Cloud data governance in-light of the saudi vision 2030 for digital transformation

Digital transformation in Saudi Arabia is one of the core elements to achieve the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. In this paper, we argue that data governance plays a vital role for the success of this vision. This role is further emphasized when considering the country's appetite for emerging technologies such as cloud computing solutions. A thorough survey of literature shows that data governance in general and for cloud computing, more specifically, is under researched. This paper puts the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 for digital transformation under a test. Supported by an empirical study, this paper provides an early warning of a highly likely failure if data governance is not integrated in the vision as a driver for digital transformation. An empirical survey, using a self-administered questionnaire, is conducted to explore and evaluate the status of data governance in the Saudi Arabia. The results of the study reveal that despite the wide recognition of the importance of data governance, especially for cloud computing, there is a consensus that this area is really in its infancy and almost absent from the Saudi organizations. © 2017 IEEE

Green IT Model for Gulf Cooperation Council Organisations

This research aims to develop a Green IT model that suits the needs of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. A mix-methods approach that combines interviews with a survey was implemented to assess the model critically. The initial model developed for evaluating various Green models to assess the Governance, Social and Cultural, Information Technology and Green Management in GCC. The Green IT model aims to raise sustainability awareness in GCC countries based on their visions

TOWARD SUSTAINABLE SMART CITIES: CONCEPTS & CHALLENGES

The world’s urban population is growing enormously, increasing of energy usage, air toxicity, and traffic congestion in urban areas which need a furthermost effective way for solutions. Smart city as a solution is expected to solve the functionality of urban systems. It needs to improve ICT infrastructure as an authoritative, adaptable, accessible, secure, and flexible one, and improve the quality of daily lifetime, refine citizen’s healthiness as well to achieve economic growth and develop the physical infrastructure services to promote sustainable development. This research is a narrative review, kind of methodological approach presented as open research and structured as follows: First section presents the smart city concept by reviewing the definitions, characteristics, and its dimensions. Based on the creation of smart cities, the research aims to identify and investigate the main challenges that smart cities development will face in the coming years by analysing, estimating, and evaluating the available data. It also includes a various assortment of challenges classified under; infrastructure challenges, theoretical, urban design, interdisciplinary, hackers challenges, urban land use, disability of the elderly challenges, the Big Data, technology trap, cultural and democracy challenges, budgetary and cost constraints, and regulations challenges. Besides, it is important to be conscious of security and privacy risks when implementing new systems. One example specifically discussed, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia smart city practices, provides a general overview of the Saudi Vision 2030. It is enlightened by a brief about “the most recent smart city project in Saudi Arabia”, NEOM and illustrates the smart city practices of Makkah, in the light of the six dimensions of the smart city, also studied the city of Amsterdam as it considered one of the first smart cities at the global level. Finally, the research ends with the conclusions and recommendations

Academic Excellence Framework: Towards Sustainable Growth

In response to the ongoing calls for excellence across all sectors in Saudi Arabia, higher education institutions are pressured to rethink their practices. However, with all the governmental strategic, focused planning in Saudi higher education to achieve excellence and compete globally, there is a gap between what is expected and what is happening regarding academic excellence’s pedagogical and practical aspects. Hence, this study is an attempt to bridge that gap. The main purpose of this study is to propose an educational excellence framework by exploring the perceptions of academics. Data was collected through semi-structured one-on-one interviews. The proposed framework will provide a roadmap to produce better and more relevant outcomes and raise the standards to complement the broader reform in higher education. The key strength of the study is that it orients the reader to understand how to acquire academic excellence to enhance institutional distinctiveness and student success

Building a Society of Trust: Innovation and the Future of Youth Employment in Jordan

The word startup is perhaps an unlikely word that comes to mind when discussing shifting dynamics in the Middle East – this is rapidly changing. In the past two decades, Arab entrepreneurs have emerged from across the region as key players in the paradigm of national economic visions. Within these plans, innovation will become the epicenter for public-private partnerships. Such collaboration will contribute to tackling youth unemployment, the region’s most pressing contemporary problem, as well as diversifying local economies. The research delves into the complexities and history of entrepreneurship in Jordan as one of the region’s pioneering nations, examining the strengths and weaknesses of the country’s infrastructure for its next generation of entrepreneurs through interviews and analysis of secondary sources

Responses to Dramatic Change in the Workplace: The Case of the Saudi Telecommunications Company

