IBIMA Publishing
Journal of E-Government Studies and Best Practices
http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/ JEGSBP/jegsbp.html
Vol. 2010 (2010), Article ID 897910, 9 pages
DOI: 10.5171/2010.897910
Supporting e-Government Progress in
the United Arab Emirates
Dunkin Westland1 and Ali M. Al-Khouri2
1
PA consulting, London, UK
2
Emirates Identity Authority, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
____________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract
This article provides an overview of current international e-Government practices and the role of
the national identity management infrastructure program in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in
supporting e-Government development. It describes the benefits of e-Government that various
governments worldwide have identified, sheds light on some recent surveys on the delivery of e-
Government by some countries, highlights some examples and puts the position of the United Arab
Emirates into context. It then discusses the program's use of Identity Management in the strategic
initiatives, explains their purpose in the facilitation of e-Government within the United Arab
Emirates and describes a general roadmap for implementation.
Keywords: ID card, Identity Management, e-Gov, PKL
______________________________________________________________________
at 49 in the world in terms of the overall
Introduction eGov maturity and development. It was
Amidst the many promises of the ranked at 25 in terms of telecommunication
Information Communication Technologies infrastructure. However, it was ranked 86 at
(ICT) revolution is its potential to modernise e-Participation, and 99 at Online services.
government organisations, strengthen their The future e-Government strategy of the
operations and make them more responsive UAE's government includes the objective of
to the needs of their citizens. However, the raising the standing of the United Arab
experiences of many countries around the Emirates as a provider of fully connected
world is that in order to truly reap the citizen to government services by providing
benefits of e-government and cope with its the enabling infrastructure to facilitate full
growth, governments are required to develop interaction between government entities, the
and setup a robust ICT infrastructure. private sector and citizens.
In a recent United Nations (2010) survey of This paper provides a contextual briefing of
global readiness for e-Government services, current progress in the realisation of e-
the United Arab Emirates was regarded as government in the United Arab Emirates and
one of the leading Arab countries and ranked
Copyright © 2010 Dunkin Westland and Ali M. Al-Khouri. This is an open access article distributed
under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited. Contact
author: Ali M. Al-Khouri: e-mail: ali.alkhouri@emiratesid.ae

the use of identity management to support e- (Burn and Robins, 2003). Most governments
government. The following section provides have introduced some form of e-Government
a short review of existing literature related to program ranging from a simple web presence
e-Government development, strategic drivers providing information to more advanced
and projected benefits. implementations providing a range of
transactional services of ever increasing
The Case for e-Government sophistication and scope. E-Government
E-Government can be defined as the use of strategies worldwide are driven by a desire
Information and communication technology to improve the efficiency, accessibility and
(ICT) to provide and improve government effectiveness of public service delivery
services by enabling electronic transactions (Chesher et al., 2003). Focal benefits to both
and interactions between citizens, citizens and the government are summarised
businesses, and other arms of government in Figure 1 below.
Fig. 1 – Internal and External eGov Contributions
Source: (United Nations, 2008)
In considering the next phase of e- world. For example the United Kingdom’s e-
Government development for the United Government strategy highlighted potential
Arab Emirates, it is important that the benefits to citizens, business, suppliers and
strategic drivers and projected benefits need the wider public sector as depicted in Table-
to be clearly focused up on. Helpful 1 below (UK Cabinet Office, 2000).
benchmarks are available from across the

Table – 1: Potential e-Gov benefits
Public
Sector Examples Benefits
transaction
with
Citizens Information Wider choice of channels,
Culture Convenience, lower transaction costs, more
Health personal service, greater awareness of
Education services and policies, greater democratic
Benefits transactions participation and openness
Taxation
Business Support programs Quicker, faster interactions, reducing
Advice and guidance transaction costs, and the regulatory burden
Regulation
Taxation
Suppliers e-procurement Reduced transaction costs, better inventory
management, shared data environments
Other Communication Greater accuracy and efficiency, reduced
public between departments transaction costs.
sector and agencies between Better use of the knowledge base. More
bodies central and local nimble, flexible working arrangements.
government Policy
making
Many of these objectives and benefits are or departments of education, health, social
clearly resonant with the e-Government welfare, labour and finance may/may not
objectives of the United Arab Emirates. The exist. Much of the information is static and
additional challenge of managing the there is little interaction with citizens.
provision of public services to a large, mobile
and rapidly changing population of foreign Stage II - Enhanced: Governments provide
residents and temporary workers further more information on public policy and
increases complexity. Together these should governance. They have created links to
drive the implementation of e-Government archived information that is easily accessible
within the United Arab Emirates. to citizens, as for instance, documents, forms,
reports, laws and regulations, and
UAE progress towards e-Government in newsletters.
the global context
The UN e-government survey uses a ranked Stage III - Interactive: Governments deliver
measure of e-Government readiness. The online services such as downloadable forms
survey recognises five stages of e- for tax payments and applications for license
government maturity relating to web renewals. In addition, the beginnings of an
presence: interactive portal or website with services to
enhance the convenience of citizens are
Stage I - Emerging: A government’s online evident.
presence is mainly comprised of a web page
and/or an official website; links to ministries

