Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (DEWA) | DEWA consolidates its knowledge environment through smart platforms and initiatives to spread and localise knowledge

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) provides a range of platforms, programmes, and initiatives to spread and localise knowledge and transfer expertise among all its employees. DEWA organises many educational courses to raise employee awareness on knowledge and its management, types of data, information and knowledge, intellectual property rights and ways to protect them. In addition, DEWA works through the Share K. Recognition Programme to honour its employees and teams that contribute to disseminating and managing knowledge at DEWA.

HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & and CEO of DEWA, said that DEWA had developed a strategy for disseminating, transferring and localising knowledge to build a knowledge-based society and economy. This in line with the directives of the wise leadership to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, knowledge-based economy.

“We support the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai the city of the future and enhance its position as a global hub and a knowledge-based economy. DEWA has developed an integrated policy for knowledge management to determine investment priorities and encourage creative abilities to enhance knowledge sharing within the organisation, its sub-departments, and stakeholders. DEWA also launches many initiatives among employees to unify knowledge management concepts to achieve organisational excellence. This helps to provide services to customers with the highest levels of efficiency and reliability. At DEWA, we aim to become a self-learning organisation and establish a knowledge environment according to best practices and international standards. In 2019, DEWA received ISO 30401: 2018 certification in Knowledge Management Systems; becoming the first utility in the world to receive this certification,” added Al Tayer.

Smart Knowledge Initiatives

DEWA has 6 Knowledge Centres across a number of its branches. These centres depend on innovative and smart knowledge management systems. Employees can borrow and return books and periodicals using self-service kiosks. DEWA Smart Library allows staff to easily access digital content, especially scientific research in fields like renewable and clean energy. The number of downloads through the library from 2021 to the first quarter of 2022 reached over 32,000, and the number of registered employees in the library reached more than 4,000. The online catalogue allows employees to search for books available in DEWA knowledge centres. This is in addition to the Digital Reading Tree at DEWA’s headquarters, which includes more than 200 titles.

Internal platforms for knowledge, expertise sharing

DEWA provides several internal platforms to transfer and localise knowledge, including:

Ma’Rifa (knowledge) collaboration platform

It is a smart platform that allows employees to interact with their colleagues to exchange knowledge and collaborate on tasks and projects. The number of employee experiences related to specialised software that has been shared through the platform from 2021 until the first quarter of 2022 has reached over 100 programmes, and over 190 technical fields that employees are proficient in, have been monitored. The number of knowledge topics that employees are proficient in exceeds 500 subjects.

DEWA provides a ‘Future Signals Catalogue’ for its employees to learn about future signals and trends, and analyse and evaluate the possibility of turning them into initiatives that shape the future. Since its launch until February 2022, the platform has attracted more than 700 participants. In addition, DEWA provides the Afkari (My Ideas) portal, an internal online platform to encourage creativity and innovation in the work environment.

LinkedIn Learning

DEWA encourages its employees to participate in self-learning courses and programmes on LinkedIn Learning to enrich their knowledge and enhance their capabilities in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emerging technologies. Since its launch in 2021 until the first quarter of 2022, the number of completed courses reached over 95,000, and the number of video watched hours reached over 46,000.

Reading Month

DEWA celebrates the Reading Month annually, and organises a series of activities, panel discussions and seminars by DEWA employees, stakeholders, writers, local and global speakers. DEWA also holds Arabic, English, and Hindi events on literary, cultural, technical, and other topics. In addition, DEWA provides discounts on purchasing books in collaboration with key distributors in the UAE.

Share an Hour

This isa ann initiative to increase readership among employees of DEWA where an employee would engage in a discussion for 60 minutes on a book of their choice. 

Knowledge Day

A dedicated day to share and acquire knowledge. This event allows employees to share and develop knowledge through established knowledge-sharing activities.

Community of Practice (CoP)

This is a networking practice by people aligned to a common subject driven by a common business goal or services. A CoP brings together employees with shared experience and knowledge needs, helping them to accomplish tasks and face challenges collectively. The number of CoPs is currently 7, discussing 51 topics, and the number of knowledge assets has reached 56 assets.

Honouring distinguished individuals in knowledge management

DEWA promotes a culture of success and excellence among its employees. It encourages and motivates them continuously by recognising outstanding ones and highlighting their innovations for improving their organisational performance. Among the most prominent programmes of excellence and internal rewards that DEWA offers to the distinguished employees in the field of knowledge localisation are:

Share K. Recognition Programme

It is part of DEWA’s internal excellence awards. This in turn, promotes excellence and encourages healthy competition as the programme recognises employees and teams for their knowledge management and contribution. Employees are recognised for their effective utilisation of various knowledge management tools, techniques, and practices, in accordance with the highest excellence standards predefined globally and at DEWA. The number of individual requests to participate in the programme was 45, and the number of winners was 24 employees, while the number of team requests to participate was 12, and the number of winning teams was 3.

Knowledge Champions

A knowledge champion is an employee responsible for enabling and promoting knowledge sharing in a team, department, location, or business unit. The knowledge hero organises the employees' knowledge management activities and ensures consistency in the shared information.