Reference to the Council of Ministers Resolution No. (418) dated 25/07/1442 AH, approving the establishment of the Digital Government Authority (DGA). With reference to the Fourth Article stipulates in its fourth and fifth paragraphs, that the DGA is mandated to “Coordinate with the competent authorities to assume the task of regulating the work of the digital government, platforms, websites, digital government services, government networks, and the unified national portal as well as developing plans, programs, indicators, and metrics related to digital government business, and joint digital government services”. In addition, the DGA is asked to “to issue measurements, indices, tools and reports; to measure the performance and capabilities of the digital government entities in relation to digital government, and beneficiary satisfaction”.
 

Furthermore, driven by the DGA responsibility to enhance digital performance, expedite the digital transformation, raise the efficiency of websites of the government entities and improve the quality of digital content, in alignment with the national digital government strategic directions, and Saudi Vision 2030.
 

Based on the best practices and international indicators aimed at improving the performance of government websites; the Authority has developed “Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index”; to measure the efficiency of government websites and the quality of digital content and optimize their appearance on search engine results. This guideline reviews the definition of the index, the methodology used, and the criteria for selecting the target government websites for this year, in addition to the perspectives and themes on which the methodology is based, and according to which government websites are assessed. 

This guideline aims to provide the necessary support to government agencies to raise the efficiency of their websites and digital content, through the following:

• Introducing the website and digital content efficiency index methodology and the assessment mechanism used.

• Contributing to raising the level of efficiency of websites and improving the quality of digital content by applying the index perspectives and themes referred to in this document.

• Enhancing transparency and enabling government agencies to comprehensively understand the index perspectives and themes, and the website classification levels.
   

This guideline introduces the concepts related to the “Website and Digital Content Efficiency Index”, the mechanism for updating and developing the index, and an introduction to the basic components of the index, including the following:

• An overview of the concept of website and digital content efficiency.

• Introducing the website and digital content efficiency index and its objectives.

• Strategic alignment of the index with Saudi Vision 2030 and digital government trends.

• The methodology of the index in its second cycle, 2025 cycle, including the criteria for selecting the government websites targeted in this cycle, clarification of the perspectives and themes included in the index and the assessment mechanisms followed, in addition to clarifying the efficiency levels on which the websites will be classified.

• Timeline of the index cycle during the current year 2025 AD.

This guideline targets government agencies, digital transformation leaders, specialists responsible for managing websites and digital content, in addition to operators responsible for managing business related to government agencies’ websites.

5.1 Overview of the Concept of Website and Digital Content Efficiency

The Internet has become an essential part of the lives of beneficiaries, and it is also considered a key enabler of excellence in government performance with major impact on how governments communicate with their beneficiaries. Today, government websites have become the main source for providing information and launching digital services for beneficiaries.

With the acceleration of the transformation in the digital landscape, and the need of beneficiaries for immediate and effective access to information, the website performance can play a direct role in enhancing confidence and raising satisfaction among its various types of beneficiaries locally or globally. Here lies the importance of improving the beneficiary digital experience and improving their journey, starting with their search for data and information using international browsers, through making this information and digital services available with high quality and efficiency, and ending with them obtaining the information or service smoothly, achieving their aspirations, and even exceeding their expectations.

Search engine optimization is a set of procedures to improve the website’s appearance in the first search results on the search engine to achieve a high visit rate on the government agency’s website.

Monitoring and improving the technical efficiency of the website is essential to provide website visitors with a fast, reliable and easy-to-use experience, where improving the efficiency of websites begins with the preparation to improve appearance on global search engines such as “Google” search engine, that is called “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”. This means ensuring that the website appears among the first search results, which leads to an increase in the growth of the number of visits to websites.

There are several important factors that contribute to improving the efficiency of websites, and they can be referred to as “Technical SEO” or technical procedures for search engine optimization. They are a set of procedures and steps that are followed for the purpose of improving the technical aspects of the website in order to make it easier for search robots to crawl the website (Crawling) and assess its pages based on several factors that would affect the user experience, such as: the speed of loading the page. The importance of improving it lies in not negatively affecting appearance in search results, the length of time visitors stay on the website, and overall traffic.

Search engine optimization is one of the most important elements of building an effective digital presence. Also, search engines are tools that help users discover the content of a specific website. Therefore, care must be taken to prepare reliable and positive content as it is considered the first attraction to achieve the aspirations of users and to make them interested in browsing the website, and the means through which we can achieve the purpose of creating websites, portals and applications and realizing their strategic objectives towards the target groups.

Digital content is all information that is automatically recorded about digital services delivered by government agencies to their intended audience.

The content must be unique, valuable and compatible with the agency’s scope of work and image, it also must be easily accessible to the various target groups and achieves good interaction with them. There are several types of content, such as: information pages, articles, news, short videos, statistics, presentations, and illustrations.

Informative content is information that the government agency publishes through its digital channels to give an overview of  the agency and what it does, such as: its latest news, its initiatives and its mechanism of action. 

For more information; Check the digital version.

The following terms and expressions, wherever mentioned in this document, have the meanings assigned to them respectively, unless the context requires otherwise: