DUBAI, (Pakistan Point News - 09th Dec, 2020) Dubai Customs awarded the winners of the Al Furdah Datathon ''the Open Data Challenge'' on the sidelines of the Gitex Week 2020.
The competition, which Dubai Customs launched concurrently with the exhibition, involved different segments of society who competed in innovating future projects for Dubai Customs in accordance with the UAE vision.
Dubai Customs annually participates in Gitex Technology Week and launches contests that focus on the use of modern technology in the work environment.
Last year, it launched the AI Hakathon, which garnered wide attention and participation and resulted in three disruptive innovations.
Ahmed Mahboob Musabih, Director General of Dubai Customs awarded the winners of the three categories: (Dubai Customs Employees Category, Public Category, and Students Category).
Musabih expressed his happiness for the positive participation and the wide engagement in the competition, highlighting the significant role open data and technological advancements play in sustaining development in different sectors.
Dubai Customs’ Al Furdah Datathon aimed to help generate innovative programmes to best use Dubai Customs open data available on Dubai Pulse that benefit the customs sector in general, in fulfilment of Dubai Plan 2021.
The "DC Data Miners" initiative won the Dubai Customs Employees Category. It is based on the "10 C" or "10 Competitors" concept, which aims to instil an enterprise level legacy to think and work as if we are in an environment of 10 competitors of similar organisational capabilities.
In Dubai Customs case, it is like "Dubai Customs" competing with "10 Dubai Customs" to continually innovate, increase trade and Dubai economy, enhance compliance/safety and delight customers. This concept presents various new ideas such as "Subscription based Customs services", "business first, pay later schemes", "Trader’s ratings", "Enhanced Compliance Framework" , " Go to customer", "Integrated government services" and others.
"Queryus" initiative won the Public Category award. It is about building a search engine to find the correct commodity codes for a given product in an intuitive and interactive manner using pattern/image recognition and conversational UI features to target the Dubai Customs open datasets of section wise commodities. AI and Machine learning algorithms will be used to make this a self-learning model based on the feedback and keywords used by different users to arrive at the same commodity code. Customers will be benefitted greatly by the ability to identify the correct commodity codes for their declarations, which in turn helps in reducing fines and delays due to wrong submissions.
In the Student Category, the Triple Data initiative by the Al Wasl University students won the first place. It is about using image-scanning technology to identify the product under inspection and find its correct commodity code using the Dubai Customs section wise commodity datasets. Other government entity datasets are used to showcase statistics on trade and associated risk factors relating to frauds, defects, complaints, accidents etc.
The solution will be self-learning based on increasing number of cases being inspected and the feedback provided. This will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Customs in detecting fraudulent activities and risky goods in order to protect society.
On his part, Juma Al Ghaith, Executive Director of Customs Development Division at Dubai Customs said; "We look forward to benefiting from the enormous potential of technology and open data to encourage innovation, develop new projects, facilitate customs procedures and make passengers happier. We are committed to involving different segments of society to come up with disruptive innovations that can develop the customs sector in the UAE and beyond."
