Dubai Municipality's Qoot Initiative Wins International Award

Dubai, 17 August 2021:  Dubai Municipality won the International Award for Innovation, Improvement and Development in the happiness category. The Municipality’s Qoot initiative won out of 86 participants from inside and outside the country, and competed with 13 participants in the happiness category. The award, organized by Dubai Quality Group, was announced through a virtual function.

The Qoot initiative launched by Dubai Municipality aims to effectively contribute to achieving the Municipality's strategic objectives, the most important of which is enhancing confidence in food safety and improving the food sample inspection service. This service enables the customer to check the quality and safety of food products, to ensure that they are free of disease-causing bacteria and chemicals and compliance with approved local and international specifications, and instant detection of foodborne pathogens. The service is provided by relying on the latest technologies, in order to ensure leadership in the field of testing laboratories and achieve fast and high-accuracy results, which positively reflects on improving the customers’ experience and enhancing their happiness.    
        
The Qoot initiative has succeeded in achieving remarkable positive results since its launch, including the launch of the mobile laboratory, which contributed to reducing the testing period from five to two working days and increasing the capacity of samples by 175%. In addition to that it adopted the rapid technologies initiative that contributed to accelerating the release of shipments within two working days instead of five. 

Smart linking of devices using Artificial Intelligence technology facilitated the process of tracking samples and data. It also implemented a risk assessment system by building an advanced mechanism for a food risk assessment matrix that relied on Artificial Intelligence by registering and classifying food products. The initiative aims to build the mechanism for food risk assessment matrix in accordance with best practices, by registering and classifying more than 800,000 food items, and periodically updating them according to the tests that include microbial, chemical and physical tests.

The Qoot initiative also contributed to improving the customer's journey, reducing the number of procedures and customer visits, in addition to contributing to preserving the environment by reducing the carbon footprint by 50%, and ensuring food safety and quality by achieving 93% in the sample percentage index that meet the standard specifications over the past year.