Dubai - MENA Herald: The Smart Dubai Government Establishment (SDG), the technology arm of the Smart Dubai Office (SDO), has organised a training workshop on the Happiness Meter in collaboration with the Dubai Department of Economic Development’s (DED) Dubai Service Excellence Scheme (DSES) launched in 2002.
The Happiness Meter was unveiled by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, in October 2014 with the goal of making Dubai the world's happiest city. It is a metric to interactively measure the happiness of residents, visitors and tourists in the emirate on a daily basis. Subsequently developed by SDG and implemented under the supervision of Smart Dubai Office, the Happiness Meter is being deployed in customer service centres, websites, and other touchpoints with the aim of assessing happiness levels as part of the Happiness Agenda approved by H.H. Sheikh Mohammed. It has received more than 2 million votes and registered an overall happiness and satisfaction rate of 89 per cent in May 2016.
Under a partnership agreement signed between Dr. Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, Director General of the Smart Dubai Office, and H.E. Sami Al Qamzi, Director General of DED, in September 2016, the Happiness Meter will be added as a criterion for the annual DSES Awards. It will help the business sector gain more customer confidence by identifying areas for service improvements and adopting the best practices in productivity and efficiency to make Dubai the world’s smartest and happiest city.
The training workshop was aimed at familiarizing private sector entities with the Happiness Meter and the technology interface necessary for connecting their systems with its central database. It also explained how to deal with the interactive database, enabling each entity to view the results recorded by the Meter. Multiple features allow decision-makers to view all the information related to the Meter on the database, which also has a ‘workspace’ feature that permits users to create special reports based on selected data.
H.E. Dr. Aisha said: "Happiness has been at the heart of Smart Dubai's work from the very first day. Our vision at SDO is to make Dubai the world’s happiest city by employing smart technology. We believe that happiness can be achieved and measured and that we can harness our city's resources to positively impact people's happiness in a tangible and lasting way by using tools such as the Happiness Meter. Connecting the systems of private sector entities with the central database of the Happiness Meter will give us data to help revise and constantly improve our smart transformation approach to achieve our goal of enhancing Dubai’s happiness rate to 95 per cent by 2021."
H.E. Wesam Lootah, CEO of SDG, said: "The Happiness Meter, which has been adopted by 55 government and private entities so far, is a tool for assessing positivity and happiness in the Emirate of Dubai. Activating the Happiness Meter service is a step towards the building of a distinguished smart city where the elements of sustainable well-being are available for its citizens, residents and vibrant business sector."
"The Happiness Meter is a technological innovation that helps increase efficiency and enhance the experiences of Dubai’s people in line with the vision of establishing the world’s happiest city. It is a positive step towards fulfilling the wise leadership's directives for all government and private policies as well as programmes and services to ensure the satisfaction and happiness of those interacting with the city," concluded Lootah.
“The Happiness Meter is a significant enabler for the DSES, which in itself aims to ensure shopping in Dubai a pleasant experience. The goals and the vision for the Happiness Meter will encourage member retailers in DSES to elevate their services and their pursuit of excellence to newer heights,” commented Shaikha Ahmed Al Bishri, Director of the DED’s Business Excellence Department.
