Gazette Staff CAIRO, July 4, 2018 - Egyptian and Emirati officials on Wednesday reviewed ways of improving government performance, efficiency and excellence, on the second day of the Egypt Government Excellence Conference 2018 which began on Tuesday. During a session entitled "Building Exemplary Government Human Resources Capabilities", the Director of the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Abdel Rahman Abdel Mannan al-Our described his authority's system of work as an innovative model for empowering government cadres. The Emirati official said that knowledge, economy, promoting competitiveness, encouraging continuing education and building human capacities were key pillars of the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda. He said, "The fourth industrial revolution and the subsequent technological developments are a turning point for economies and future of governments around the world." The conference which began in Cairo on Tuesday, focused on four main topics; government performance, efficiency and excellence, government capabilities, smart services and government stimulus. "The conference is aimed at achieving a quantum leap in government services to transform the strategic sustainable development goals of the ‘Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS): Egypt Vision 2030' into reality," Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform Minister Hala el-Saeed told the inaugural session on Tuesday. The conference is the first step taken in implementing a memorandum of understanding to modernise government work. The MoU was signed by the Egyptian Planning Ministry and the UAE Ministry of Cabinet Affairs and the Future on the sidelines of the World Government Summit, which was held in Dubai on February 11-13. Also on Wednesday, during a session entitled "Global Entrepreneurship and Government Excellence", Professor of Entrepreneurship at the American University of Cairo Khaled Ismail said that there should be universities and research centres for developing technology and finding new solutions to problems. He referred to one of the centers that he worked for and said that it was providing a budget of $6 billion for innovation and finding new solutions. The university professor also called on governments to promote efficiency and to foster innovation and thinking "out-of-the-box" about the root-causes of problems and how to tackle them.
