April 16th, 2014, Silviu Matei
The eGovernment Satisfaction Survey (eGSS), conducted by YouGov, has revealed that UAE public institutions are consistently delivering high quality online services to nationals and expats across all seven Emirates.
The survey, which tracks eight different types of UAE public sector organisations, combines a range of measures including satisfaction, trust, recommendation and recent improvement, to produce an eGovernment Satisfaction Index (eGSI) that allows Government institutions to track public perception of their online services.
This is the second eGSS wave conducted by YouGov, which surveyed over 4,000 residents in the UAE. It showed that overall satisfaction with eGovernment services for all institutions in January 2014 was 67.1, just below the 68.3 score measured in June 2013.
Local Governments were the highest performing public institutions online with an overall eGovernment Index (eGSI) score of 72.7 (+3 points from 2013), overtaking the Police in 2nd place whose online services scored a high 69.7 (-2.1 points from 2013).
eGSI methodological note: The eGSI is a composite index of satisfaction with public institutions based on the weighted average of satisfaction with their online services and policies including; recommendation, recent improvement, relative performance and trust. The index takes values from 0 to 100, 0 meaning low satisfaction and 100 meaning maximum satisfaction.
When looking more closely at nationality groups, Emiratis and Abu Dhabi residents are more satisfied with eGovernment services. However, westerners and residents living in Sharjah are more likely to feel there is room for improvement in the way eGovernment services are delivered.
The study also shows that more than half of online respondents (52%) are aware of the UAE eGovernment program, representing an increase of 5 percentage points compared to the previous wave. Respondents were also surveyed on the usage and satisfaction of the program which are revealed in the full report.
78% of respondents said they had interacted online with at least one public institution in the last 3 months. The Police (33%), Electricity & Water providers (33%) and Transport departments (31%) continue to have the highest level of online interaction compared to other institutions.
When respondents interact with public institution websites, the top 3 activities are: looking for information (53%), using the search engine (53%) and registering (53%), closely followed by getting in touch with customer service.
The YouGov eGovernment Satisfaction Survey monitors organisations from eight different public sectors including Police, Transport (including Salik), Health, Local Government, Electricity & Water, Municipalities, Emirates ID and Telecommunications.
Data was collected from 4,151 UAE residents using YouGov's proprietary online panel from November 25, 2013 - January 12, 2014. Results are representative of the online population in the UAE.