The business environment in Saudi Arabia has undergone dramatic changes in recent years due to the country’s entrance into the World Trade Organization, the entry of women into the workforce, and the institution of the Vision 2030 initiative to diversify the economy and reduce its dependence on oil. While a need exists to update business practices to compete with multinational technology companies, traditionalism and religious beliefs can impede these changes. This dissertation investigates obstacles to change management in Saudi organizations through a case study of the Saudi Telecommunications Company, one of the nation’s largest such organizations. The study was conducted through semi structured interviews with senior (executives and managers) and junior employees as well as observation and document analysis. The results showed some similarities between senior and junior employees’ responses; both groups showed an accurate understanding of the Vision 2030 goals and believe they will be fulfilled, and both have generally positive views of the company and its methods of managing change, while also perceiving that it has some weaknesses, such as its large size leading to lack of flexibility. Some senior employees noted employees’ resistance to change as a problem they had faced in instituting change. In general, junior employees were more reticent in discussing problems with the company, but some stated that changes will need to be made in the future to incorporate employees who are not Saudi natives. The case study identified communication issues, gender, culture, and natural resistance to change as key obstacle, and emphasize that to overcome them, leaders must communicate effectively, involve staff in changes, listen to their perspective, pace large changes appropriately, and take culture into account

An investigation of management systems for sustainable e-government

Sustainable e-government has become an important issue for countries wishing to sustain their e-services and promote integration with smart cities. Such new challenges require policy makers to move toward sustainable e-government and encourage organisations to engage with management systems that promote sustainability; these include systems for environmental sustainability (ISO14001) and social sustainability (ISO 26000). The literature related to sustainable e-government shows a lack of research into the acceptance and adoption of such management systems and their influence on e-government sustainability. A quantitative case study was conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which investigated the Saudi Ministry of Justice (MoJ), together with private software companies employed by the MoJ. The purpose of the study was to understand the current situation regarding standards that support sustainability in e-government and its affiliates in the private sector. Survey data was gathered from 83 e-government project employees from the public and private sectors; participants reported on their adoption of management systems designed to support sustainable egovernment. Social management systems were more highly ranked than other management systems, namely those related to environmental and economic administration. This raises concerns about the low level of awareness of green-ability (environmental considerations). While social management systems were more likely to be adopted, these four management systems, environmental, social, quality and economic, showed a strong positive interrelationship: when organisations agreed on the adoption of one form of system, they tended to respond positively to others. These results will be utilised to support future work in designing a framework for sustainable e-government

