Digital Transformation is the transformation of People's mind

   The Vision of 2030 is a game-changer for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. One of the most important goals for the Vision of 2030 is to reduce the dependence on oil and increase the diversification of the economy. The foremost tool to realize this goal is to take full advantage of digital transformation in Saudi Arabia. The digital transformation provides strategic instruction, professionalism and administration through cooperation and interaction among government organizations and private entities to improve Saudi Arabia’s ranking of all kinds of indices globally. The goal of digital transformation is to achieve the optimal development digitally through long-lasting economic development, and strengthening innovation.

         With a deep understanding of the importance of digital transformation, the Saudi Arabia government not only enacted laws to provide guidelines to regulate digital transformation, but also established the related organization-Digital Government Authority to instruct and monitor the entire process of digital transformation of Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spent $3.19 billions on digital transformation in public sectors for 2021, which was a succeeding expenditure in digital transformation after previous years. And this spending is expected to increase for the next couple of years. Thanks to the huge effort in digital transformation from the Saudi government, the Kingdom was ranked second among the G20 countries in terms of digital competitiveness issued by the European Center for Digital Competitiveness. Moreover, the E-Government Development Index has ranked Saudi Arabia at 43 globally in 2020 (latest), which has improved 9 ranks compared with previous ranking. And due to the development of digital transformation, the participation of women in the related sectors has increased over 50 percent over the past few years. From this perspective, digital transformation benefits Saudi Arabia politically both internationally and domestically.

         Besides the politically benefits of digital transformation, the spending on digital transformation has also benefited numerous other sectors, such as health, education, commerce, tourism and culture, government services, infrastructure, etc. In 2019, 19% of Saudi citizens registered the Shared E-Health File. 5.5 million citizens registered the Mawid online appointment system, and 9 million appointments was made in 2021. And 506 medical centers adopted the system developed by Elm Company. Moreover, 18,767 vocal consultations and 4,962 video calls were made through the Seha platform in Sehaty App. And the sick leave was granted by the system for government employees. What is more, 10,381 people registered in this app and 8,821 people requested for medication prescriptions renewing. Undoubtedly the digital transformation in health sector not only makes the entire system more efficient, but it also reduces the cost of the system for both-end users. Additionally, it will also make the cost for medical research to collect data much cheaper than before. And the collected data will be much completer and more accurate. It is a triple-win situation.

        For the education system, more schools, educators, and students are benefited from digital transformation. By 2020, 50% of the schools have connected to the internet, and 1,893 schools have connected to Future Gate, which is a country-wide learning management system for K-12 educations. The users of Future Gate crosses 16 educational regions with almost half a million users (498,000 users). And the Noor System offers free services to students and parents for checking the educational status of the students. And there were 10 million users and 36.6 million saved certificates by 2020. And the National Suggestion & Complaint system “Tawasul” has provided the access for the users to submit their suggestions and complaints to any government entity electronically. By 2020, 432,122 calls, 153,822 reports, and 49,433 consultants have been made or filed through the “Tawasul” system across many sectors, universities, and all departments. Besides providing easy access to the people, the system also increases the transparency of the government system.

        For the commerce sector, there were 500 e-stores launched through the Tomoh program platform by 2020, which aims to help the development of the fast-growing small and mid-size tech companies. Value of operations through the platform has reached 9 million. Moreover, the number of operations using National Address database has reached 28.7 million by 2020 with 35 entities connected to the database. For the transaction payment, it even receives more benefits than ever before. There were 100% increase in the number of e-commerce transactions and 600% increase in the number of Atheer service transactions by 2020. For Fintech, there were 21 fintech projects in progress in beta testing in 2020. And there were 100% increase both in the number of e-stores and active clients for second quarter of 2020 compared with the first quarter of the same year. And the Kingdom even passed the E-Commerce Law to deepen the trust in electronic transactions and protect consumer rights. As a result, this law will also give the consumers more confidence in digital wallet, which makes the transaction easier, faster, and more cost effective.

