Al Tayer reviews digitisation of drivers and vehicles services

His Excellency Mattar Mohammed Al Tayer, Director-General, Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors of the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), reiterated RTA’s commitment to uplift the calibre of drivers and vehicles services. He also stressed the importance of migrating to smart channels such that all RTA’s transactions can be self-processed, and accordingly dispose of the need to visit service centres. Al Tayer underscored the importance of applying artificial intelligence, big data and Blockchain technologies to enhance the delivery of customers services.

“The digitisation of RTA’s transactions contributes to realising the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President, Prime Minister of the UAE, Ruler of Dubai, and the directives of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai Crown Prince, Chairman of the Executive Council, to transform Dubai into the smartest city in the world. Undoubtedly, it requires a raft of excellent services that surpass customers expectations to make them happier,” said Al Tayer.

Al Tayer made these remarks in a gathering with the directors of the Licensing Agency in which he reviewed the progress in the digitisation of the licensing services, which covers 140 services (54 for drivers licensing, 53 for vehicles licensing, 32 for commercial transport, and 1 for licensing activities monitoring). The programme is based on four key pillars: paperless services, visit-less services, simplified procedures and sustainability. The implementation of the programme is characterised by agility, which accelerated the response to changes of requirements by 70%. It has also improved the delivery time by 25%, the product by 20%, and programmers’ productivity by 15%.

Improved Services

Abdullah Yousef Al Ali, CEO of Licensing Agency, and directors at the Agency briefed Al Tayer about the digitisation of drivers licensing services, which will be up-and-running by the end of this May when 15 services will be added to the smart channels.  Transactions covered by the improved services constitute 57% of driver licensing services. The digitised services will be available on RTA’s smart channels, all the 9 driving institutes, 19 main branches, and more than 120 service delivery counters.

For instance, the improvement of opening a learning driver file will drop from 2 days and 4 visits to just 15 minutes and without visiting the centre. Simplifying the procedures of 15 main and subsidiary services will result in a uniform journey for obtaining a driver license. Improvements covered developing a unified central data system and automating the data entry through digital integration with other government systems.

Al Tayer also reviewed the latest developments of linking the commercial licensing with Invest in Dubai platform, which seeks to provide an environment conducive to investment in development projects in the Emirate. RTA’s systems have been connected with the platform, and workshops were held to brief about 11,500 companies practising 69 commercial activities in the fields of transport and car rental. Following this improvement, the time of obtaining a commercial license has plunged from 15 working days to 15 minutes only. The number of conditions list has dropped from four to one list. Equally, the number of required documents has fallen from 10 to 1 or 2 documents (depending on the transaction type), and the number of required visits has tumbled from five to zero.

Paperless Transformation

Al Tayer attended a presentation about initiatives to improve the technical testing of vehicles that included improving the Under-Process phase of the technical testing result, which improved the successful testing of vehicles from 86.2% to 88.7%.

Initiatives also included paperless technical testing certificates, which replaced the printing of technical testing certificates for customers. Customers now get an electronic copy via text messages and emails. The initiative saved the printing of 1.094 million certificates since the introduction of the system in September 2020. The compliance with the paperless transactions of the service clocked 98.3%.

The initiatives included the creation of a smart waiting panel at the technical inspection centres. The screens at customers waiting for lounges display updates about the status of testing customers vehicles and transmit vehicle’s data instantly without requiring them to wait at the testing bays. The system provides information about the time of the customer’s arrival at the centre, the expected time to start and complete the technical testing, service delivery time, and the number of vehicles in the testing bay.

Al Tayer concluded by calling upon attendees to double their efforts and set customers happiness and matching with customers expectations as a priority.