necessities only.
He continued saying, “Knowledge and
technology production should go hand in
hand with the development stages of ser-
vice transition and smart city building by
assessing and measuring the status and
nature of society and its needs and devel-
opments and the goal we seek to reach.
Based on such results, technology indus-
try is developed at the level of systems
and devices locally”.
Mansoor Al Awar, Chancellor at Hamdan
Bin Mohammed e-University (HBMeU)
linked the success of e-transition of gov-
ernment services to the level or care giv-
en to developing awareness and human
knowledge to deal with this transition and
the realization of the im-
portance and benefits of
its use.
He explained that the
state’s ability of e-transi-
tion relies essentially on
the extent of providing
infrastructure and invest-
Scholars confirm the success of
smart city
building relies on knowledge making and public awareness
I
T academicians and experts regarded that building successful smart cities that achieve the de-
sired goals relies on human resources development and non-reliance on the import of knowledge
and technology, but rather producing them locally. They called upon specialized entities to focus
on these two elements to achieve real society development and progress following developed
countries and effective global models.
