Saudi Arabia Ranks Second in Global GovTech Index
Saudi Arabia ranked second out of 197 countries in the World Bank's GovTech Maturity Index for 2025. The ranking places the kingdom as a leader in the Arab region for digital government, according to the UN's e-Government Index. The achievement highlights the country's progress in scalable, public-sector digital transformation.
- The kingdom has shown a dramatic and rapid rise in the GovTech Maturity Index rankings, climbing from 49th in 2020, to 3rd in 2022, and now 2nd in 2025. - The 2025 index, which ranked South Korea first, assesses 197 countries on four main areas: Core Government Systems (CGSI), Public Service Delivery (PSDI), Digital Citizen Engagement (DCEI), and GovTech Enablers (GTEI). - Saudi Arabia achieved near-perfect scores across all sub-indicators: 99.92% in Core Government Systems, 99.90% in Public Service Delivery, 99.30% in Digital Citizen Engagement, and 99.50% in GovTech Enablers. - This digital transformation is a core pillar of Saudi Vision 2030, a national strategy to diversify the economy away from oil dependency and create a knowledge-based economy. - The Digital Government Authority (DGA), established in 2021, is the primary regulatory body orchestrating this national effort, setting policies and measuring the performance of all government digital initiatives. - Key citizen-facing platforms driving this success include "Absher" for individual and business services, "Tawakkalna" for health and other services, and "Etimad" for transparent government procurement and tenders. - A "Cloud First" policy, launched in 2020, mandates that government agencies prioritize cloud solutions for new services and modernization, aiming to enhance scale, resilience, and cost-efficiency. - To foster private sector participation and investment in govtech, the DGA launched the Digital Government Investment and Procurement Center (SADAF) in 2022.
