The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) has announced that the number of the UAE’s national portal users reached 8.5 million during the first half of 2021. Users increased by 42% compared with last year.
TDRA stated that this increase is due to the great efforts exerted to develop the portal and provide online services and information according to the current circumstances. According to the results, the portal is the UAE society’s first source of services, information, particularly those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The UAE’s national portal has employed automatic learning tools to provide a unique experience focusing on the customer. It uses advanced research algorisms that can identify entity names (Named Entity Recognition – NER). Named entities may be individuals, organizations, places, etc. This mechanism provides users with accurate search results designed for the keywords entered by the user. Search results include images and summaries quoted from the search topic.
TDRA indicated that updates on the portal included the launch of a new page for the statistics portal users, which is automatically read from Google Analytics, and provides real-time data based on application programming interfaces (APIs). Updates included also launch of the live chat bot (around the clock 24/7) to answer customer queries automatically, using artificial intelligence techniques. Users can ask questions in the form of a chat, while the virtual assistant answers these questions to help the user find the searched topic.
Updates on the portal included enhancing content related to digital transformation of the UAE, government efforts to improve services, co-creation, and design of public services. Updates included also enhancing content related to the digital participation, society engagement in decision-making, economy and investment, and government budget, as well as continuous updates of the COVID-19 page. The portal team information related to the UAE National Agenda and the role of the UAE’s National Committee on SDGs.
Statistics showed that most viewed pages are those elated to Travel amid COVID-19, Visas, Quarantine procedures, and Vaccines against COVID-19 in the UAE.
It is noteworthy that the UAE’s national portal consists of four main sections; they are information and services, about the UAE, eParticipation, and media.