Powering Effective Governance: From Dubai’s Digital Milestones to Global Best Practices

by Mahboob Subuhani, Regional Director, IT Solutions – MEA & APAC at Sigma Software Group

Mahboob Subuhani

Dubai stands as a global benchmark for government digitalisation. In 2025, 99.5% of its services are digitised (120+ gov apps), with over 173 million digital transactions processed across 1400+ services, serving 57 million beneficiaries.

Today, Dubai ranks 4th globally in the IMD Smart City Index 2025, and 1st in the GCC, showcasing digital transformation across health, mobility, identification services, green spaces, recycling, and so on.

According to the United Nations E-Government Survey 2024, the UAE ranked first globally in the Telecommunications Infrastructure Index, achieving a full score of 100%.

The UAE also topped the region in the Government AI Readiness Index 2024, issued by Oxford Insights, which covered 193 countries.

From paperless government to AI-driven lawmaking pilots and smart police stations, Dubai is showing what the future of governance looks like: seamless, data-driven, and citizen-focused.

The Global Shift in Public Sector Tech

This transformation is not unique to Dubai or the Gulf region – it perfectly reflects a global shift. Governments everywhere are under pressure to:

Deliver services faster and more transparently;

Harness AI, data, and automation to cut costs and improve efficiency;

Ensure security and accessibility at scale.

At the same time, citizens increasingly expect government to match — and in the UAE’s case, even surpass — the digital experience offered by private tech companies.

Global tech expertise to strengthen the digital state

At Sigma Software, we apply our tech expertise to government and public sector clients, drawing on the best practices from both fields. We built our services around exactly the same pillars that drive Dubai’s success.

For example, in Sweden, we help build Platina ECM, an electronic process and document management platform used by 80% of the country’s public institutions, including the Financial Inspection Agency, the Tax Agency, the Swedish Coast Guard, and the County Administrative Boards.

We also contributed to the development of Sweden’s national Long-Term Archive platform, ensuring secure digital storage and access to government records for over 50 public agencies. The system safeguards critical documents for decades, eliminating paper dependency and guaranteeing compliance with strict EU archival standards. Today, the product is used in 90% of government institutions in Sweden (including VINNOVA, the Swedish Research and Innovation Agency, the Stockholm Region Archive, etc.). It is ranked the No. 1 enterprise info archiving system in Sweden.

In the United Kingdom, as a digital partner to Sport England, we developed a sector-leading community sports portal that reaches users nationwide. The platform organises local teams, events, and activities by district or city, supporting newsletters, media libraries, and interactive features for thousands of registered users.

In Europe, we developed Meetings Plus, a cross-platform solution used by 20+ EU municipalities to streamline meetings and document management. European citizens can access committee information, meeting schedules, and public documents, while representatives manage agendas, minutes, and approvals through mobile apps. By integrating with the broader ECM ecosystem, the platform streamlines workflows, enhances transparency, and ensures the timely distribution of official documents.

Building on this expertise, Sigma Software was recently nominated as one of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud Launch Partners. The initiative is designed for organisations – including governments – that require all data to remain stored within their country while still leveraging the scalability of AWS. For regions like the Middle East, where sovereign data requirements are a cornerstone of digital governance, such developments demonstrate how global best practices can be tailored to local realities.

Regarding smart street lighting control systems, we helped design and develop an such IoT-based system for Israeli Telematics Wireless. This system is now deployed across cities in the US, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, Brazil, and Asia. Smart controls cut annual operating costs by up to 20%, in addition to 50% savings from LED conversion, managing 900,000 lights in Georgia, 132,500 in Montreal, and 61,000 in Cleveland.

These aren’t just services on paper – they deliver measurable impact.

In Ukraine, we helped the “Government in a smartphone” app called Diia.Business automate events and sales processes, cutting labour costs 2-3x. This app is part of Diia, an ecosystem that allows Ukrainian citizens to use digital documents and over 80 governmental services on their smartphones, making their user experience faster, easier, and more enjoyable.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, our team developed the “Act at Home” mobile app to enable safe self-isolation with direct integration to the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.

Across all these projects, one pattern is crystal clear: digital government succeeds when vision meets execution, policy meets platforms, and strategies turn into real technology. That’s the bridge we are building at Sigma Software.

GITEX Dubai – A Moment of Connection

GITEX Dubai again becomes the stage for the world’s most ambitious digital government initiative. It’s the perfect moment to connect global leaders, innovators, and public institutions. Dubai’s journey proves what is possible. The next step is collaboration between forward-looking governments and tech partners like Sigma Software Group. Let’s connect at GITEX Dubai to discuss how we can work together to build the future of governance.