Dubai, 01 March 2021: Dubai Municipality has submitted 170,267 ideas it received through its unified Suggestion Scheme and the Mohammed bin Rashid Smart Council from its beginning in 2008 until 2020. Out of them 17,545 were feasible ideas, through which, the scheme has so far achieved financial savings amounting to approximately Dhs105 million.

Dawoud Al Hajri, Director General of Dubai Municipality emphasized that the Corporate Suggestion Scheme is a program in which all entities, including employees, customers, partners, and community members participate, with the aim of improving and innovating all of the Municipality’s work, and this is one of the most important pillars of the innovation charter that was launched to adopt the foundations and practices of innovation in the Municipality.

“Many lessons have been learned at the Municipality level in terms of creating a spirit of competition between all groups, merging ideas, posing challenges and opportunities to find innovative solutions in different ways, encouraging creativity and development, moving away from routine methods of implementing tasks, and using the simplest innovative methods of providing services, or adding new services to raise their level, and encouraging access to the latest experiences, technologies and practices,” Al Hajri said.  

“As a matter of concern for the customers and community members, the ideas received from the Mohammed bin Rashid Smart Council are adopted, to focus on them and quickly respond to them and not be repeated by the Municipality's employees in another system, which reduces the time allocated to responding to ideas, evaluating them and applying ideas that can be used,” he said. 

Eng. Ahmed Saeed Al-Badwawi, Director of Knowledge and Innovation Department, explained that the Municipality is keen to find and activate appropriate channels for the participation of employees and customers in proposing ideas and presenting opinions. 

He said the Suggestion Scheme began in 2000 in the Municipality with the aim of laying down foundations, procedures and systems that encourage the submission of suggestions and be a tool and means to stimulate creativity and attract ideas with appreciation of the contributors.

Al-Badwawi indicated towards the importance of periodic innovation lab sessions among employees to come up with ideas and suggestions that would develop the work in the Municipality and contribute to support creativity and encouragement of employees and creating a stimulating environment for that.  

He added that the Municipality was keen to create a stimulating mechanism to receive ideas in an effort to provide the best services to the public and customers.

Al-Badwawi pointed out that the Municipality has created policies and methodologies to manage ideas, innovation and knowledge in the Municipality, and through the incentive and honoring system in the Municipality with the aim of stimulating creativity and attracting innovative ideas that will continue developing and improving working methods, systems and procedures in the Municipality and the quality of the services it provides.    

He stressed that every suggestion is a new idea for development and innovation, whether it is a method of work, a system or a procedure, so that it results in practical benefits that have remarkable positive results in any field of investment of material and human resources, such as raising the happiness of customers, the quality, efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of work and work environment and other areas related to the Municipality's tasks and specializations.

Al-Badwawi stated that the Suggestion Scheme is considered opening doors for the freedom to create and put forward ideas that can be applied, in order to secure a decent life for this generation and for future generations.

“It aims to offer useful suggestions that serve the goals and objectives of the public good, and to confirm that this is one of the most effective programs aimed at improving the level of services provided by the Municipality, with the aim of establishing the foundations of partnership between employees, customers and partners in the improvement processes at the administrative, social and environmental levels in the Emirate of Dubai,” he added.

Al-Badwawi emphasized the principle of positive participation for all by highlighting potential energies and creative ideas, contributing to increasing revenues, rationalizing expenditures, saving time, effort and money, encouraging the spirit of cooperation by providing the opportunity to benefit from everyone's experiences and ideas, simplifying procedures, shortening time, speed of response, and improving corporate performance and activating the participation of the various community elements in the processes of improving the services available in the city, and achieving the happiness of employees and customers. 

Ohood Abdul Kareem, Manager of Innovation and Suggestions Care Section, said that Dubai Municipality organized a special virtual ceremony to celebrate and honor the owners of creative ideas with material results, whether by increasing revenues or rationalizing the expenses of the Municipality or ideas with moral or creative results related to ideas to address the Covid-19 pandemic. 

“It also coincided with the activities of the “UAE Innovates” month at the national level, embodying and translating the directives of the wise leadership that has already transcended the limits of time to achieve happiness for its people, the highest standards of living and sustainability, by making ideas and innovation a method of work and a mark of government development and an essential tributary of growth,” said Abdul Kareem. 

She mentioned that the Municipality holds an annual celebration to honor the creators of ideas for their contribution to the Corporate Suggestion Scheme, as these suggestions contributed to achieving a material return (revenues and rationalizing expenditures) and also had a moral effect in raising the level of the institution’s performance. 

It should be noted that Dubai Municipality also pays great attention to registering the outputs of ideas of the Municipality's innovations and documenting them in the Ministry of Economy as intellectual properties, patents or trademarks according to their classification.

Until the end of 2020, the Municipality has registered 236 intellectual properties, patents or trademarks. The Knowledge and Innovation Department follows up any employee who wishes to register an intellectual property or patent with the Ministry of Economy and grant a certificate to the owner of the intellectual property.