Читать книгу Digital Government Excellence - Siim Sikkut - Страница 21

In 2003, the Dubai government issued a decree that we were to have a unified enterprise resource planning solution for the government to manage human resources and so on. No government entity could go and invest in its own separate solution. Similarly, in the same period, the e-Government Office was launched on the idea to unify all of government services. It ended up having only a unified website after the first eighteen months. It took them almost thirteen years to try and push organizations to move from offline to online and from informative services to transactional services, but not fully online.

Why did it take thirteen years? Because here in Dubai, we have both a centralized and decentralized government at once. We have centralized budget funds, but decentralized execution in different bodies with their own directions and strategies. They come and meet at the center only for funds. It had been difficult to maneuver and bring everyone on the same page.

This had been the main point of my PhD thesis—such kinds of change in any organization should be top-down with strong leadership that supports the change across the organization. This huge change will change the lifestyle of an organization, a city, or a government or a country. You cannot expect that to happen by agencies themselves. Transformation had not been given such a momentum in Dubai before; that is why SDO was necessary.

I knew that SDO and we needed to work in several layers and not only in technology. The technology part is the easiest part: you can bring in any vendor and they will build it for you. The main issue is people, processes, and decision-making. The challenge was in all these layers and to link each layer to the other.