As part of the operational managed services that GPC is providing to the Department of Municipalities & Transportation (DMT) and government since the handover of the e-NOC program from e-government entity Abu Dhabi Systems & Information Center (ADSIC) in 2016 until present, GPC supported, through a team of dedicated professionals comprising business consultants and technology developers, the implementation of a strategic initiative by Government under the aegis of DMT (previously DMA) titled Building Areas Preparations (BAP) initiative. The purpose of the initiative was to streamline government to government (G2G) coordination by obtaining planning approvals and site clearances for priority development areas for which the infrastructure is recently completed or under relatively advanced stages of development. The purpose is streamline government approvals on a timely and qualitative manner and obtain the planning and site clearance approvals on the individual plots before initiation of building permit activities by the owners. This endeavor contributes to the Government strategic direction for attracting investments in the emirate in addition to meeting and exceeding customers expectations. By the end of 2019, around 20,000 plots were covered with participation of 21+ stakeholder entities in addition to several major developers. Throughout this activity, which leveraged the e-NOC platform initially designed and operated by GPC during the foundation establishment phases of the e-NOC program, several 100,000s of entities BAP replies were reviewed using the BAP solution which was provisioned by GPC including comprehensive design, development, and operational support throughout rollout and initial operations.
Key operational support activities by GPC for the BAP initiative
In additional to business consultancy and governance support activities provided by GPC to the BAP initiative as described in the BAP case study, the operational support activities comprised, but were not limited to, the following:
- Configuring the BAP services on the e-NOC platform as part of on-going operations: GPC team configured the BAP e-NOC service on the e-NOC platform which was originally conceived as a platform-as-a-service (PAAS), and prepared the BAP circular announcing the rollout of the service that was distributed via the e-NOC helpdesk to the 800+ government end users of the e-NOC program.
- Developing the interim BAP solution using agile & adaptive technology implementation and operational enhancements: In order to expedite the BAP solution development and rollout, the GPC project team developed an interim BAP solution (using Access database) following an agile and adaptive approach as an intermediate step by the time the final solution is fully automated on the e-NOC solution (by GPC as well). This allowed the government to expedite the rollout of the solution across whole of government while continuing operational enhancements and streamlining transition into the final automated BAP solution that is being developed by GPC.
- Extending the e-NOC solution helpdesk with the complementary BAP solution helpdesk and operational support function: The GPC team mobilised a team that setup the BAP helpdesk and operations support activities using standard operating procedures based on sound practices. The operations support functions comprised: remote support to the stakeholder entities, on-site support as necessary, entities BAP replies screening and quality control validations, follow-up on entities requests for replies reissues, transactions data organisation and management, support of the review by DMT planners, applications releases smoke testing, and several others.
- Applying activities tracking dashboards and following rigorous change management procedures: Given the complexity of operations including the combination of transactions, involved entities, and multiple replies/ reissues on the individual transactions, the helpdesk team developed a activities tracking dashboards and reports to stay on top of progress and escalate pending issues with the stakeholder entities as necessary. In addition, given the complexity of the data and the iterative nature of the replies and review activities, comprehensive change management procedures, supported by the right tools & methods, were developed and applied by the helpdesk team as part of daily operations to ensure reliability of the outcomes and mitigate human errors.
Key Operational Statistics