        Besides the above achievements and regardless of the Neom city project, the Kingdom also started the smart cities plan. By 2020, there were over 35,000 LED lights installed in 8 cities and 1,100 smart parking spot were created by 2020. And these numbers are expected to increase in the following few years since the plan has projected more LED lights and more smart parking spots to be built. And the Riyadh Metro Project serves as a key factor in smart transportation services development, which has now been completed. And it aims to serve up to 100, 000 people every day. Without digital transformation, it will not serve so many people daily. The application of digital transformation in the Metro operating system will reduce the manual operations on the metro and hence reduce the human error and improve the operating efficiency.

          The Kingdom also launched the industrial city communication infrastructure initiative. By 2020, there were 505 factories already connected in Sadeer Industrial City and Jeddah Second Industrial. Under this digital transformation, the factories have increased in efficiency around 30%-50%, and reduced costs for about 20%-30%. Besides this, digital transformation also benefits tourism and culture sectors. In 2020, there were 7.5 million Umrah visitors to the Kingdom who visited with digital technology. And the average number of Umrah visitors from 2000 to 2019 is around 2.2 million, which is even less than one third of the Umrah visitors in 2020. In other words, if the average number of visitors from 2000 to 2020 is 2.45 million, which is around 11% more than the average from 2000 to 2019. We can easily see and analyze the improvement in the number of visitors after digital transformation. Moreover, digital transformation offers tremendous advantages to government services. In 2020, there were 12.8 million participants who were using Absher platform to deal with their government affairs. And the average time to administer any service is 3 minutes. And the digital services saved about $15 billions for the government. Other government services or affairs including document management, financial investigations, housing, transportation, water, electricity, agriculture, the court system, media, and so on, are also benefited from digital transformation. Digital transformation makes government services more efficient with less cost. Moreover, digital transformation, which is application of digital technology, significantly reduces human error.

         Without any doubt, digital transformation has benefited, and will continue to benefit all aspects of the society. And some sectors and companies will benefit more from digital transformation. Here are the top 10 trends in digital transformation: The switch to 5G, artificial intelligence in food and beverage industry, digital customer service, robotic process automation, online education and digital payments, cloud-based cyber security, Drones in oil detection and inspection, 3D printing in manufacturing, digital health. One of the greatest success about digital transformation is the largest technology company in China-Alibaba. Alibaba has the largest e-commerce platform in China. It also has its world famous fintech (digital payments system), logistics, marketing services and even digital media. Denso engineer Hara Masahiro invented the QR code 25 years ago, but Alibaba made QR code famous in China. QR code payments and money receiving is the most popular way for transactions and money activities in China. Based on the e-commerce platform and fintech, Alibaba builds up its empire China. And the example of Alibaba is an excellent example of the power of digital transformation. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia may not totally copy the way how Alibaba succeeds, but the Kingdom has been working hard to build up its own success of digital transformation uniquely, which has been proven by the data mentioned earlier in this article.

          One of the direct economic or financial impact we can see is the reduction of cost after applying digital transformation. Another direct association between digital transformation and the economy is that a 10 percent increase in digital transformation will increase 0.50% to 0.62% in per capita GDP. The more advanced the digital transformation is, the greater the impact of digital transformation on the economy. The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has done a great job in digital transformation in all aspects of the society. But there are 35.89 million people in Saudi Arabia, there are still over 50% of the people in Saudi haven’t enjoyed the benefits of digital transformation. The next step is to all the Saudi people know that the government has provided opportunities and access of digital transformation to all its citizens which already being worked on. And digital transformation can provide Saudi people more knowledge, more opportunities, and more efficiency to their life. To enjoy the benefits of digital transformation will make the people smarter and more intelligent. And when people become smarter and more intelligent, they will produce and invent more advanced technologies. This positive circulation and cycle will definitely help to improve the technology production of Saudi Arabia and help to realize the 2030 Vision. The digital transformation of Saudi Arabia is, in fact, the transformation of Saudi people.