Innovation in Government-Citizen Engagement

Using Social MediaDr. Saeed Al Dhaheri

ICT Expert

@DDSaeed

Social Media Club UAE

UAE Plans to be one of the most

innovative countries in the world

2015 the year of Innovation

National Innovation Strategy

Emphases on government innovation

Mohammed bin Rashid Center for Gov Innovation

National Innovation Committee

UAE is 1st in the ME and 36 world-wide in

innovation – GII 2014

What does this means?

Social Media Club UAE

increasing adoption in UAE for smart

phones and Social Media

57% of handsets registered on the UAE’s networks were Smartphones

5 M facebook users in UAE (2nd in the GCC)

> 400,000 twitter users

About 1 M LinkedIn users (the largest in the GCC)

Convergence of mobile and social media

The Nexus of Forces are driving

innovation in Public & Private Sectors

The Nexus of Forces “is the convergence and mutual

reinforcement of social,

mobility, cloud and

information patterns that

drive new business

scenarios.” - Gartner

Social Media Club UAE

Government-Citizen Social Media

Engagement• SM as one of the main communication & engagement channels

with the public

• Social Media:

• Enable citizen participation with government

• Improves awareness & promotion about

Gov services -> increase uptake

• Improves quality of services through feedback

from the public

• Improves transparency

• Co-creating and crowdsourcing is possible

Social Media Club UAE

The Engagement Game

What is citizen engagement: The exchange of ideas, information and feedback between citizens and government organizations

good citizens engagement from government agencies increases citizens trust in the government

“Good citizen engagement is actually a national security issue,,, bad customer experiences makepeople less excited about the prospects of our country itself.” – Rick Parrish, Forrester research

How to improve Gov-Citizen engagement through Social Media?

Create engagement and content strategies

e.g, ask people to give comments and feedback

Think from citizen perspective

Address the “immediacy-to-respond” issue

Provide incentives for people to engage

Build capacity for social media engagement

Measure engagement

Social Media Club UAE

Innovation Examples in Social

Media Engagement

• The National Brainstorming session launched through Twitter

• Outsourcing ideas to improve health and education sector

• More than 82,000 ideas received

• More than 12 M users interacted with the initiative

• Initiative encouraged citizen participation

• Brainstorming became a practice in gov organizations

Social Media Club UAE

Innovation Examples in Social

Media Engagement

“UAE Pioneers” award initiative launched through Twitter

To recognize and award UAE pioneers “first emaratis”

43 nominated individuals nominated

137,000 nominations

Initiative created healthy environment for competition

Initiative encouraged citizen participation

A case study needs to be documented

Social Media Club UAE

More innovative uses of SM is

needed

Government organization need to develop more innovative uses of

Social Media engagement with customers/citizens

Apply social analytics to provide insight

Extend social media uses to enterprise social networking

Social Media Club UAE

Thank you