Kingdom leads the world in digital competitiveness

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a world leader in digital competitiveness, according to the European Center for Digital Competitiveness.

The Digital Riser report, which analyzed changes in digital competitiveness in countries around the world over the past three years, found that the Kingdom led the Group of Twenty (G-20) countries. 

“(Saudi Arabia’s) underlying policies show a strong and comprehensive push toward digital transformation, which has created significant results,” the report said.

“Saudi Arabia’s outperformance can be mainly explained by its ‘ICT Strategy 2023,’ which was launched in 2018 to transform the Kingdom into a digital and technological powerhouse,” it said.

“Furthermore, the smart city project NEOM, to which the government allocated $500 billion, also highlights aspirations around the Saudi Vision 2030.”

The Digital Riser report builds on data from the Global Competitiveness Report, published annually by the World Economic Forum. The center is based at the ESCP Business School in Berlin.

The technological advancement in services available to citizens and residents in the Kingdom is part of improving the quality of life, which coincided with the Kingdom’s chairing of the G-20 in 2020.

The Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence launched a national strategy that seeks to entrench the status of the Kingdom as a world center to enable leading data and artificial intelligence technologies.

The authority, in cooperation with a number of government and private agencies in the Kingdom, launched a number of applications and electronic services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The number of Tawakkalna movement authorization application users exceeded 8.5 million, a record number achieved in the first six months of release. The Tabaud physical distancing application came third among similar applications around the world. Around 750,000 people have registered to take the vaccine on the Sehhaty application. According to the latest statistics, more than 6 million students now use the Madrasti virtual school application. The I’tamarna application has helped more than 1 million people book and perform umrah in a healthy and safe environment.

Meanwhile, there have been more than 26 million delivery orders worth more than SR2 billion Kingdomwide during the pandemic, according to the Communications and Information Technology Commission.