{"id":42971,"date":"2019-11-04T10:13:55","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T10:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/?p=42971"},"modified":"2019-11-04T10:13:58","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T10:13:58","slug":"using-technology-to-protect-the-vulnerable-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/2019\/11\/04\/using-technology-to-protect-the-vulnerable-in-dubai\/","title":{"rendered":"Using technology to protect the vulnerable in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the Community Development Authority in Dubai (CDA) playing a vital part in the way the government of Dubai helps vulnerable groups, Intelligent CIO speaks to its director Yousef Mohammed Bin Lahej Al Falasi, about how the organisation is using IT to better deliver its services, the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and the way CDA utilises analytics. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Community Development Authority in Dubai\n(CDA) plays a vital part in the way the government of Dubai operates to help\nvulnerable groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDA has adopted state-of-the-art technologies to\nanalyse the services it provides to customers and improve its communication with\nthem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of its noteworthy projects is \u2018Masar,\u2019 a\nsmart application that enables communication with those registered with its\nempowerment programme. The application allows CDA\u2019s empowerment management team\nto interact with customers and update them on training schedules and send reminders\nto attend job interviews and employment events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The application enables users to give feedback and\nfollow up the implementation of CDA\u2019s empowerment plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Empowering people who are eligible for financial\nand social benefits is one of CDA\u2019s key missions. As a result, CDA has\nidentified financial empowerment as one of the best methodologies to enhance\nthe financial security of low-income people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve this, it has been conducting successful\ninterventions, including training, as well as education and social support for\nthe underprivileged, helping them acquire financial and other skills that\nsignificantly enhance their social and physical security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Masar application enables easy communication\nwith the participants of CDA\u2019s empowerment programmes, following up on their\nfiles and helping determine the extent to which the plans set for them have\nbeen completed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will ensure that customers stay informed\nand demonstrates a commitment to the success of their plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDA utilises a\nsmart dashboard that tracks service delivery, providing daily reports on the\nstatus of services provided to all customers. This service helps the CDA\u2019s top\nmanagement to improve the quality of the services provided to the customers by taking\nnecessary decisions on the development of social services, introducing new\ninitiatives, and by addressing the evolving needs of the members of the\ncommunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intelligent CIO<\/em>, spoke to Yousef Mohammed Bin Lahej Al Falasi, a Director at CDA, about how the organisation is using IT to better deliver its services, the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and the way CDA uses analytics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Yousef Mohammed Bin Lahej Al Falasi, Director, CDA <\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me about the work of the Community Development Authority. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nCommunity Development Authority works with various vulnerable groups in Dubai,\nparticularly senior citizens, widowed women, separated people, people with\ndisabilities and those socially excluded. We are a government organisation\ncreated to bring forward social inclusion by providing various types of support\nservices to them in accordance with their specific needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\naddition, we provide support to members of the community with low income and\npeople that have been disabled, which prevents them from going back to work and\nthe authority focuses on empowering them socially and financially. Our approach\ninvolves assessing their situation, to see what they have, what challenges they\ncurrently face and provide a plan of action that will enable them to overcome the\nchallenges socially. Afterwards, we assess their ability about whether they can\ngo back to work or to their own businesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How\nare you using IT systems to deliver these services?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

IT\nsystems enhance our efforts to collect social data. However, at present we are\nstill working on this as a relatively new initiative because these are impact-based\nprogrammes. There is a need for us to develop our own model because there is no\none-size-fits all programme for social behaviour monitoring and social change\nmonitoring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nevery country has their own model based on its own cultural and social\nperformances, thus, it also has its own specific method of measuring change. We\nhave implemented a three-stage programme, starting with the gathering of data\nand analysing it. We look forward to automating the entire case management in\nthe future through Artificial Intelligence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nempowerment team is working on an in-house programme called the Social Risk\nMatrix which identifies clients and categorises them and provides corrective as\nwell as preventive action from a social level. It will read all the factors,\nidentify them and automate the case management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nterms of changing people’s behaviour, there must be a representative from the government\nsector to monitor that change. We have appointed case managers that sit with\nthese clients to address their need for support in terms of putting up a plan and\nthe steps for them to implement change, from the stage where they depend on\ngovernment funds to the point that they can depend on themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nmonitor behaviour and change in the social sector takes a lot of focus, sustenance\nand monitoring. For this aspect, it is not possible to fully automate this type\nof service as the whole concept significantly requires human element to effect\nthe changes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nautomate as much as we can up to the stage of automating the empowerment plan, the\ntraining, upscaling of the plan or even the timetable throughout this important\njourney. Empowerment focuses first on awareness, then upscaling and job\nplacement, training and development and self-training. Within the plan, we put\nall these elements together and the plan works as a reminder and monitors the\nperformance of the clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe future, we look to move towards implementing Machine Learning, where we plan\nto develop the KPIs from the social sector to measure the impact that we are\ncreating within the community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe long-term, we see moving into increasing our AI systems to enable all our\nclients access services through touchscreens where one simply uses their ID and\nall relevant social information, and it will automatically register the user in\nour social intervention programmes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do\nyou think AI can only grow in importance in the future? