Dubai: More than 170 governmental service centres in Dubai will get the opportunity to get internationally certified by the new evaluation and certification system that was launched by the Dubai Model Centre on Wednesday.

DMC, which is part of the General Secretariat of the Executive Council of Dubai, based the new certification system on the Dubai government services model. The system which will be open for application on April 1, 2013, was launched as a strategic initiative to contribute to the achievement of the development of services in the Dubai Strategic Plan 2015 which aims to improve the quality of services provided.

The system will assess service centres and certify them according to their performance. “There are three rankings that a centre can obtain from the assessment, “Qualified Centre” which is the minimal ranking, “Excellent Centre” level, and lastly the “Model Centre” which is the highest rank a centre can obtain” said Dr Wafa Abu Snaineh who is an advisor at DMC.

The Centre that receives the internationally accredited certificate will also have their ranking displayed on the outside of their centre similar to the rankings displayed by hotels.

“If a Centre has low standards, it will not qualify for the certificate furthermore if they dropped in performance they will be given a notice time to correct their performance, if they fail to maintain an improved performance we will withdraw the certificate,” she added.

Abu Snaineh also stated that DMC has already trained 15 Emirati assessors who are aware of the government market services in order to start in the assessment and certification process in April.

Dubai governmental service centres deal with 1.48 million transactions a day and a total of 540 million a year. For this reason one of the key criteria that are focused on in the assessment are the services that are related to customer related services said Eman Al Suwaidi, director of DMC.

The assessment will be based on six main criteria that include understanding the traders need and expectations, describing services clearly, completing the required service, the trader’s experience, the performance of the employees who have a direct contact with traders and finally service improvement.

Noor Nazzal is a trainee at Gulf News