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Table of Contents
1 COVER
5 PREFACE
8 INTRODUCTION Choice of Twenty Remarkable Leaders Who Can Benefit from This Book? Structure of the Chapters
9 CHAPTER 1: Aisha Bin Bishr How Did You Rise to the Digital Government Leadership Role in Dubai? What Was the Concrete Expectation Laid Out for You? How Did You Go about Devising the Strategy and the Metrics Then? You Already Hinted a Bit about It, but Did You Hesitate at All When Taking the Job of Leading the SDO? Given These Challenges, Did You Have Any Requests Going In? What Was Your Own Motivation in Taking Up the Call by His Highness? What Was the State of Digital Development in Dubai at the Time, and What Led You to Suggest Creating the SDO? What Was the Mandate for SDO and the Tools at Your Disposal to Make Change Happen? What Were the Very First Steps You Took When You Started Leading the SDO? What Was the Focus or Core of the Strategy You Had Laid Out and Started Delivering—What Were the Steps for Building Up a Smart City for Happiness? How Did You Embrace New Things That Must Have Emerged along the Way? Did You Ever Adjust the Strategy? You Spent the First Months on Daily Tour to Build Relationship with Other Agencies. How Did You Sustain These Relationships Later? How Did You Attract Talent to Join You in SDO? What Qualities Were You Looking for in Your Hiring? Who Was Your Most Valuable Hire? Can You Tell Some More on What Was the Culture You Were Trying to Create in SDO? What Were Your Mantras That You Kept Repeating to Your Team? What Were Your Regular Practices or Routines to Act on These Values or Make Delivery Happen? What Were Your Biggest Achievements as the Director General, in Your Own View? What Prompted You to Move Ahead from Smart Dubai after Five Years in 2021? How Did You Prepare for the Handover and Making Sure Your Initiatives Would Live On? What Were—or Are—Going to Be Next Challenges for the Team and Smart Dubai? What Do You Wish You Had Known When You Started the Job? What Do You Think You Learned the Most? What Do You Think Are the Key Skills One Needs to Do Your Kind of Role Well? What Are Your Three Recommendations from Your Experience—What Does It Take to Do a Digital Government Leader's Job Well? Notes
10 CHAPTER 2: Alex Benay How Did You End Up in a Digital Government Leader Role for the Government of Canada (GC)? Why Did You Say “No” at First? Given This Context, Did You Have Conditions or Requests to Take the Role? What Was Your Own Motivation for the Role? What Was the Concrete Mission Set to You through These Conversations by Your Bosses? Besides Phoenix and Outdated Policies, What Was the State of Digital Government and Strategy in GC? What Were Your Levers besides the Legislative Powers You Asked For? Given Your Overall Mission, Did You Set Yourself Any Concrete Goals or Deliverables to Reach? With All This Load Ahead of You, What Did You Start With? What Was the Focus for Your First Months? How Hard or Easy Was It to Maintain Your Focus on the Skunkworks as Time Went On? You Spoke about the Need to Work Very Openly and Transparently—How Did You Do That Really? You Did End Up Taking the Work of Saving Phoenix into Your Own Portfolio. How Did You Go about Fixing It? How Did You Build or Rebuild the GCIO Setup to Achieve the Changes? I Know That You Also Made a Big Push for the Team to Work in the Open. How Did That Work? Tell a Bit More on the Skunkworks Approach—How Did That Working Method Really Work? What
