Is Saudi Arabia's Digital-Transformation Mandate Reaching the Campus? A Webometrics Review of University Governance Structures

Research stream: Higher-Education Digital Transformation (crossing into University Digital Strategy). Published 21 September 2026.

Executive Summary

Saudi Arabia has built one of the world's most closely tracked national digital-government programs. The Digital Government Authority (DGA) runs recurring, publicly reported indices that score hundreds of government entities on website quality and digital-transformation maturity, and in January 2026 the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) launched a mandatory, cross-disciplinary data-and-AI curriculum for undergraduates at every Saudi university. Universities are formally part of this system: they are counted as government entities in DGA's indices, and King Saud University was named the academic partner for SDAIA's new national curriculum. Webometrics examined what this national push looks like once it reaches an individual university's own website — not by re-running the government's evaluation, but by directly inspecting how 10 purposively sampled Saudi public universities present their own digital-transformation governance to the public, and by reading DGA's own published 2025 results for evidence of comparative standing. Five of the 10 sampled universities maintain a clearly named, centrally organized digital-transformation unit — a dedicated deanship, center, or directorate — on their own website; three distribute the function across multiple existing offices without a single named unit; and two show no dedicated digital-transformation administrative unit in the pages examined, despite active, AI-related activity elsewhere on their sites. Two of the ten sampled universities, King Khalid University and Qassim University, appear in DGA's own published top-10 national ranking for the 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index — and both are also among the five universities with the clearest institutional governance structure. The pattern observed is consistent with, though it does not prove, a link between visible institutional ownership of digital transformation and stronger measured outcomes in the national program that sets the target in the first place.

Key Findings

• Of 10 purposively sampled Saudi public universities, 5 (King Abdulaziz University, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, King Khalid University, Qassim University, and Taibah University) maintain a single, centrally named digital-transformation governance unit — a dedicated deanship, center, or directorate — that is directly reachable from their own website.
• 3 of the 10 (King Saud University, Umm Al-Qura University, and Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University) distribute digital-transformation-related functions across multiple existing offices — skills-development, quality, e-learning, IT, and data-management units — without a single centrally named digital-transformation unit identified during this collection.
• 2 of the 10 (King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) showed no dedicated digital-transformation administrative unit in the pages examined; digital-transformation-related content at both was research- or pilot-scoped (academic publications and a graduate research strategy at the former; an AI research institute and a narrow autonomous-delivery pilot at the latter) rather than an institution-wide governance structure.
• In the Digital Government Authority's own published 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index — which scored 250 Saudi government websites — exactly 2 universities appeared in the publicly released top 10: King Khalid University (3rd, 92.37%) and Qassim University (4th, 92.31%). Both are also in the group of 5 universities with a clearly named digital-transformation governance unit.
• Qassim University's own published account of its DGA index history shows a score rising from 40.5% in 2015 to 92.72% in the most recent published cycle, with the university reporting it has held the index's highest maturity tier for four consecutive years (2022–2025).
• King Saud University does not appear among the 5 universities with a single, centrally named digital-transformation unit, yet it was named the academic partner for SDAIA's new National Cross-Disciplinary Curriculum for University Students in Data and AI, launched 30 January 2026 in Riyadh — indicating that visible governance structure on a university's own website and visible standing in national digital-government initiatives are not always the same signal.
• DGA has not published a full ranked list of all 250 assessed entities, only a top-10 table; this study can confirm where 2 of the 10 sampled universities stand nationally, but cannot determine the other 8 sampled universities' standing in that specific index from public information alone.

Why This Matters for Universities

A national digital-transformation strategy sets direction, but a university's website is where the public — prospective students, researchers, international partners, and government evaluators alike — actually encounters the result. Webometrics' own methodology treats public digital services and interaction, discoverability and indexability, and technical web quality as observable dimensions of an institution's Openness and Excellence, independent of any single national program. A visible, centrally organized digital-transformation unit is one of the more direct ways a university can signal, to any outside reader, that digital modernization is an institutional responsibility rather than a scattered set of departmental projects. Where that structure is absent or fragmented on the public website, an outside observer — including a prospective research partner or an accrediting body — has less basis for judging how digital initiatives are coordinated, even if meaningful work is happening elsewhere in the institution.

