GX endorsed at the 2nd Government Services Forum

The 2nd edition of the Government Services Forum was held at and co-hosted by the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley on Feb 21. Moderated by Jonathan Reichental, CEO of Human Future and a former CIO of the City of Palo Alto, California, the forum convened 15 experts from government, academia and the public sector, mostly from in and around the Silicon Valley, to engage in a dialogue on the future of government services. The Forum was launched by the Emirates Government Service Excellence Program (EGSEP) at the UAE Prime Minister’s Office in 2019 with the inaugural edition being held at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

The attendees included:  Dr. Peter Pirnejad, Senior Director Global Public Sector at Oracle; Pete Peterson, Dean of School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University; Michelle Littlefield, Data & Analytics Manager, City & County of San Francisco; Jane Wiseman, CEO at the Institute for Excellence in Government and Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School; Elizabeth Goodman, Director of Design at A1M; Jason Rissman, Managing Director at OpenIDEO—IDEO; His Excellency Mohamed Bin Taliah, Assistant Director General for Government Services Sector at the Prime Minister’s Office in the Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE; Dan Chenok, Executive Director at the IBM Center for The Business of Government, USA; Henry Brady, Dean and Class of 1941 Monroe Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley; Alex Holmes, Global Business Development - Worldwide Public Sector at Amazon Web Services (AWS); Catherine Carlton, City Council Member, City of Menlo Park; Marc Hebert, Director Innovation Office at the Human Services Agency San Francisco; Jonathan Simkin, Co-founder and CEO at Swiftly; Michael Brownrigg, City Council Member at the City of Burlingame; Christina Arizpuro, Industry Executive Advisor, Public Sector at SAP.
 
The Forum was organized as a roundtable and comprised of three sessions. The first session, ‘Citizen 2030: How Should Governments Prepare?’ explored the implications of changing citizen expectations on government services.  The second session, ‘Government Digital Services: What’s Working, What’s Not?’ discussed challenges being faced by Governments in delivering citizen-centric services. Panelists acknowledged that the new and innovative services must not only provide an experience but also be inclusive. The final session, ‘Emerging Technology and Data-Use Implications: What Rules Do We Need?’, witnessed the panelists talking about the future of government services in a data-driven digital world. Compounded with the remarkable emerging power of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), the panelists said that there is significant responsibility by governments to manage this capability and data with care.

Panelists were invited to join the GX portal. The panelists endorsed the GX portal and noted its critical role in facilitating the global exchange of ideas and expertise revolving around the design and delivery of government services. The forum concluded with panelists agreeing to continue the dialogue on the future of government services through the portal and the future editions of the Government Services Forum. 

The Emirates Government Services Excellence Program was launched in 2011, in line with the vision of the UAE to be one of the best countries in the world by the year 2021. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai launched the program in order to raise the efficiency of government services to a seven-star level, by focusing on customer centricity and enhancing government efficiency.

Details on the inaugural Forum held in Feb 2019 can be found here: 
https://gx.ae/en/resources/digital-transformation-and-why-it-s-essential-for-government-services
https://gx.ae/en/resources/government-services-forum-at-the-world-government-summit-2019-detailed-report

For more details on the Forum, please contact Chetan Choudhury.