Dubai Municipality launches an initiative "Signs of the Future – Dubai Community Observatory"
Dubai, November 11, 2017 – Dubai Municipality launched the “Signs of the Future – Dubai Community Observatory” initiative to be the first institutional communication channel via the WhatsApp application specifically designed to enable more than 3.8 million Dubai residents and visitors to contribute directly to Dubai Municipality’s strategic foresight processes and transform them from customers into active partners in shaping the future.
The service translates its vision for Dubai Municipality to be a leader in a global city that embraces proactiveness and anticipating the future as a business approach whose goal is to develop municipal work and provide the best quality of life for Dubai’s residents and visitors.
The smart service is characterized by a systematic separation mechanism that is the first of its kind in the world, as it clearly distinguishes between immediate operational reports such as; Reporting a problem and forward-looking signals such as; Monitoring a future opportunity is the first emerging societal behavior. The new service separates today’s services from tomorrow’s ideas to ensure rapid response to current problems and enhance planning processes for future opportunities.
His Excellency Eng. Marwan Ahmed bin Ghalita, Director General of Dubai Municipality, said, “Municipal work today has become a proactive work, and we, as Dubai Municipality, manage the services of a global and rapidly growing city. We are committed to activating the proactive municipal model in an effective way so that it touches every detail of the daily lives of Dubai’s residents to make it the best city in terms of quality of life, sustainability, and attractiveness. The Future Signs Initiative – Dubai Community Observatory is a qualitative step that transforms our work from a model of responding to current challenges to a model of being proactive in creating opportunities for the future by activating the collective intelligence of society.” This channel “It detects signals that seem small today but will shape tomorrow’s reality and help us achieve our vision of making Dubai the best city in the world for quality of life.”
The new channel enhances Dubai Municipality’s highly efficient services system. While the municipality continues to provide its immediate services with its usual efficiency through its designated channels, this channel is dedicated to monitoring weak signals that form the basis of readiness for the future, which ensures rapid response to today’s challenges and enhances the depth of strategic planning for tomorrow’s opportunities.
The Future Signals – Dubai Community Observatory platform represents an open invitation to every Dubai resident to become a “future forecaster” through a simple conversation on WhatsApp. The user is encouraged to describe his observation and then motivated to think forward-looking by answering the question: What if? Instead of just submitting an immediate report, the user can now report a forward-looking opportunity. These signals will reach the municipality’s strategic foresight team for analysis and incorporation into future plans, expanding the scope of the Horizon Scan to include the entire community.
Dubai Municipality launched the “Asia-Pacific Cities Summit and Mayors Forum 2025” held in Dubai recently; Its global report, “Proactive Municipality: Creating the Future through Emerging Signals,” presented its methodology to the leaders of more than 350 global cities, which is based on listening to signals before they turn into reality.
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