Authoritative Background

Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 reform program set out to diversify the economy and modernize public administration, and its National Transformation Program is the delivery vehicle most directly associated with digitizing government services. Within that architecture, the Digital Government Authority is the body responsible for measuring digital-government performance across the public sector, including universities, which in Saudi Arabia are public entities. DGA runs at least two recurring, publicly reported instruments relevant to this study. The Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index, now in its fourth annual edition, assessed 250 government websites in 2025 on technical efficiency (domain strength, website quality, security, and accessibility) and content quality (editorial standards, design, e-participation, and open data), producing an overall national average of 76.24% ("Competent" level), up from 71.40% in 2024. A separate, broader Digital Transformation Index — described in Qassim University's own published account of its results — uses 125 criteria (52 drawn from royal orders and ministerial resolutions, 73 assessing digital-transformation implementation) and classifies entities into five maturity stages: Establishment, Availability, Improvement, Integration, and Innovation.

Separately, the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) — the national body responsible for Saudi Arabia's data and AI strategy — announced on 30 January 2026, at the International Conference on Data and AI Capacity Building (ICAN 2026) in Riyadh, a National Cross-Disciplinary Curriculum for University Students in Data and AI. According to reporting from the Saudi Press Agency, the curriculum is intended to become a mandatory element of undergraduate programs across all academic disciplines at Saudi universities, not only computer science, with King Saud University named as academic partner, the Human Capability Development Program as knowledge partner, and Elm as strategic partner. International frameworks for institutional digital transformation in higher education — including EDUCAUSE's Dx framework, which organizes transformation into "Learn," "Plan," and "Do" phases spanning culture, workforce, and technology, and Jisc's framework for digital transformation in UK higher education, which foregrounds leadership, cross-team governance, and a people-centered approach over technology alone — converge on a common point relevant here: institutional digital transformation is understood internationally as a governance and leadership question as much as a technical one, which is precisely the dimension this study set out to observe directly on each sampled university's own website.

Research Question

Among a purposive sample of Saudi public universities, do the institutions' own public websites carry an observable, centrally organized digital-transformation governance structure, and how does the presence or absence of that structure relate to each university's standing in the Digital Government Authority's own published national index results?

Methodology

Collection dates: 20–21 September 2026.

Population: Publicly accessible official websites of Saudi public universities, together with the Digital Government Authority's own published index results and Saudi Press Agency reporting on SDAIA's national curriculum announcement.

Sample: A purposive sample of 10 Saudi public universities, selected to span large multidisciplinary research universities, specialized technical institutions, regional universities, and a women's university, rather than to represent a statistically random draw from Saudi Arabia's full higher-education system: King Saud University (Riyadh), King Abdulaziz University (Jeddah), King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Dhahran), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Thuwal), Umm Al-Qura University (Makkah), Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (Dammam), Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University (Riyadh), King Khalid University (Abha), Qassim University (Buraydah), and Taibah University (Madinah).

Selection rule: The sample combines Saudi Arabia's largest and most internationally visible research universities with regional and specialized institutions, so findings are not limited to Riyadh- or Jeddah-based universities alone.

Variables recorded for each institution: whether a single, centrally named digital-transformation administrative unit (deanship, center, or directorate) is directly reachable and identifiable from the university's own website; where digital-transformation-related content exists without such a central unit, which existing offices host it; and whether the institution appears, by name, in DGA's own published 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index results or in other DGA-published index materials referenced by the institution itself.

Evidence sources: Each university's own website (English- and Arabic-language pages), retrieved and inspected directly via web search and direct page retrieval; the Digital Government Authority's own published 2025 index results and related official reporting; Saudi Press Agency reporting on SDAIA's National Cross-Disciplinary Curriculum announcement.

Analysis approach: Descriptive classification of each sampled university into one of three governance-visibility categories (centrally named unit; distributed function; no dedicated unit identified), cross-referenced against DGA's own published national index standing where available.

Limitations: See the Limitations section below.

Results

Digital-transformation governance structure observed on each university's own website

Standing in the Digital Government Authority's published 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index (top 10 of 250 assessed government websites)

None of the other 8 universities sampled for this study appeared in DGA's published top-10 table; DGA has not published the full ranked list of all 250 assessed entities, so this study cannot determine where those 8 universities stood in the same index.

Analysis

Two independent observations converge on the same two institutions. King Khalid University and Qassim University are the only sampled universities that appear in the Digital Government Authority's own published top-10 national results, and they are also among the clearest cases, on direct inspection of their own websites, of a university organizing digital transformation as a named, central institutional function rather than a scattered set of departmental initiatives — Qassim University in particular publishes its own account of a multi-year DGA score trajectory (40.5% in 2015 to a reported 92.72% most recently) alongside specific claims about ISO certifications and government-system integrations, while King Khalid University maintains a dedicated award program and public initiatives plan for digital transformation. This is a pattern worth noting, not a proof of causation: with only 2 of 10 sampled universities appearing in DGA's published top 10, and DGA not having released a full ranked list of all 250 assessed entities, this study cannot determine whether the other 8 sampled universities would show a similar relationship between governance visibility and index standing, nor whether a centrally named unit itself produces better website scores versus both being downstream effects of a shared underlying institutional priority.

