The Dubai Government Excellence Programme (DGEP), part of the General Secretariat of the Executive Council of Dubai, launched the initiative in October 2015. This initiative is in cooperation with the Centre of Organisational Excellence Research (COER), New Zealand. The initiative aims to empower a culture of institutional learning and the transfer and exchange of knowledge within the government sector. Due to the tremendous success of the 1st year of this initiative a 2nd cycle of benchmarking projects was started in April 2017. The 2nd cycle consists of the mentoring of 11 benchmarking projects, training in organisational learning and benchmarking, and the provision of a best practice resource, www.BPIR.com, for all 37 government entities.

The projects selected are shown below:

Government Entity	Project Name
Dubai Civil Aviation Authority	Remotely Piloted Aircraft System services
Dubai Corporation for Ambulance Services	Treat the patient not the clock
Dubai Customs	Dubai accredited clients
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority	AFKARI ideas management system
Dubai Health Authority	Prevention better than cure (innovative prevention program to combat Diabetes)
Dubai Human Resources Department Dubai	Launching a Human Resources Research and Studies Centre
Municipality Dubai	Innovation driven knowledge hub
Police Dubai	Governance of work hours of Dubai Police vehicles maintenance and repair tasks
Public Prosecution	Increasing the use of electronic and smart applications
General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs	Renovate your thinking
Knowledge and Human Development Authority	Holacracy safari

Projects were selected based on their potential benefits to Dubai as a whole (and the government entity) and the commitment of each government entity to complete the project. Meetings were held with each government entity to discuss their proposed projects and set expectations for the year. The photographs below show the teams of Dubai Human Resources Department Dubai, Dubai Electricity and Water Authority and Dubai Police after meetings with Dr Robin Mann and Ahmed Abbas of COER.

The official start of the 2nd cycle began with 3-days of intensive training on the TRADE Benchmarking methodology for each team. At the training the projects were further refined and the teams learnt how to manage their projects and utilise benchmarking to find and implement best practices.

The photographs below are for Dr. Ahmad Al Nusairat delivering the opening speech for the training that were undertaken. In the first batch 5 teams were trained and the second batch 6 teams were trained.

Following on from the training three progress sharing days will be held throughout the year and a final closing sharing in April 2018 to evaluate the results of the projects. The 1st progress sharing day will be held on 11 June 2017 with each team giving a 10-minute presentation describing the progress of their projects. These progress sharing days provide an excellent platform for the teams to learn from each other. As all project teams are using the TRADE benchmarking methodology it is easy to compare progress and share experiences.

To receive up to date information about this initiative subscribe to our free newsletter from here, you can also search #Dubai_We_Learn in the social media websites to see content uploaded by the teams.