Assessing progress towards smart governance in Saudi Arabia

Smart governance is a powerful political instrument to enhance the quality of public decision-making. Saudi Arabia has established smart city strategies using Information Communication Technologies to improve the quality of life and facilitate sustainable development. This study assesses smart governance, based on identifying five distinct areas by means of sixteen indicators for smart governance performance. To this end, data was collected from public and international sources, as well as from the literature. The findings reveal that Saudi Arabia has achieved solid progress in this field. Two factors, the e-service system and spending on public services, have highly contributed to this improvement. Other factors, such as citizen participation, governmental organization, and political domain have also played an important role; however, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed.