HE Dr. Abdulrahman Abdul Mannan Al Awar, Director General of the Federal Authority for Government Human Resources (FAHR), said that "Ma’arif" initiative for the Federal Government’s preferred training partners was launched by FAHR in late 2013 in order to build partnerships with the best training providers in the UAE. The aim was making their training programs available to the federal entities at competitive prices and nearly 1600 free and joint training courses were held since the launch of the initiative until the end of 2017, benefiting about 19 thousand Federal Government employees.
Elaborating on this point, HE said that the Authority in cooperation with its accredited training partners in "Ma’arif" initiative, held 1,600 free training courses since the launch of the initiative until the end of last year, 406 of which were during the past year, with nearly 19 thousand employees working in ministries and federal agencies benefiting from these courses.
For her part, Lulu’a Al Marzouqi, Director of Human Resources Planning said: “The Authority has received 500 applications from training providers in the UAE to join the initiative. Of these, 170 have been selected and work is underway to select more during the coming period according to recently developed and updated standards to match the aspirations of the wise leadership towards Raising the quality of training services provided by the federal bodies.
“The workshops and training courses covered several topics such as: strategy, quality, leadership, communication, project management, public administration, information technology, accounting, legal affairs, creative thinking, as well as implementing standards of excellence in government customer service centres, motivation, career development, media, finance, investment, institutional development, and human resources management”.
Evaluation of training programs through "Ma’arif" portal
Lulu’a added: In 2017, the Authority launched the updated version of the electronic "Ma’arif" Portal for the preferred training partners of the Federal Government, which allows the employees of ministries and federal agencies to view the training programs and workshops offered by the approved training providers under "Ma’arif" initiative. It also allows training officials in these federal bodies to register their employees in the training courses that are continuously announced by Ma’arif training providers. The portal provides the opportunity of evaluating the training programs by linking them to the electronic Training & Development System for Federal Government employees”.
"Ma’arif" initiative is considered one of the Authority’s major strategic initiatives, and a first of its kind at the level of the Federal Government. It is aimed at preparing a list of the best providers of training services in the UAE and make it available to the ministries and federal entities, and negotiating with key training providers to offer quality training programs at competitive prices.
The initiative seeks to improve the performance of Federal Government employees and empower citizens to take up leadership roles and technical positions as well as create a culture based on excellent performance, high productivity, and development of human capital, toward the achievement of Human Resources Strategy in the Federal Government and the UAE Vision 2021.
Ma’aref Initiative aims to:
Establish a partnership based on social responsibility and serving the mutual interests the government and private sectors. Guarantee providing high quality training for around 84,000 employees working in 56 ministry and federal entity. Meet the training needs in accordance with the training and development system of the Federal Government employees. Achieve a financial surplus from the training budgets of federal entities, and serve the maximum number of employees. Enhance the competence and productivity of the Federal Government, and create a favorable business environment therein. Assist federal entities to select training courses online, in accordance with predefined time frames.