A second, distinct pattern appears in the case of King Saud University. Despite showing no single, centrally named digital-transformation unit on its own website in the pages examined — its relevant activity is split across a skills-development deanship, a quality-and-accreditation unit, and a dedicated AI center — King Saud University was named the academic partner for SDAIA's new national cross-disciplinary AI curriculum in January 2026, a prominent, government-led initiative that will shape how every Saudi university teaches data and AI literacy to non-specialist undergraduates. This indicates that visible governance structure on a university's own public website is not the only channel through which a university's standing in national digital-strategy initiatives becomes apparent — national program partnership, in this case, appears independently of the specific structural signal this study measured directly.

A third pattern concerns the two universities where no dedicated digital-transformation unit was identified at all: King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Both are specialized, internationally oriented research institutions where the closest observable equivalents to a digital-transformation program were research- or project-scoped rather than institution-wide — a research strategy document and teaching materials referencing digital transformation as a subject of study at the former; a research-focused AI institute launched with Cisco in October 2025, and a narrowly scoped "KAUST Smart" autonomous-delivery pilot explicitly referencing Saudi Arabia's National Digital Transformation Unit, at the latter. It is possible that both universities manage institutional digital transformation through offices this study's search-based method did not surface, or through channels not indexed publicly; the absence recorded here describes what was found in publicly indexed pages during the collection window, not a comprehensive audit of internal governance.

University Examples

Qassim University's own published account of its digital-transformation program is the most detailed self-reported case in this sample: the university describes reaching the Digital Government Authority's highest maturity tier ("Creativity" in the university's own terminology for the top level of DGA's index) for four consecutive cycles from 2022 to 2025, cites a score rising from 40.5% in 2015 to 92.72% most recently, and lists three ISO certifications (ISO 20000 for service management, ISO 27001 for information security, and ISO 22301 for business continuity) alongside integration with more than 23 government entities through unified platforms. These figures are presented here as the university's own published claims, not independently re-verified against DGA's underlying scoring data, which DGA does not publish at that level of institutional detail. King Khalid University's public-facing program takes a different, more participatory form: a named "Digital Transformation Ambassadors" platform, an internal Digital Transformation Award recognizing individuals and teams, and a specific AI-literacy initiative ("Wiqad") run by the university's Deanship of Electronic Services, aimed at training students, faculty, and staff in generative-AI tools, administrative automation, and AI ethics. Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University's General Directorate of Digital Transformation is organized around four subordinate departments — administrative efficiency, enterprise architecture, information-technology management, and beneficiary care — a structure that maps closely onto the kind of cross-functional governance that Jisc's framework for digital transformation in higher education describes as a critical success factor, independent of whether PNU's own materials reference that specific framework.

Implications for Higher Education

For Saudi university leadership, this study's central observable pattern — that the two sampled universities with the clearest public governance structure for digital transformation are also the two that appear in DGA's own published national top 10 — is a reason to treat public-facing governance clarity as a plausible complement to internal digital-transformation work, not a substitute for it; the relationship observed here is associative, from a sample of 10, and should not be read as evidence that renaming an office or launching an awards program will itself improve DGA scores. For university communications and IT teams, the contrast between universities with a single named digital-transformation unit and those where the function is distributed across several offices suggests a discoverability question distinct from the underlying work itself: a prospective partner, accreditor, or researcher assessing an institution's digital maturity from its website alone will find a clearer answer at some universities than others, independent of how much digital-transformation activity is actually under way internally. For national policymakers and DGA itself, the fact that only a top-10 table is published, rather than full results for all 250 assessed entities including all participating universities, limits how far external researchers — including Webometrics — can independently verify claims that individual universities make about their own index standing.

Recommended Actions

Universities without a single, publicly identifiable point of ownership for digital transformation may consider consolidating existing digital-transformation-related content — currently, in several cases in this sample, spread across e-learning, IT, skills-development, and quality-assurance pages — under one clearly labeled institutional page or unit, independent of how the underlying work is organized internally. Universities that do maintain a dedicated unit, as five in this sample do, may find value in publishing more of the specific, quantified detail that Qassim University's own materials include, since specific figures are more useful to external readers, evaluators, and Webometrics-style research than general mission language alone. These are evidence-supported observations about public website presentation, not guarantees of improved DGA index scores, Webometrics ranking positions, or any other outcome.

