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Emerging and modern technologies

The EA office supports the entity in planning adoption of emerging technologies and strengthening innovation, through services and procedures that analyse global technology trends and define use cases per business area and sector.

The EA office supports the entity in planning adoption of emerging technologies.

In brief

4
services

Procedures linked to adopting emerging technologies within the organisational structure (dedicated unit or as part of existing unit tasks) and the EA role in these procedures.

Adopting emerging technologies as a strategic pillar in the entity’s digital transformation plan.

Achieving results in implementing initiatives and projects related to adopting emerging technologies within the digital transformation roadmap.

Presenting advisory studies or use cases that were studied and approved by the entity and resulted in deploying or applying emerging or modern technologies.

Entity adoption of emerging technologies

This guideline reflects the entity’s focus on adopting emerging technologies, which play a central role in strengthening digital innovation and providing enablers that encourage investment and support use across the entity’s business sectors. Emerging technologies include, for example but not limited to: artificial intelligence, IoT, blockchain, augmented reality/virtual reality, robotics, cloud computing, 3D printing. Refer to the DGA guideline “Guideline for adopting emerging technologies”.

Advisory study

Present a list of advisory studies or use cases that were studied and approved by the entity and resulted in deploying or applying emerging or modern technologies. The table below is an illustrative view of use-case building outputs.

Automating routine office work using artificial intelligence

Using AI to automate routine office tasks in the entity to increase operational efficiency and productivity, by developing a smart application for document recognition, understanding required content, and executing tasks based on available data.

Technology

Artificial intelligence

Duration

6 months

Estimated budget

1,000,000 Saudi riyals

Current state

Currently, entity staff process a large volume of documents manually, which is time-consuming, increases the risk of error, requires significant resources, and affects the entity’s response time to beneficiary requests.

Proposed solution

Develop and apply AI using machine learning to understand and process documents, so that the application can: classify documents by type and importance; extract key data and integrate with internal applications with automatic updates; generate reports and responses based on input data.

Impact

Reduce errors from manual document processing by up to 50%; increase productivity by 70%; improve staff satisfaction through faster response and high accuracy; lower operational costs and improve resource use.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking for the entity is prepared within the same scope as the target study, with local and/or international entities, to benefit from their experiences and strategic directions and help define the entity’s strategic direction. Those entities are selected based on standard criteria defined in advance.

1

Define standard criteria for selecting the technology or product

The entity defines the objectives it aims to achieve from the study, understands the required need, develops the basis for benchmarking between local and/or international entities, and defines a set of standard criteria to be used in evaluating and selecting the appropriate technology or product for the entity.
2

Select model countries or entities for benchmarking

Select the countries or entities that will be analysed and compared in the study, by gathering data on candidate countries and evaluating them against the predefined standard criteria, then evaluating the shortlist to choose model entities with high maturity in the target study area that meet the criteria.
3

Study and analyse data

Review and study the data collected from reliable sources, analyse each selected country’s performance against the chosen criteria, and focus on strengths and weaknesses of each, to identify improvement and innovation opportunities and enhance overall entity performance.
4

Measure and assess compliance

Verify measurement of performance against the predefined standard criteria, assess each country’s compliance with the standard criteria in the target study area, and identify gaps between actual and target levels.
5

Present final results and prepare recommendations

Final stage of benchmarking: calculate the final assessment score based on the standard criteria, then prepare the final report with a clear picture of overall performance and compliance of the selected countries, present recommendations and identify improvement opportunities that can be applied within the entity, with a detailed plan for implementing recommendations linked to the entity’s future vision.

Services and procedures

A list of EA services and procedures related to adopting emerging and modern technologies that are activated within the entity, contributing to fundamental changes in shaping the future landscape across sectors and achieving positive results in line with entity objectives. Illustrative sample to ensure the entity’s commitment to the criterion “Benefiting from global best practices and modern technologies”.

1

Feasibility study service: analyse feasibility, impact, cost, and benefits for adopting emerging technologies.

2

Identify and approve adoption of emerging and modern technologies: a procedure that clarifies how the EA team identifies and approves adoption across EA domains (business, experience, data, applications, technology, security) and links to the feasibility study service.

3

Benchmarking: steps to study global experiences and best practices and link them to entity decisions (as in the steps above).

4

Build use cases: present studies or cases that were approved and led to deploying emerging or modern technologies.

Examples of the EA role in building new technical directions

The EA office identifies or adopts new technical directions, clarifying the impact of their use in the entity and linking them to the future state. The sample below is from global technical directions in EA domains, based on technical trend reports from approved global research and consulting firms, with evidence on how to benefit from these directions in building the future vision.

BA001

Business – Use cases for robotics and AI: many companies rely on high-capability robotics and AI. The top five use-case categories in AI spending: virtual assistant, knowledge management, autonomous vehicles, digital workplace, and manufacturing. The entity can use this direction in one of these categories or others and improve its procedures and services.

DA001

Data – Composable and analysable data: aims to aggregate, organise, and analyse data and turn it from raw data into valuable, reusable data through advanced analytics and big-data techniques, supporting innovation and continuous development and enhancing the beneficiary journey in the entity.

AA001

Applications – Low-code/no-code development: the global low-code development platform shapes multiple application development activities, enabling rapid software development with minimal coding and reducing the need for broad coding expertise.

TA001

Technology – Green data centres: the Saudi Green Initiative aims to reduce carbon emissions by more than 4% by 2030. As data centres consume a significant share of electricity (about 1% of global total), this creates the need for a sustainable, energy-efficient data centre.

Example outputs

List of advisory studies or use cases approved by the entity that resulted in applying emerging or modern technologies.

Results of benchmarking with global experiences and best practices.

Identification and approval of specific emerging technology adoption within the DT roadmap.

This guideline (advisory study model for global best practices in adopting emerging and modern technologies) is issued under NORA. Refer to the DGA guideline for adopting emerging technologies.

Related topics

Establishing EA practice

EA strategy

Reference models