Dubai Pulse is well-known as the centralised platform for data sharing from Dubai’s public sector entities. It’s the lynchpin of Digital Dubai’s aim of making insightful, useful data available to stakeholders to improve decision-making, and laying the foundation of tomorrow’s smart government services. 

While many of our audience are well-versed in navigating Dubai Pulse and its features, there are some ideas that we want to draw particular attention to. Apart from being a repository of datasets that can be accessed by category or organisation, Dubai Pulse also offers advanced functionality for power users. 

Many of Dubai Pulse’s more customisable features require users to log in via a UAE Pass, which can be generated through an easily downloadable app. 

Once you’re logged into Dubai Pulse via UAE Pass, an extended world of features opens up for you. To start with, you can use data views and visualisation tools in brand new ways. 

You might have seen the Dubai Pulse data views. They’re available to everyone, anywhere in the world. By default, non-logged-in users only see those data views and visualisations that have been created and made public.

But logging in lets you create your own customised data views. You can start by taking any accessible dataset in Dubai Pulse, and mixing and matching in new ways with powerful, easy-to-use tools to create brand-new representations of data. Logged-in users have access to a new tab, called “Create Data Views” on the Data Views Page. Just head into Self-Service Analytics, and you’re ready to tell visual stories with data to unlock fresh perspectives and insights. You can even overlay multiple data sets to find meaningful patterns. 

Carrying forward this theme of visualising data, we’ve also introduced widgets on Dubai Pulse. Available to both logged-in and anonymous users, widgets allow users to embed Dubai Pulse data directly into websites through code they can copy. It’s swift, easy, and allows users to use Dubai Pulse data directly in their own online spaces without needing to duplicate or copy data. Data is always drawn from a single source of truth, and is automatically updated when the underlying dataset is. Our widgets are currently available for all our data registers and other key datasets. There are plans to expand them to other important and upcoming datasets.

This brings us to the subject of our data registers, which we’ve spoken about before. A data register is a carefully compiled dataset that is unified, verified and trusted. It can be used as a reference resource under the Dubai Data Law. With Dubai Registers, our users can rest assured that they are accessing vetted, high-quality data they can rely on. 

At Digital Dubai, we want Dubai Pulse to be an interactive platform where users can communicate with us and let us know about their data requirements. A feature, available to all users, is the “Request Data” option. It’s easily visible to the top right of the Dubai Pulse interface, and is an excellent way for users to highlight the data they are interested in. Your data requests help Digital Dubai plan its ingestion pipeline and data expansion programmes for Dubai Pulse. If needed, we can even facilitate key requests by reaching out to entities on your behalf to see if the data you require has been captured, and can be shared. 

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that Dubai Pulse isn’t just a platform for the easy sharing of valuable citywide data. It also offers a suite of business-to-business services, largely aimed at government entities. This suite includes managed services for IT hardware, software and data. Digital Dubai teams support partners through API services, and pre-configured analytics where we use our data science expertise to further organisational goals. We also create customised IT support plans that align exactly with your organisation’s needs, and the city’s requirements.

We’re proud of the progress Dubai Pulse has made, becoming the de facto platform for citywide data insights in Dubai. Yet, this is just the start. Dubai Pulse is constantly iterating, improving and expanding. We are grateful to our communities, data champions and users for their input, insights and feedback — and we continue counting on you support as we evolve Dubai Pulse further. We have exciting new announcements coming soon, so watch this space.