Case Study: The General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs – Dubai (GDRFA-Dubai) achieves a unified digital government and real-time IT visibility with Software AG (ARIS & Alfabet)

A Digital Government Transformation With ARIS and Alfabet

The General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs – Dubai (GDRFAD) is the UAE government agency that manages citizenship, residency and port access services across 21 locations with 5,000+ employees, working to support Dubai’s “Happiest City in the World” vision. Faced with the Dubai 2021 digital strategy, GDRFAD struggled with a fragmented business architecture that blocked e‑government plans, needed an IT audit, battled manual compliance processes and lacked reliable information across 42 departments.

Working with Palmira and Software AG, GDRFAD deployed ARIS and Alfabet to create a single source of truth and map a new business and IT architecture in just eight months. The implementation introduced API‑based service portfolio management, unified and digitalized compliance and delivered a real‑time view of the IT landscape—enabling application retirements, cost reductions, eliminated duplication, consolidated audit plans and a centralized KPI dashboard that transformed the agency into a lean, responsive digital organization.

GDRFA-Dubai