Sheikh Mohammed Center for Government Innovation

On Wednesday, March 15^th, our group had the opportunity to visit the office of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai and was given a presentation by representatives of the Mohamed bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation, a subset of his office. As we drank tea and coffee, the representative gave us a brief history of the Centre, its strategy and its outlook on the future. 

The Centre for Government Innovation was founded in September 2014 as a center of gravity for innovation in the public sector. The functions it performs are: coordinating “innovation labs” in government organs to build capacity for innovation across the country, building a national database for innovative government initiatives and international best practices, and consolidating individual projects into a unified framework to better serve federal and local government entities while preserving intellectual rights. The Centre also plans to form partnerships with international universities to drive this innovation initiative. 

The Centre seeks innovation in seven public sectors:

•  In the renewable energy sector, it intends to facilitate decentralized power generation projects such as small scale solar installations and encourage innovation in the renewables industry and support applied research in clean technology.
• In the transportation sector, it seeks to stimulate innovation in air and sea travel as well as logistics and make procedures more effective and save time and focus the field of unmanned drones.
• In the education sector, it desires to establish innovation labs in schools and universities in order to provide students with abilities such as “critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, perseverance and adaptability.”
• In the health sector, it intends to boost advanced technologies in healthcare services and promote the growth of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and support medical research.
• In the water sector, it seeks to promote innovations to the large problem of water scarcity in the country.
• In the technology sector, it seeks to promote overall research in technology and the sciences.
• In the space sector, it wants to support space technology for exploration and satellite communications.

The representative reiterated that the overall purpose of the Centre is to make the United Arab Emirates a global hub for innovation.  Our final meeting of the trip proved fascinating and informative and exposed us to the future ambitions of the U.A.E. 

-Vivek Sharma, second year Middle East Studies concentrator, SAIS