Exploring the impact of digital technology on women’s employment in Saudi Arabia

Digital technology is revolutionising employment, creating new job opportunities while disrupting traditional occupations. Few studies, however, have examined the impact of technology on women’s employment in developing countries. There is a scarcity of literature on employment opportunities arising from the digitalization of economies for women in Arab countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, from the leadership perspective. Hence, the aim of this study is to focus on exploring the impact of digital technologies on the employment opportunities in digital technologies for women of Saudi Arabia, where the unique political, social and economic characteristics of the state compound may contribute to employment opportunities and barriers against the successful participation of Saudi women in the labour market. This study explores the perspectives of leaders working in the government, businesses and the academic institutions about the employment opportunities created by digital technologies in the Saudi labour market for women.This study has adopted a methodology based on the structuration theory to explore the complexity involved in the subject matter which warranted the selection of participants from three key social structures: government, businesses and academic institutions and the results of semi-structured interviews with 40 participants (13-14 participants from each group) guided the researcher to derive important findings presented in this study. The afore-mentioned three groups were selected based on their overwhelming role in shaping and implementing the digital technologies in the emerging Saudi economy. Additionally, participants at leadership positions from the respective groups including both men and women were included as participants in this study, so that an in-depth insight into employment opportunities for Saudi women could be gained to highlight not only the employment opportunities but also the potential barriers in the ways of Saudi women in exploiting the employment opportunities if they do exist as a result of digitalization of Saudi economy. Importantly, leaderships from the included three groups included in this study are supposed to decide whether Saudi women need to be integrated in the labour market, which justifies the selection of participants occupying the leadership positions in business, academia and government and involved in digitalization of Saudi society and economy were included in this study. Thematic analysis was adopted to analyse the qualitative data, while the interpretation of data was done using the theoretical insights from the structuration theory.Based on the data presented in this study, the social structures of the Saudi society were theorized to play an important role in enhancing or hindering the Saudi women’s participation in the labour market created by digital technologies. Participants believed that there are employment opportunities for Saudi women in different areas of digital technologies such as graphics, entrepreneurships, online businesses, e-marketing, robotics and artificial intelligence. It was found that Saudi government has introduced several affirmative action programmes for women in collaboration with academic institutions and businesses for training and educating Saudi women in digital technologies. This study found evidence supporting the widespread use of social media as a marketing tool for home-based businesses, which could enable employment indigital technologies. The academic institutions in collaboration with businesses were found to be engaged in training women in digital technologies at vocational level, so that participation of Saudi women in digital technologies-assisted labour market could be made successful. The result showed some of the socio-cultural and structural levels barriers for a successful participation of Saudi women in the digital technologies-mediatedlabour market in Saudi Arabia. Among other obstacles that were identified involved the inadequacy of the educational curriculum for girls, particularly in science and engineering and technology-related disciplines. The finding of this study also revealed that career options were limited; family and community pressures and stereotypical attitude towards Saudi women’s employment in digital technologies. The lack of separate working environment, childcare facilities at organizations could limit participation of Saudi women in the labour market created by digital technologies. Moreover, the lack of transport facilities for female workers were identified to be some other barriers.This study has implications for governmental bodies endeavouring to foster the equal employment, education and training opportunities for Saudi women. The outcomes of this study could inform government of the potential socio-cultural and structural issues which could prevent the successful participation of Saudi women in the national economy and society productively. The results of study contributed to the practice by presenting the Women-Employment in Digital Technologies Promoting Structuration (WEDTPS) theory which was informed by the findings of this study.The data from this study did not show the views of women aspiring to participate in the labour market generated by digital technologies, which may provide some additional insight into the women’s positions on the utility of current training and skills programs arranged by social structures in terms of increasing the employment opportunities for women. This study does not specify or focus on particular type(s) of digital technologies; variations in terms of implementation and emphasis of industries on different digital technologies may affect the employment opportunities for Saudi women in different ways. This may limit the generalizability of outcomes of this study to a particular digital technology

Organizational cybersecurity systems and sustainable business performance of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Saudi Arabia : the mediating and moderating role of cybersecurity resilience and organizational culture

Cybersecurity challenges in Saudi Arabia’s service and manufacturing sectors are escalating due to increased digital adoption, highlighting the need for robust security measures and awareness in SMEs. Therefore, this research is significant due to the increasing reliance on digital technologies and the unique cybersecurity challenges faced by SMEs in these vital economic sectors. With rapid technological advancements, IT capabilities and cybersecurity have become paramount, particularly in the post-COVID-19 era. The service and manufacturing sectors in Saudi Arabia have seen significant shifts towards digital operations. This study aimed to explore the impact of organizational cybersecurity systems on organizational resilience and sustainable business performance in Saudi Arabia’s service and manufacturing sectors, examining the mediating and moderating effects of organizational resilience and culture. A quantitative research method was employed, combining a thorough literature review with empirical data from a sample of 394 respondents in Saudi Arabia, split evenly between the service and manufacturing sectors. Smart PLS 3.3.3 was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings suggested a positive effect of the factors of organizational cybersecurity systems on organizational resilience. Organizational cybersecurity systems also significantly influenced sustainable business performance; however, organizational resilience and culture did not play mediating and moderating roles. This study is one of the first to offer a nuanced analysis of IT capabilities and cybersecurity within Saudi Arabia’s service and manufacturing sectors, especially in a post-COVID-19 context. The insights gleaned contribute to the academic discourse and have pivotal managerial implications for organizations navigating the digital era in Saudi Arabia

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Military Defence and Security

The twenty-first century is now being shaped by a multipolar system characterized by techno-nationalism and a post-Bretton Woods order. In the face of a rapidly evolving digital era, international cooperation will be critical to ensuring peace and security. Information sharing, expert conferences and multilateral dialogue can help the world's nation-states and their militaries develop a better understanding of one another's capabilities and intentions. As a global middle power, Canada could be a major partner in driving this effort. This paper explores the development of military-specific capabilities in the context of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Building on Canadian defence policy, the paper outlines the military applications of AI and the resources needed to manage next-generation military operations, including multilateral engagement and technology governance