The Ministry of Finance (MoF) has unveiled eight innovative initiatives as part of its smart services portfolio at GITEX Global 2024, which kicked off on October 14 and concludes next Friday at the Dubai World Trade Center.
The smart initiatives are designed to support the Ministry’s digital transformation strategy, aimed at enhancing public financial management and government services while improving customer experiences.
The eight projects include the e-Invoicing system, “Virtual Mona,” “Intelligent Payroll Administrator,” and “DPP Catalogue Mobile App”. Other innovations include integrated support for technical solutions, generative AI services, “Digital Twin,” and Automatic Information Exchange Portal. All of these projects are tailored to support key sectors of the national economy.
A Model to Follow
His Excellency Mohamed bin Hadi Al Hussaini, Minister of State for Financial Affairs, stated: “The innovative digital projects and initiatives implemented by the Ministry of Finance represent a fundamental pillar in achieving the vision of ‘We Are the Emirates 2031’ and the objectives of the ‘UAE Centennial 2071.’ Through these projects, we aim to enhance the UAE’s position as a leading financial destination globally, providing a model to follow in financial management and sustainable development.”
He added: “Our participation in the GITEX platform stems from our commitment to enhancing the role of innovation and technology in developing financial services and contributing to the sustainability of the national economy.
We in the Ministry of Finance are committed to implementing strategic projects that enhance digital transformation and ensure effective management of public finances, contributing to achieving our goals aimed at enhancing financial sustainability and developing a financial infrastructure that aligns with global economic developments.”
He explained that by adopting the latest financial technologies and innovations, particularly artificial intelligence, the ministry aims to achieve greater efficiency in managing financial resources, providing government services that contribute to attracting investments and enhancing international partnerships.
He affirmed that the GITEX platform represents an ideal opportunity to showcase these initiatives and exchange experiences with technology and innovation leaders worldwide, emphasising that the Ministry of Finance is working to expand cooperation with financial institutions and global technology companies to adopt best practices in implementing financial policies.
Electronic Invoicing System
The electronic invoicing system project, highlighted by the ministry during the exhibition, is one of the ministry’s transformative projects. It aims to simplify and standardise the invoicing process by enabling electronic exchanges of invoices between suppliers and buyers in an integrated manner.
This new approach benefits companies and government entities by allowing immediate invoice generation and facilitating the seamless preparation of tax reports for submission to the Federal Tax Authority, thereby reducing VAT evasion, enhancing business ease, lowering transaction costs, and decreasing the time required to process invoices.
The targeted beneficiaries of the project include the federal government, local governments, technology service providers, multinational companies, and large, medium, and small enterprises.
The project consists of multiple phases, with the electronic invoicing system expected to be completed by the end of 2026. The ministry has a strategy that allows for gradual implementation of the project, enabling companies to transition smoothly to electronic invoicing starting in 2026.
The phase from October 2024 to December 2025 involves drafting laws and executive regulations that will contribute to improving tax compliance, simplifying procedures, and disseminating them to gather opinions and feedback for final review before issuing the laws and regulations.
‘Virtual Mona’
As part of its proactive digital transformation efforts, and to ensure alignment with the latest innovative technologies in the financial data field to provide accurate government statistics in line with technological developments by applying artificial intelligence techniques, the Ministry of Finance launched the “Virtual Mona” initiative at the GITEX exhibition, which serves as an AI financial data advisor.
This initiative aims to support the decision-making process by integrating augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and generative data analysis technologies to fully utilise the available data, enabling senior management and decision-makers to obtain accurate insights for sound decision-making. Additionally, it provides an easy mechanism for employees to access valuable information through generative data analysis, marking an important step towards a more data-driven government.
The expected impact of the initiative is to achieve more accurate and faster decisions relying on AI to obtain financial data with high accuracy and efficiency, reducing human intervention in providing the required information, as well as enhancing collaboration and coordination among teams regarding data sharing mechanisms, and making data easily accessible and clearer for the recipient, which contributes to increasing stakeholder trust and promoting a culture of transparency in publishing government financial data.
This initiative enriches the Ministry of Finance’s work by improving efficiency and highlighting the most important and accurate data while developing an innovative mechanism for predictions.
‘Smart Payroll Administrator’
During GITEX, the Ministry of Finance announced the launch of the “Smart Payroll Administrator,” an innovative system that combines robotics and generative artificial intelligence to affect a qualitative leap in managing monthly payroll processes.
This system is characterised by its remarkable ability to execute repetitive tasks accurately and quickly, where the robot operates these processes monthly, while artificial intelligence analyses the vast employee data, allowing the identification of unusual patterns and ensuring disbursement accuracy.
This system has been developed entirely within the Ministry of Finance and is subject to ongoing evaluation by a team of specialists to ensure it aligns with best practices.
