UAE Cabinet Approves System To Monitor Customer Satisfaction In Government Services

A new interactive digital platform has been approved by the UAE administration that monitors and displays customer satisfaction details with regard to government services in real-time. It will also display the customer satisfaction levels of different channels like websites, service delivery centers, and apps.

The approval for the Government Services Observatory was given in the first Cabinet meeting of 2023 chaired by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE. 

The UAE Cabinet has approved a Government Services Observatory

Back in July 2022, a report was published in which the UAE was complimented for its efforts in measuring user experience and pushing new methodologies to understand the mindset of the customer.

The report was published by Serco Institute, which is a global public service think tank and ExperienceLab had observed that better methods were needed to analyze and measure how citizens approached government services. They also said that a better approach is necessary that reflects the nature of the government service being offered. 

According to the report, which studied different countries in North America, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East, the UAE has been ranked as the world leader when it comes to the measurement of customer satisfaction with government services.

The inclusion of happiness as an indicator of development in 2016, the UAE, through its National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing, decided to include happiness in all policies, services, and functions of the public sector.

The Director of ExperienceLab, Ren Baba said that it is important to know how a customer feels when they interact with a government service. This helps the public system to improve itself and also a country’s economic activity, international perception, etc. are also dependent on the quality of its public services.

The UAE government launched an initiative called the Happiness Meter and this feedback system would identify the satisfaction level of a customer once they have used a government service. By 2019, almost all federal institutions in the UAE had started using the Happiness Meter. This customer feedback method was integrated into government websites and other online portals, and apps too.

The new Government Services Observatory is also an initiative in the same direction to create a more organized and efficient scale to understand the customer’s point of view.

A 2019 survey reported that the Happiness Meter was a huge success among the public and around ninety percent of happiness rating was recorded in the previous year, 2018.

Following this, in 2020, the UAE government expanded the options for public feedback and launched an app called ‘UAE Mystery Shopper’ through which the residents of the Emirate nation can rate public services and submit their feedback on government institutions. 

Ben O’Keeffe, the Deputy Director of Serco Institute said that recently a lot of efforts has been made by the government sector to measure the satisfaction of its citizens when using different public services but mostly these sort of initiatives are currently being used in the private sector.

O’Keeffe hopes that more governments of different nations worldwide would make use of customer satisfaction methodologies to know what their citizens want and improve upon those services to create a more transparent and proactive public sector. He also observed that it is important to ask the right questions to get the proper feedback.

So rather than relying on old types of surveys or Q&A methods, government institutions must be ready to incorporate new technologies and processes that can enable a better understanding of the public’s needs.                      

The cabinet also approved a strategy for development and desertification that includes around thirty-three initiatives and a national action agenda that lasts for another seven years till 2030. The current strategy looks at five main points to understand the issues created by desertification.

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These include studying and adapting to the climate change of ecosystems that were affected by desertification, preserving these environmental ecosystems, and improving the overall condition of the arid and dry lands.

Apart from this, the cabinet also approved a regulatory permit for space related activities. This would ensure proper compensations are given for damages caused to third parties during space missions.

It would also encourage more investments and pull in investors from different parts of the world to the space exploration initiatives of the UAE. The space resource activities will also be regulated under the new decision.

A new and revised Emirates Council for Food Safety will also be created as part of the decisions taken in the cabinet meeting and a more stringent financial guide would be set up for financial transfers and donations done outside the UAE.

The new year has started off with a series of new decisions that are directed at an overall improvement of the UAE economy and these will be extended as part of the vision of Sheikh Rashid Al Maktoum to bring the UAE into the top most position as a global hub for economic development.