The Challenges of Developing Smart Services Projects in the United Arab Emirates
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Date
2016-03
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Publisher
The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
The UAE’s ecosystem has become more complicated in terms of activity operations which have increased rapidly over the past few years. That is due to several factors that include migration to cities and the enlarged expatriate population. As a result, the activities overload along with the demands that are associated with adapting to the new changes has become a major problem. Consequently, the government still has to fulfill in to the request for finding sustainable and agile solutions that have the potential abilities to enhance the cities’ infrastructure and provide high quality and long-term standards for residents.
This dissertation demonstrates the literature review of the concept and criteria of Smart City and defines the smart services projects applied by government. The literature section explores a case study that was conducted in South Korea in order to obtain more knowledge about the field. This dissertation seeks to answer unresolved questions that are directly relevant to this research as well as highlighting the challenges associated with applying smart services in the government sector in the UAE. Furthermore, it aims to illustrate the influence of stakeholders in developing this project.
This empirical study followed a qualitative approach methodology which offers a wider range of exploratory information accessing opportunities as well as affording a better description of the issues in question. Two case studies were selected Case (A) is Federal Government (FG) and Case (B) is Local Government (LG). The data collection methods used for these cases are mainly observation in Case (A) and in-depth interviews in Case (B) where the researcher evaluates three main elements: 1.Quality of Services, 2. Customer Happiness, and 3. Security.
The major findings that derive from both Cases identify four main challenges during the development of smart services projects in the UAE:
1. Understanding stakeholders’ requirements in project phases.
2. Integrating the complex operations and services of Federal and Local Government
3. Building a collaborative team from different entities for large-scale ICT projects
4. Lack of efficient Data Protection technology
To conclude, these challenges generate some recommendations such as; involving stakeholders in large projects, creating a set of unified national laws and policies that are applicable to all governments and organizations to apply open data and establish a security governance framework to protect smart city infrastructure. Also, they indicate many opportunities for future academic research in different aspect of smart services projects.
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Keywords
Smart Services Project, smart city, Government challenges, stakeholders, security, quality of services, customer happiness, United Arab Emirates (UAE)