Dubai Becomes First In World's To Go 100% Paperless

The Crown Prince of Dubai, Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced that Dubai has become the world's first Government to go entirely paperless. The achievement results from the Dubai Paperless Strategy, which was launched in 2018 to establish Dubai as the world's first paperless Government.

All internal and external procedures and transactions in the Government of Dubai are now 100 per cent digital. The Government of Dubai executed the Strategy through five phases.

"Today is the beginning of a new stage in Dubai's journey to digitise life in all its aspects – a journey which is rooted in innovation, creativity, and a focus on the future," said Sheikh Hamdan.

The first stage involved cutting down on paper usage by more than 72.5 million sheets of paper, according to a Siasat Daily report. The second and third phases followed in 2019, with entities such as Dubai Courts, Dubai Municipality, and Dubai Customs joining the initiative, drastically reducing paper usage. More than 242 million sheets of paper were saved in the second and third phases, collectively.

The fifth and final phase began in June 2020, with more entities joining the initiative, saving more than 8.2 million sheets of paper in total. The Dubai Government implemented the Strategy across all 45 government entities in the emirate, which provide over 1,800 digital services and over 10,500 key transactions.

Indian Government's Ambitious E-Governance Plans

Meanwhile, the Indian Government ambitous paperless initiative has been affected by several factors including security flaws. DigiLocker is the leading flagship initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & I.T. (MeitY), which provides access to authentic digital documents through the citizen's digital document wallet. However, the initiative had been affected by an alleged authentication flaw, which put over 3.8 crore accounts at risk. The flaw has been fixed per an NDTV article. However, security concerns still remain.

State governments such as the Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh governments are spearheading the paperless e-governance initiative with projects such as Khajane Project, Lokvani Project, and FRIENDS. As reported by Economic Times, the Tamil Nadu E-Governance Agency has planned to launch an e-Office, creating 50,000 e-mail points for over 3,500 employees. However, M Anbarasu, President of Tamil Nadu Government Employees Association, had stated that it was practically impossible to implement 100% paperless from a remote location.

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