Dubai Police, municipality and Dewa top in ‘happiness’ reading

DUBAI — Smart Dubai has announced the results of the Happiness Meter 2017, which seeks to measure Dubai residents’ happiness and also identify ways to increase happiness.

The ‘meter’ is a roadmap to more effective and efficient services, measuring the quality of smart services on offer and ways to improve them.

The results were calculated by deploying the ‘Happiness Meters’ across customer service centres at both public and private entities, and also via websites and smartphone applications.

More than 8.82 million users voted through the Happiness Meters in 2017. The overall scores were calculated based on two figures: first, interaction via smart channels, which accounted for 30 per cent of the final figure; second, customer votes, which made up 70 per cent of the final score.

The meter was measured happiness among three main categories: large government departments (with considerably high numbers of employees, customers and transactions), mediumsized government departments, and private companies.

Dr Aisha bint Butti bin Bishr, director-general of the Smart Dubai Office, SDO, said: “Launching an advanced, emirate-wide instrument to measure happiness echoes the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world. This is, in turn, the main objective of Smart Dubai.”

According to the Happiness Meter’s results in the Large Government Departments category, Dewa came in first place with a score of 83.49 per cent satisfaction based on 1,209,914 votes.

Meanwhile, Dubai Police came in second with an 81.74 per cent score and 253,330 votes. Third place went to the Dubai Municipality with 80.77 per cent, based on 218,670 votes.

As for Medium-Sized Government Departments, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) ranked first with an 88.13 per cent satisfaction rate, based on 47,093 votes. Dubai Courts came in second with an 81.99 per cent score and 145,320 votes, whereas the Department of Land and Property in Dubai ranked third with 81.04 per cent, based on 184,455 votes.

In the Private Companies category, where more than 10,000 customers cast their votes, AAFAQ Islamic Finance scored 97.8 per cent satisfaction based on 376,956 votes.

Meanwhile, the Arab Bank for Investment and Foreign Trade came in second with a 97.7 per cent score and 33,262 votes, and Al Jaber Optics ranked third with 96.6 per cent satisfaction based on 31,831 votes.