Smart Dubai bags the SXSW Award for Interactive Innovation at South by Southwest Conference & Festivals 2019

Technology

Smart Dubai bags the SXSW Award for Interactive Innovation at South by Southwest Conference & Festivals 2019

Dubai, 14 March 2019: Smart Dubai has concluded another successful participation in the world-renowned South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference & Festivals, held on March 8-17, 2019, in Austin, Texas, winning the prestigious SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.

This year marks the 22nd edition of the Award and was presented by international audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG to Smart Dubai in recognition of the Dubai Paperless Strategy. Innovators from around the world competed for the prize, which honours ground-breaking and promising technological developments.

Smart Dubais stand at the international event housed a presentation on the Dubai Paperless Strategy, launched in February 2018 to transform the Dubai Government into a fully digital administration, transferring all applicable transactions to digital platforms by the year 2021.

Smart Dubais Director General H.E. Dr Aisha Bint Butti Bin Bishr, who led the delegation to SXSW, elaborated on the subject in a session titled Can Emerging Tech Make a City 100% Paperless? further highlighting the Dubai Paperless Strategy and the emirates efforts to leverage emerging technologies, such as Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI), to make the entire city paperless, and design end-to-end, experiential journeys for all residents and visitors.

Dubai has made tremendous progress in transitioning towards a full-fledged smart city of the future, H.E. asserted. One area where this is increasingly visible is the shift away from paper, driven by the ambitious Dubai Paperless Strategy, which seeks to transfer all applicable paper transactions in Dubai Government offices to digital platforms by 2021 the countrys 50th anniversary. The Strategy has successfully progressed into its 2nd phase, inaugurating the first two fully digital customer journeys on the DubaiNow platform and application the citys one-stop shop for smart services. Our efforts are already paying off as six government departments were already past the halfway mark in the shift away from paper at the end of 2018. We are delighted and grateful to see that success recognised once again here, as we receive the prestigious SXSW Interactive Innovation Award.