This innovation reflects the Ministry of Finance’s commitment to providing advanced technical solutions that contribute to improving various administrative processes, allowing employees to focus on their core tasks and achieve their professional goals efficiently.
Digital Procurement Catalogue application
The ministry launched the mobile application (e-shopping – to purchase from the digital procurement platform catalogue) as an initiative to develop and facilitate the purchasing journey from the catalogue for users by developing the (e-shopping) application.
The aim is to increase the use of entities purchasing from the catalogue, thereby ensuring the achievement of the desired goals of implementing e-procurement in the federal government, which focuses on reducing the purchasing process from 60 days to 6 minutes, providing an easy and flexible user experience to ensure increased customer satisfaction, enhancing the efficiency of government spending, and supporting small and medium enterprises.
The expected impact of this initiative goes beyond facilitating the purchasing journey through easy and flexible interfaces and ease of access and navigation between pages, classifying products and services into main categories for clarity of available options, providing multiple channels for easy access to the catalogue and e-shopping (system and application), along with offering an advanced feature for searching for products and services, which will increase entities’ adoption of the catalogue, ultimately leading to cost savings.
Integrated support for technical solutions
The Integrated Support for Technical Solutions project was showcased as a pioneering initiative that establishes an integrative link between the automated chatbot “Musaed” and the “Microsoft Teams” platform.
This innovative project offers users an exceptional opportunity to access self-service technical support and address technical issues autonomously via the most widely used channel, available around the clock.
The “Musaed” platform provides instant self-service solutions for 34 common technical issues, empowering users to resolve problems independently. Additionally, the platform includes proactive solutions that help address issues before they arise, eliminating the need for human intervention.
Among the key features of this automated integration, targeting the employees of the Ministry of Finance, is the reduction of reliance on human support by offering self-service and proactive solutions for technical problems. It also accelerates the time taken to resolve issues by providing immediate and effective solutions.
Furthermore, it allows technical support to be accessed through various channels, such as “Microsoft Teams,” making it easier and more seamless for users to reach services. This enhances the user experience by improving the immediate responsiveness to users’ needs, increases service efficiency and sustainability, and reduces operational costs.
The automated integration between the “Musaed” chatbot and “Microsoft Teams” is expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Generative artificial intelligence services
During the GITEX events, the ministry showcased the project to adopt generative artificial intelligence services to enhance the user experience in the digital services provided. It includes several vital applications using the latest technologies and innovations in the field of artificial intelligence to achieve its objectives.
The project is directed towards individuals, companies, and users from government entities, aiming to improve interaction with users by providing immediate and personalised interactions that enhance their responsiveness and satisfaction while reducing the time required for submitting requests.
It also aims to customise services to meet the needs of customers through collecting and analysing user data to provide tailored services that address their individual needs, enhancing efficiency and productivity, offering innovative and immediate solutions that adapt to changing market needs, and providing advanced user experiences and intelligent services that respond to users’ inquiries promptly and accurately.
The applications vary between document processing, multilingual speech-to-text conversion, model classification, and providing instant responses to user inquiries. Three phases of the project, which commenced in October 2023, have been completed, and the expected completion date is by the end of 2025.
Digital twin project
The Ministry of Finance showcased its “Digital Twin” project during GITEX, aiming to enhance user experience through interaction with virtual disaster environments simulating actual conditions.
This innovative project allows users to test and evaluate various scenarios and events and offers real-time simulations for disaster management in virtual environments.
The project allows users to experience decision-making processes in emergencies and understand potential impacts and outcomes, contributing to enhancing the ministry’s operational efficiency.
The project also aims to enhance service providers’ ability to respond to disasters and emergencies by simulating different situations and providing scenarios for proactive solutions.
This innovative initiative reflects the ministry’s commitment to improving capabilities and resources in the face of challenges and crises and ensuring the provision of the best services to customers.
Automatic information exchange portal
The Automatic Information Exchange Portal is one of the new initiatives launched by the Ministry of Finance to enhance international tax transparency. This initiative is part of the commitment to implement the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), which aims to prevent tax evasion and promote compliance through the automatic exchange of financial information between countries.
Through this electronic portal, financial institutions in the UAE will be able to provide information about the financial accounts of individuals and companies that fall under the scope of the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and share this information seamlessly and securely with the tax authorities in those countries. The primary goal is to enhance and increase tax transparency within the international tax system and combat tax evasion.
The portal includes smart tools based on risk assessment, facilitating regulatory authorities in reviewing reports and identifying high-risk reports. With this system, information can be exchanged at the click of a button, reducing effort, and increasing the efficiency of the exchange.
This portal significantly contributes to improving international tax compliance and enhances the UAE’s position as a stable and secure international financial hub. It also helps strengthen economic relations with international partners and supports the country’s efforts to attract foreign investments. The complete implementation of all system features is scheduled for March 2025.
tanvir@dubainewsweek.com
