Digital Government Strategy 2023-2030

• Satisfied Citizen: Personalize digital services to Saudi citizens through life milestones.
• Enabled Business: Improve ease of doing business in KSA through a digitally integrated business sector, and build a digital-first business ecosystem.
• Effective Government: Operate as one government digitally to remove duplication, improve decision making, and reduce government expenditure.
• Efficient Investment: Channel KSA government investment to increase private sector participation, grow FDI and DDI inflows, and extract more value from expenditure.
• Regulated Ecosystem: Build a universal digital ID & trust ecosystem used by Saudi citizens, and a future-proof harmonized, and adaptive digital regulatory regime.
• Expedited Transformation: Accelerate the digital transformation of KSA by working closely with the government entities and provide national leadership and guidance in innovation, cloud computing, open source, enterprise architecture, and the future of digital government.
   

The 16 strategic objectives were defined to achieve the Digital Government Strategy Vision:

• Satisfied Citizen:
• 1.1 Ensure Saudi citizen satisfaction from the use of digital services.
• 1.2 Strengthen Saudi citizen engagement to increase trust in government.
• Enabled Business:
• 2.1 Provide economic added value to the private sector in KSA.
• 2.2 Enhance Saudi competitiveness of the local economy.
• Effective Government:
• 3.1 Enable evidence-driven government decision making across government in KSA.
• 3.2 Increase use of common shared services across government in KSA.
• Efficient Investment:
• 4.1 Maximize the economic return from digital investment in Saudi
• 4.2 Optimize the private sector participation and local content development in KSA
• Regulated Ecosystem:
• 5.1 Implement an efficient & harmonized KSA regulatory system.
• 5.2 Achieve universal uptake of a trusted national digital identity in KSA.
• Expedited Transformation:
• 6.1 Enhance global perception of KSA digital government and increase global rankings.
• 6.2 Foster capabilities and skills and promote digital culture.
• 6.3 Depend fully on cloud for resilient digital infrastructure.
• 6.4 Enable change management, communication, and governance.
• 6.5 Promote green government, innovation and use of emerging technologies.
• 6.6 Enable a digitally transformed government ecosystem.

Overall, the Strategy identifies 25 programs across the pillars that will implement the strategy with seven game-changer programs:

Alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals

Digital Government Strategy will contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and have a social impact on multiple groups of citizens. It will contribute to achieving the SDGs 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16, and 17. Numerous citizens will benefit from implementing the strategy's objectives and programs, such as citizens, residents, families, vulnerable groups, women, students, patients, tourists, visitors, businesses, investors, etc.

Alignment with the Vision 2030 and National Development Plans

The strategy is guided and aligned with the Vision 2030 goals and strategic objectives. The strategy aims to specify how KSA will deliver on its vision to digitally transform the Government and build world-class smart government capabilities. It contributes to achieving the following Vision 2030 objectives:

• Direct Contribution to L1 Vision 2030 Objectives:
• Enhance government effectiveness.
• Grow and diversify the economy.
• Offer a fulfilling and healthy life.
• Direct Contribution to L2 Vision 2030 Objectives:
• Improving the performance of the government ecosystem.
• Effective interaction with citizens.
• Unlocking the capabilities of the promising non-oil sectors.
• Direct Contribution to L3 Vision 2030 Objectives:
• 5.2.4 Develop e-government.
• 5.3.3 Ensure responsiveness of government entities to stakeholders' feedback.
• 5.3.5 Improving the quality of services provided to citizens.
• Indirect Contribution to L3 Vision 2030 Objectives:
• 3.3.2 Develop the digital economy.
• 4.3.1 Nurture and support the innovation culture.
• 4.3.2 Grow SME contribution to the economy.
• 5.2.1 Design a leaner and more effective government structure.
• 3.1.1 Ease of Doing Business.

The Digital Government Strategy is also critical to the success of several Vision Realization Programs (VRPs), such as the National Transformation Program, Quality of Life Program, Human Capability Development Program, Health Sector Transformation Program, National Industrial Development and Logistics Program, Doyof Al Rahman Program, and Fiscal Sustainability Program. The demands from the VRPs (over 170 initiatives are linked with Digital Government) are extensive. The need to improve government services, provide shared platforms, develop standards and regulations, and improve decision-making is among the key needs. All VRPs are aimed at operationalizing Vision 2030 strategic objectives.

