Dubai Municipality goes 100% paper-free

Dubai Municipality has achieved a 100 per cent reduction in papers during the year 2020, equivalent to 20,960,743 papers annually.

The initiative helped save over Dhs95m and more than one million working hours.

“The implementation of the improvement measures related to the Dubai Paperless Strategy has led to an increase in the percentage of digital completion to 100 per cent, and an increase in the percentage of customer and employee satisfaction and meeting their needs in an integrated and proactive manner,” said Dawoud Al Hajri, director general of Dubai Municipality.

@DEWAOfficial, @DMunicipality, @DubaiSC & @DubaiStatistics, have succeeded in becoming 100% paperless! Today we recognize their outstanding efforts to provide all their services digitally, achieving the goals of the #DubaiPaperlessStrategy. #SmartDubai

— Smart Dubai (@SmartDubai) March 7, 2021

The Municipality provided 1,877,987 smart digital transactions in 2020.

As part of the Dubai Paperless Strategy, #DubaiMunicipality reduced paper use by 100% during 2020. The number of reduced papers reached 20 million 960 thousand and 743 papers annually and saved more than AED 95 million more than one million working hours. pic.twitter.com/CkaKqiTW4R

— بلدية دبي | Dubai Municipality (@DMunicipality) March 15, 2021

“We started the work by assessing the current situation and counting the baseline of Dubai Municipality in the use of paper, and we found that 20,984,104 papers were used in the services provided to customers and for the main internal operations and support processes. The papers printed were optional, and they were papers in government resource planning systems. Accordingly, we embarked on seven initiatives to achieve the paper reduction target for the year 2019, and following up on their achievement. As a result we could achieve 56.94 per cent success in 2019,” he added.

“Among the most important of these improvement initiatives that were implemented in 2019 were the green ticket in Municipality centers, digital service bills and receipts, smart inspection, hygienic export certificates and food product evaluation certificates, in addition to the fee adjustment on commercial licence service, smart office, and improvement of 13 environmental services,” said Al Hajri.

Eight initiatives were also identified to achieve the paperless target for the year 2020. They were: Dubai Central Lab Department’s Labware management system, the import and re-export system, the Montaji system, the system development project called Legacy as well as the digital transformation project, the contractors’ qualification system, the building services improvement project, the advertising system, and the project to reduce and automate internal forms and documents.

“There were additional initiatives such as linking with local and federal government agencies, in addition to link e-health certificates for imported food with New Zealand Government, removing and disposing of all printers, stopping the purchase of papers and inks, and holding awareness workshops for employees and customers on the importance of using alternative and technical solutions as well as training labourers on the use of smart and technological channels, and the provision of computers in workers’ accommodations,” Al Hajri continued.

Earlier this week, Smart Dubai certified that the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority’s (DEWA) operation were now 100 per cent paperless.

Read: Smart Dubai certifies DEWA’s operations to be 100% paperless

In 2019, a new “digital and paperless” property rental platform was launched by Dubai Asset Management, a member of Dubai Holding to integrate the services of government and private sector.

Read: New ‘paperless’ Dubai rental platform to provide tenants Ejari contract in ‘few minutes’

Last year, as part of the Dubai Paperless Strategy, Smart Dubai also partnered with Dubai Health Authority (DHA) to upgrade its ‘Smart Inventory’ application.

Read: Smart Dubai partners with Dubai Health Authority to upgrade inventory app