Driven by a desire to develop the official portal of Dubai Government and in keeping with the mission of delivering high quality services to individuals, the eServices team in Dubai Government has regular surveys to assess the level of user satisfaction in terms of ease of access to information.

Replies were received from as many as 1,244 respondents on the portal’s Arabic homepage and from 909 respondents on the English homepage. While the majority of Arabic respondents said they could not find the desired information, the majority of English users were satisfied with the results of their search. This actually prompted “e4all” to conduct a field survey with some portal users so as to understand the exact needs of users and the actual information they wished to be displayed on the official portal of Dubai Government.

If we exclude the reply of the third group, which was only browsing without looking for specific information, we find that the percentages will be different:

The above results show that more than half the visitors of the Arabic portal were unable to find the information they wanted. This is actually a high percentage that should make us stop and ponder over the causes. Based on this, the following field survey conducted by “e4all” focused on the obstacles that stood in the way of finding information.

The field survey yielded a number of comments, the most important of which were:

Government Information Index
Ahmed Al Aqqad, a website designer, remarked that information was the most important component of government portals because customers need information more than they need eServices. Surely, a customer does not have to deal with fines or conduct a transaction via eServices on a daily basis, whereas he/she needs information on a continuous basis.

The most important information that individuals need to obtain from the official portal of Dubai Government is the information related to how to contact the government itself. This information is actually governed by a number of global criteria which are adopted by many government portals and can be summarized by the phrase “Government Information Index” which features the following:

1) Government’s organizational chart: This shows the decision-taking mechanism in each of the government job sectors and determines the administrative and official references, enabling the citizens to be familiarized clearly with how government decisions are taken and consequently making it easier for them to refer to the decision-maker in charge of drawing up the government policies related to the required field.

2) Profile of government institutions: Each of these profiles contains full information on a government institution or department as derived from its establishment decision or incorporation decree, which determines the role that each department or institution plays and the organizational chart that it has.

3) Government contact information: This includes all the information related to contact with government departments as well as contact and user support centres, email addresses of institutions and websites of government departments. It also includes a full index of names of all the officials in each department, together with their direct telephone numbers and email addresses, enabling every ordinary individual or citizen to contact the decision-maker directly.

Diverse arrangement of government index: A government index should be classified according to several categories, the first, in alphabetical order of government departments and names of government officials and, the second, as per job and the section of individuals and customers that are served by those departments. This index can also be classified as per the nature of the field in which services are rendered.

Despite the diligent effort exerted in preparing the portal of Dubai Government, it only provides the profiles and contact information of government institutions. 

I feel that the portal of Dubai Government can achieve success only if it simplifies communication with government officials. This will certainly put a heavy burden on the content team because it is not an easy task.

Table of eServices
Nisreen Jabullah, in charge of several websites in a media establishment, believes it is high time for combining over 2,000 government eServices scattered among different government websites into a single table through the eGovernment portal. The eServices could then be arranged thus:

1) Name of eService: eServices should be arranged in alphabetical order.
2) eService provider: This is meant to be the government or non-government department or institution that provides the eService. The user should be given the chance to arrange eServices as per their respective providers.
3) Type of eService: eServices should be classified in terms of type, whether they are related to information, inquiries, procedures or ePay services. This kind of classification is necessary for guiding the user to what he/she can get when choosing the service. 
4) eService sector: This is meant to be the category to which the eService belongs, whether it is a social, tourism, economic, security or educational eService.
5) Targeted categories: This means that we should differentiate between individuals, be they citizens, residents or visitors, and companies or business sector.
6) Conditional registration: There are a large number of eServices that require pre-registration before use. In contrast, there are many general eServices that are open to the public. It will be very useful that the table contains a special field that will differentiate between the two types of eServices, enabling the user to determine what he can get when entering to make an online transaction.

Geographic Information System and Road Status
Ahmed Mohammed, a specialist in the electronic methods of the geographic information systems, says Dubai Government’s portal lacks a major component that is indispensable for any government portal around the world. This component is the interactive system of geographic information that displays detailed interactive maps about the emirate and the field activities that take place in it, including maps, plans of new projects, infrastructure data, road condition and public transport information.

All these elements appeal to site visitors because they affect their movement and appointments. If this data had been provided by the government’s portal, the number of hits would definitely rise phenomenally.

Forums and Contributions
Eyad Shanableh, a specialist in business development consultancy, says the Internet is currently shifting from Web 1.0 to 2.0 which allows website users to be partners in formulating the content and the displayed material.

In order to achieve success and gain momentum, the government portals must open the doors for the public to express their opinions and make the government to listen to them through forums and web-logs specialized in discussing government issues.

Local News and Societal Activities
Jamal Lootah, a journalist in a daily newspaper, highlighted the need for enriching the portal of Dubai Government through more local news and societal activities. This is because news and newspaper websites rank first in terms of hits.

As Dubai plays host to many events and activities, forging alliances between the portal of Dubai Government and sources of local news can help the city gain a significant advantage, with the portal visitor having the chance to find new and interesting information that may affect their lives.

Dubai is also a vibrant venue for entertainment events and festivals. The portal needs nothing more than collaboration with the government authorities and institutions that organize these activities, such the Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, to turn it into a comprehensive site obtaining information on shopping, special offers, fun and family enjoyment.

English Homepage Questionnaire Results
As many as 909 respondents took part in the English homepage questionnaire and the results were as follows:

After deleting the third category (browsing the website without being interested in searching for information), the final percentages would be as follows:

Strikingly, those satisfied with the information provided on the English homepage of the Dubai Government’s portal outnumber those on the Arabic homepage, although the content is quite identical in both.

Trying to find the reason for this difference, we approached Leslie John, an information technology specialist and user of Dubai Government’s portal.

He replied that he did not busy himself with searching for information on the website by switching from one link to another but rather inserted the desired word to appear in the first result of the search that was supported by the popular Google search engine within Dubai Government’s portal.

The search results show remarkably how far they are compatible with the subject. This helps select the subject related to the search request by the highest percentage possible.

Asked about his comment on the reason behind the Arabic users’ dissatisfaction, keeping in mind that the same Google-backed search engine was being used, Leslie said the reason lay behind the thesaurus feature. The Google search engine is unique for its ability to search using the origins, synonyms and antonyms of a word. This feature is much more powerful in the English version of the Google search engine than it is in the Arabic version, and consequently search results are usually more accurate and better in the English version than they are in the Arabic one, he said.

Another user of the portal, Harish Chandran, said he used the portal only to get familiarized with the websites of departments. This information is quite clearly and smoothly shown on the portal with full explanation of all the means of communication with each department. Chandran got accustomed to entering a certain number of government websites that used to display their information in a well-organized way. He, however, used to avoid those government websites that neither displayed their information in an easy-to-browse way nor showed the updated information.

Making Dubai.ae More Comprehensive
When e4all explained to the respondents that many services and information they suggested actually existed in department websites, they unanimously said it was difficult to obtain such information and services because it was scattered. Hence, Dubai Government’s portal must be a comprehensive portal from where the user can obtain the required information and only if they needed detailed information, then they could go to the departmental websites.