The Digital Government Strategy is also fully aligned with the other key ICT sector strategies, such as the ICT Sector Strategy, National Strategy for Data & AI, Cyber Security Strategy, etc.

Alignment with global guidelines

The Digital Government Strategy was also developed following the guidelines published by UNDESA on the Open Government Data for Citizen Engagement and the OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies. 
The Strategy address 12 OECD recommendations:

• Ensure greater transparency, openness and inclusiveness of government processes and operations.
• Encourage engagement and participation of public, private and civil society stakeholders in policy making and public service design and delivery.
• Create a data-driven culture in the public sector.
• Address digital security and privacy issues.
• Secure leadership and political commitment to the strategy.
• Ensure coherent use of digital technologies across policy areas and levels of government.
• Establish effective organizational and governance frameworks to co-ordinate the implementation of the strategy across levels of government.
• Strengthen international cooperation with other governments.
• Develop clear business cases to sustain the funding and focused implementation of digital technologies projects.
• Reinforce institutional capacities to manage and monitor projects' implementation.
• Facilitate procuring digital technologies based on assessment of existing assets.
• Ensure that general and sector-specific legal and regulatory frameworks allow digital opportunities to be seized.

In addition, the government is working continuously with multilateral agencies and governments worldwide for guidelines and strategy alignment on eGovernment through global partnerships like G20, GCC, and other multilateral and bi-Lateral participation.

The eParticipation and Digital Inclusion are among the most significant priorities identified in Vision 2030 and the Digital Government Strategy.

To improve the overall eParticipation environment, the Strategy defines Strategic Objective 1.2. Strengthen Saudi citizen engagement to increase trust in the government. For this purpose, the Strategy looks to increase the involvement of citizens by placing them at the center of government by engaging them in service design and policy-making. The Strategy outlines one specific Initiative 1.2B Promote public consultations and E-Participation.

To promote Digital inclusion, the strategy defines two strategic objectives:

• Strategic Objective 6.2: Foster capabilities and skills and promote digital culture.
• Strategic Objective 6.3: Enable change management, communication, and governance.

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The issue of national data governance is high on the strategy objectives. Four strategic objectives are directly or indirectly related to improving the national data governance model and moving towards evidence-driven government decision-making and the use of common shared services. These strategic objectives include:

• 3.1 Enable evidence-driven government decision making across government in KSA.
• 3.2 Increase the use of common shared services across the government in KSA.
• 5.1 Implement an Efficient & harmonized KSA regulatory system.
• 6.3 Depend fully on cloud for resilient digital infrastructure.

The Strategy outlines several specific initiatives to support the operationalization of the strategic objectives:

• 3.1A Support government decision-making and foresight
• 3.1B Develop shared/common government platforms
• 3.1A Build common government infrastructure
• 5.1A Build digital policies and regulations
• 6.3A Transform government to depend fully on cloud services
• 6.3B Raise the level of quality and availability of open government data
• 6.3C Rely on the best methodologies and achieve government excellence
   

Collectively these must comply with national Cybersecurity legislation, Data and Privacy protection legislation and National Standards for Interoperability.

The Once-Only principle is recognized as one of the essential elements of the Digital Government Strategy. It is an eGovernment principle that aims to ensure that citizens and businesses only have to provide certain information to the government authorities only once (also known as a "Tell us Once Principle").

The Once-Only Principle is part of Strategic Objective 1.1 Ensure Saudi citizen satisfaction from the use of digital services. The operationalization of the strategic objective is supported by the Initiative 1.2A Whole of Government Platforms.

The once-only principle is regulated and defined in the Digital Government Regulatory Framework, which includes eight principles, out of which the eighth is Once only Principle. The objective is to ensure that citizens, institutions, and companies only have to provide certain standard information to the authorities and administrations once.

Compliance with national Cybersecurity legislation, Data and Privacy protection legislation and National Standards for Interoperability underpin the implementation of the Once-Only principle.