Stage IV - Transactional: Governments The role of Identity Management
begin to transform themselves by Infrastructure in the delivery of e-
introducing two-way interactions between Government
‘citizen and government’. It includes options
for paying taxes, applying for birth
certificates, passports and license renewals, The Identity Management Infrastructure
as well as other similar Government to (IMI) as developed part of the UAE national
Customer interactions, and allows the citizen ID card program has an imperative role as
to access these services online 24/7. All the single source for personal identity
transactions are conducted online. provision in the Country. The IMI
development is planned to be implemented
Stage V - Connected: Governments through three strategic initiatives which
transform themselves into a connected entity directly support e-Government within the
that responds to the needs of its citizens by United Arab Emirates. These are:
developing an integrated back office
infrastructure. This is the most sophisticated • Issuing Identity Cards to all
level of online e-government initiatives and individuals;
is characterised by: • Public Key Infrastructure; and
• Federated Identity Management
1. Horizontal connections (among
government agencies) These initiatives, and their fit within the
2. Vertical connections (central and strategic intents of the program, are
local government agencies) discussed in the following sections.
3. Infrastructure connections
(interoperability issues) 4.1 Issuing Identity Cards: Enabling secure
4. Connections between governments
remote authentication
and citizens
5. Connections among stakeholders Transactional e-Government services rely on
(government, private sector, some form of user authentication (and
academic institutions, NGOs and civil indeed authentication of the e-Government
society). Service provider). There are a number of
Many studies revealed that the United Arab possible solutions for user authentication.
Emirates has distinguished itself in the Most organisations providing transactional
customer centric eGovernment development services use passcode authentication,
approach it adopted (Al-Khouri and Bal, examples are the UK (Government Gateway)
2007). Nonetheless, extensive work is and Singapore (Singpass). However these
needed to address the requirement of provide limited assurance and very limited
“connected” services (United Nations, 2008). non-repudiation of the transaction (see for
The enhancement of e-Government in the example: Lambrinoudakis and Gritzalis,
UAE and the region therefore will require a 2003).
focus on establishing the necessary
infrastructure to deliver connected services Some countries therefore have moved
and the development of targeted service towards token-based authentication
offerings to deliver related benefits to the (smartcards) – Belgium and Oman being
citizen and government. notable examples. The national ID program
provides the United Arab Emirates with this
capability too, through the secure and

sophisticated design of the ID Card. Strong biometric authentication is required
authentication and non-repudiation of (either on its own or as part of a
transactions are both enabled by the new three factor authentication). An
example is use for border crossing.
smart ID card because each card contains
individual secret keys for authentication of 4.2 Provision of a federal public key
the card and for document signing. infrastructure
The use of the ID Card for authentication and
The UAE government through this program
non-repudiation is supported by a Public Key
is introducing a flexible authentication
Infrastructure (PKI). The program runs a PKI
architecture. The Federated Identity
for the ID Card. It provides digital
Management system described below,
certificates to enable use of the ID Card for
combined with the ID Card, will support
authentication and non-repudiation. This is
single factor authentication (passcode), two
an interim solution and it is intended that the
factor authentication with the ID Card (PIN
UAE government2 to roll-out a Strategic PKI
and token) and even three-factor
during 2010. This strategic initiative will
authentication (PIN, token, biometric). This
address key areas such as trust, identity
has two advantages for the United Arab
management and privacy, within the context
Emirates:
of a modern, secure, Public Key
• It does not mandate a particular Infrastructure- (PKI-) based e-government
authentication approach that an e- model. The PKI project will primarily
Government service provider must include:
take. The service provider is free to
choose a method which is • A Root Certificate Authority, which is
appropriate to the value of the the ultimate trust point for all ID
transaction (although there would Cards; and
seem to be little advantage in using a
• A Population Certificate Authority,
passcode, given the availability of
subordinate to the Root Certificate
the ID Card).
Authority, which creates the digital
• It supports all authentication certificates that each card needs
methods that will be required for the
The Root CA will, by its nature, also provide a
foreseeable future. Whilst two
factor, PKI-based authentication is solution for other Government PKI uses, such
generally accepted as sufficient for as issuance of SSL and VPN certificates to
the majority of e-Government support secure communication. The
interactions1 - approved digital infrastructure will have the flexibility to
signatures have legal weight support the establishment of other
equivalent to a hand-written subordinate Certificate Authorities for these
signature in many jurisdictions -
purposes, in addition to the Population
there are occasions where the
assurance level provided by Certificate Authority.
1
Two factor authentication may either use a card
2
reader connect to a PC, with or without a PIN pad or Emirates Identity Authority, a Federal Government
a separate (air-gapped) card reader. Authentication organization responsible for the implementation of
using connected readers is susceptible to malware but the ID card for all the population of the UAE, is
has advantages where signing of documents is working on the PKI project, with the objective of
required. support eGovernment initiatives.

