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Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum – Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Executive Council, the Mohammed Bin Rashid School of Government (MBRG) will hold the fourth edition of the UAE Public Policy Forum on February 17-18, 2020 at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Festival City, Dubai. The UAE Public Policy Forum is an annual global discussion platform bringing together government leaders, the academic elite, and experts from all over the world who are dedicated to enhancing government policymaking in the U.A.E. and the region. Each year, the two-day event sheds light on a unique theme by addressing several related pillars. The theme for the 2020 conference is “Agile Government: Becoming Future-Proof.”

As a sub-discipline of public administration, agile government is not a new field, though there are few scholarly papers in this area, suggesting that this is an area ripe for further focus. In the government sector, the field (under new public management) began to overlap with digital transformations, but the high failure of e-government projects in the region and worldwide (35% total failure and 50% partial failures), and the “the unrelenting waves of technological and social changes that show no signs of easing off”, have resulted in renewed thrust to focus on Agile Governments to better prepare for the future. In simple terms, agility refers to “the ability of an organization to react to changes in its environment faster than the rate of these changes.”

To become future-proof, an Agile Government must be able to handle three tension areas as depicted in the figure below. At the heart of an agile government is a commitment to the identification, creation and delivery of public value.