What’s Dubai’s Smart happiness plan?

Dubai is home to 4 million residents from 180 countries and it welcomes five times its population in visitors each year. Therefore, the core of the Dubai’s Happiness Agenda is ‘people’s happiness’ on a daily basis.

If you measure the city’s happiness in terms of quality of life, then for sure Dubai is a pioneer but in order to make it the happiest city in the world, the Dubai Ruler believes that technology is the platform for all solutions. And this is how Smart Dubai was born out of the visionary approach of Sheikh Mohammed — to create happiness with technology innovation.

As the entity in-charge of Dubai’s transformation to a smart city, the Smart Dubai uses technology innovation and is working with strategic partners in the public and private sector to enhance experiences for the whole city.

To achieve happiness at a city level, the Happiness Agenda sets forth a series of programs designed to discover, influence and satisfy individuals’ affective, basic, cognitive and deeper needs — the essential ingredients for happiness.

The Happiness Agenda will pursue a scientific framework to allow people to access services in an easy, efficient, convenient and seamless way; help people achieve a high sense of well-being and satisfaction with their lives; support people in engaging and meaningful activities that maximises their sense of purpose and pleasure.

Measuring Happiness

Through the Happiness Agenda, Smart Dubai will research, formulate and implement a citywide happiness index and a predictive happiness impact score. The Happiness Agenda aims to deliver deep, live and target-driven measurement of satisfaction and happiness levels across the city.

Leading change at the city level, the Happiness Agenda will create and influence policies and approaches to focus the city, and people, on happiness. These evidencebased policies and frameworks will enable city leaders, managers and innovators in the public and private sector to actively influence the happiness of individuals living and working in Dubai.

Smart Dubai has also introduced the Happiness Meter to the private sector, measuring customer satisfaction at service interaction touchpoints throughout the city. Already in use by 38 government entities at customer service centres, websites and online transaction points, the Happiness Meter has collected over 2 million votes and recorded an overall happiness index of 87 per cent in 2015.

Using data from the Happiness Meter Dashboard, service providers are able to monitor customer satisfaction in real-time.

saman@khaleejtimes.com