Limitations

This study examined 10 of Saudi Arabia's several dozen public universities; findings describe this purposive sample and should not be generalized to the full national system without a larger, more systematically drawn sample. The method relied on web search and direct page retrieval rather than a comprehensive site crawl or access to each university's internal organizational charts, so the absence of a governance structure recorded for a given university reflects what was found in publicly indexed English- and Arabic-language pages during the collection window, not a confirmed absence within the institution. The Digital Government Authority has published only a top-10 table for its 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index, not full results for all 250 assessed entities; this study therefore cannot state where the 8 sampled universities outside that top 10 actually ranked nationally. Figures describing Qassim University's multi-year DGA score history and ISO certifications are drawn from the university's own published materials and have not been independently re-verified against DGA's underlying data. This study did not measure website technical performance, security headers, or structured data directly, and does not claim that a named governance unit itself causes stronger digital-government index performance — the association observed involves only 2 of 10 sampled universities and should not be treated as a general finding about Saudi higher education. Data reflect a collection window of 20–21 September 2026; institutional websites and index results change over time. Webometrics ranking data was not used to select or weight this sample.

Conclusion

Among the 10 Saudi public universities examined between 20 and 21 September 2026, 5 maintain a single, centrally named digital-transformation governance unit directly reachable from their own website, 3 distribute the function across multiple existing offices, and 2 show no dedicated digital-transformation administrative unit in the pages examined. The two universities in this sample that appear in the Digital Government Authority's own published 2025 national top-10 index results — King Khalid University and Qassim University — are also the two with the most extensively documented public governance structures for digital transformation, a pattern this study can observe but not establish as causal from a sample of this size. Separately, King Saud University's role as academic partner for SDAIA's new national data-and-AI curriculum shows that a university's visibility in national digital-strategy initiatives does not always track directly with how clearly that university organizes and labels digital transformation on its own public website.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this study measure the quality of each university's digital-transformation work, or only how it is presented on the website?
Only the latter. This study observed whether a centrally named, publicly identifiable governance structure exists on each university's own website; it did not assess the internal effectiveness, budget, or staffing of digital-transformation programs at any institution.

Why do only 2 of the 10 sampled universities appear in the national index results discussed here?
The Digital Government Authority has published only a top-10 table from its 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index, covering all 250 assessed government websites, not university-specific results for entities outside that top 10. This study can report where King Khalid University and Qassim University stood, but not where the other 8 sampled universities ranked.

Does the absence of a named digital-transformation unit mean a university has not adopted digital transformation?
No. This study's method — web search and direct page retrieval — cannot rule out that a university manages digital transformation through offices, intranets, or internal documents not indexed publicly. It can only report what was found in publicly accessible pages during the collection window.

How does this relate to Webometrics' own ranking methodology?
Webometrics' Openness and Excellence indicators include dimensions such as public digital services and interaction, discoverability, and technical web quality, which are conceptually related to but methodologically distinct from Saudi Arabia's national DGA index. This study did not calculate or imply any Webometrics indicator score for the universities examined.

Sources

• Digital Government Authority (Saudi Arabia). "Digital Government Authority Announces Results of 2025 Government Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index." dga.gov.sa
• Saudi Press Agency. "Digital Government Authority Announces 2025 Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index Results." spa.gov.sa
• Saudi Press Agency. "SDAIA Launches National Data and AI Curriculum at ICAN2026." spa.gov.sa
• Arab News. "SDAIA launches national data, AI curriculum." arabnews.com
• Saudi Vision 2030. "National Transformation Program." vision2030.gov.sa
• EDUCAUSE. "Dx: Digital Transformation of Higher Education." dx.educause.edu
• Jisc. "Framework for Digital Transformation in Higher Education." jisc.ac.uk
• Qassim University. "Digital Transformation — Deanship of E-Learning." qu.edu.sa
• King Khalid University. "Wiqad" initiative announcement. kku.edu.sa
• Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University. "General Directorate of Digital Transformation." pnu.edu.sa
• Taibah University. "Deanship of Information Technology and Digital Transformation." taibahu.edu.sa
• King Abdulaziz University. "Digital Transformation Center." kau.edu.sa
• WEBOMETRICS by UNIRANKS. Current methodology reference. webometrics.org

Suggested Citation

WEBOMETRICS by UNIRANKS. (2026, September 21). Is Saudi Arabia's Digital-Transformation Mandate Reaching the Campus? A Webometrics Review of University Governance Structures. Webometrics.org.