These slides were presented during the UAE Social Media Clud #SMCUAELab meet up in Dubai. It highlights some examples of the innovative uses of social media for government-citizen engagement.

1. Innovation in Government-Citizen Engagement
Using Social Media
Dr. Saeed Al Dhaheri
ICT Expert
@DDSaeed
Social Media Club UAE

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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 make
people 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Thank you