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes,\nI am confident AI will only increase in value in the\ncoming years. In the region, information exchange is done differently\nwhere it used to be operating through book registration. Now, we are talking\nabout a 360-degree approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introducing\nchange in a community really requires a lot of focus into so many different\nlevels. There is a need to focus at the individual level, the family level, and\nthe community to be able to sustain change. However, at present it is not easy\nto simultaneously monitor their concerns, which makes it necessary to automate\nmonitoring programmes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Change\nis not easy to implement and sustain if we miss one single element. If an individual\nreceives the message, we must ensure that the family can host it and also that\nthe community believes in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe information age, AI will enable us into developing\nthis understanding into futuristic programmes – giving us forecasts or insights\nto enable us to decide on our next steps or what we need to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\nare also introducing the Social Risk Register where we predict challenges in\nthe future, and we create scenarios of how we will address these challenges\nwhen they happen. We call it the ‘what- if’ analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nsounds as if analytics is really important to the way your organisation\noperates?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis certainly important. We mainly cater to UAE nationals based in Dubai as well\nas the larger community in the emirate which compose of various nationalities.\nIt is essential for us to understand what is happening around various\ncommunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nterms of analysis, we need to know what is going on in the news, in the economy\nand who is doing what in order to have a better social analysis. We cannot analyse the data based on a single source, which\nmakes it necessary to apply the 360-degree view and then based on that,\nmove towards automation. However, this will take some time to build up queries\nand KPIs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nsocial change, there are multiple variations with the queries, which means we need\nto build up and constantly monitor these variations to have something sturdy. The\ncommunity must be involved and the people in building up these KPIs, to be\ntruly able to deliver effective services to the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\nis the attitude of the community to technology?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare still varying degrees of responses when it comes to technology use. For the\npeople who are skilled to use these kind of systems, we are keeping the service\navailable online. However, for those who do not know how to use the system, we provide\nan offline mode and it is being administered through a case manager. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays,\nit is easier than five or 10 years ago because most people now own a smartphone\nor has access to a normal desktop or laptop to access the Internet.  When it comes to support the elderly, what we\nhave is a system where a couple of clicks will enable them to request\nsomething. We don’t want them to go through putting in too many details because\nsenior citizens are normally not keen to stay online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis important for us to cater to all these kinds of customers \u2013 and think the\nway they think to provide solutions based on their mindset and accustomed\npractices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nother side of the coin, I expect, is that the younger generation expect all the\nservices to be online?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nyoung generation nowadays have become more dependent to technology that they want\neverything delivered to their home or location and that is both good and bad.\nIt is good to have access to a smartphone as one can deliver anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\npeople are beginning to realise as well that there is a\nneed to develop social applications that improve our social cohesion and\ninclusion. This is an important factor in terms of developing technology applications\nfor the social sector. In previous years, people were unconvinced that the\npublic would use them but bearing in mind the attitude of the younger\ngeneration, I believe this is what will happen within the next two to three\nyears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\ncan see services moving towards empowering the National ID, just like the\nsocial security number in the United States and Europe, which means there will\nbe an increase in data acquisition and sharing. The younger ones are not afraid\nof sharing this information, but the older generation are still hesitant to these\ntrends. In this regard, we will have more applications in\nthe social sector which will cater to younger generations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Community Development Authority in Dubai (CDA) playing a vital part in the way the government of Dubai helps vulnerable groups, Intelligent CIO speaks to its director Yousef Mohammed Bin Lahej Al Falasi, about how the organisation is using IT to better deliver its services, the potential of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":42972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1493,809,13,185],"tags":[112,3355,10579,10578,1544,420,3430,10576,10577,10575],"class_list":["post-42971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-more-news","category-top-stories","category-uae","tag-analytics","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cda","tag-community-development-authority","tag-data","tag-dubai","tag-machine-learning","tag-masar","tag-vulnerable","tag-yousef-mohammed-bin-lahej-al-falasi"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42971"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42982,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42971\/revisions\/42982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}