4.3 Provision of federated identity enable them to authenticate a user via their
management ID Card.
It is possible for each e-Government service
provider to authenticate a user via their ID Instead, an e-Government service provider
Card, however it is not necessary for them to may redirect a user’s web browser to the FIM
implement the functionality to do this. The web service for authentication. Then, once
Federated Identity Management (FIM) the user has authenticated, the service
initiative is provisioned to provide a single provider can trust the assertion of identity
sign-on service for authenticating users, (via a SAML assertion). This simplifies the
which service providers can make use of. implementation of the service provision and
This means that both federal and local places the burden of user authentication on a
government departments which provide single organisation; i.e., ID Card Authority.
services to citizens via their web-sites do not This is appropriate because the authority is
have to authenticate users themselves. This the organisation that is best placed to
releases them from the requirement to manage authentication. It also ensures that
maintain a database of authorised users or any identity information that the service
provide functionality, such as certificate provider requires will be authoritative and
validation and authentication applets, to up-to-date because ID Card Authority is the
primary source of such information.
Fig. 2: e-Government enabling components.
_______________________________________________________
3 The user would not necessarily be aware of this redirection.

Fig. 2 shows components needed to enable e- These components should enable the
Government, although it does not include implementation of the UAE's overall strategic
components within the service providers’ intents to support advanced e-Government
systems, which are dependent on the nature development. Fig. 3 shows how PKI,
of the service. The components provided by Federated Identity Management and ID Card
the ID Card Authority are the Token, PKI, and initiatives map to its strategic intents and to
the interfacing layer. the e-Government maturity model :
Fig 3: Mapping of EIDA's initatives to its strategic intents
and to the e-Government maturity model
functionality that it supports. ID card roll-
ID Cards Authority's roadmap for the out is currently taking place and is projected
future of e-Government in the United Arab to reach 8 million by the end of 2013. In
Emirates parallel to the ID Card roll-out, several
Fig. 4 below depicts a high level initiatives are put in place to develop an
implementation plan of the intended UAE infrastructure to support the card’s use as a
Identity Management Development program two-factor authentication token for e-
related to the roll-out of the e-Government Government applications.
Fig. 4: Emirates ID Roadmap

system are both designed to facilitate the
Conclusion implementation of e-Government services
Practices related to e-governance are rapidly within the United Arab Emirates. This is
becoming a key national priority for all envisaged to support advanced development
countries and a global phenomenon. of e-government specifically in areas related
However, our observation of eGovernment to e-inclusion and e-participation, as well as
projects in public sector organisations all the end-to-end integrated government work
over the world is that they still lack processes.
fundamental infrastructure to make
considerable progress. Existing assessment Acknowledgment Partial content of this
studies of e-Government readiness shows article was presented in the Cards Middle
that governments need to adopt more East 2010 Conference, held in Dubai, United
effective approaches to promote in principle, Arab Emirates.
the authentication of online identities. Key to
achieving this requirement is to develop a References
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Lootah, R. & Geray, O. (2006) "Dubai About the Authors
eGovernment Case Study," Dubai
eGovernment [Online]. [Retrieved February Dr. Duncan Westland is
22, 2010], working with PA consulting
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/40/3698 and is based in London. He
6277.pdf. received his doctorate from
Oxford University. He has
UK Cabinet Office (2000) "e-government: a expertise in biometrics and
strategic framework for public services in the related identity management
Information Age." [Online]. [Retrieved technologies, including public key
February 22, 2010], infrastructure and security features to
http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e- support issuance of ID Cards and e-passports.
envoy/resources-pdfs/$file/Strategy.pdf He has worked for the UK’s Identity and
Passport Service for five years and held the
United Nations (2008) "UN e-Government post of Biometrics Architect for the UK’s
Survey 2008: From E-Government to National Identity Service. He was previously
Connected Governance." New York. [Online]. responsible for assuring the passport
[Retrieved February 22, 2010], production system for the UK’s first e-
http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/publ passport.
ic/documents/un/unpan028607.pdf
duncan.westland@paconsulting.com
United Nations (2010) Global E-Government
Survey 2010: Leveraging E-government at a
Time of Financial and Economic Crisis. New
York. [Online]. [Retrieved February 22, Dr. Ali M. Al-Khouri is
2010], the Managing Director of
http://www2.unpan.org/egovkb/global_rep Emirates Identity
orts/10report.htm. Authority, UAE. He
received his doctorate
from Warwick University,
UK in Managing Strategic and Large Scale
Government Projects. He has been involved
in many strategic government projects for
the past 10 years. He is a member of the UAE
e-Passport steering committee, as well as an
executive board member of the National
Centre of Statistics. His recent research areas
focus on developing best practices in public
sector management and the development of
information societies.
ali.alkhouri@emiratesid.ae.