Digital transformation in "Municipality and Housing": Innovative services for smart digital cities

Monday 08 June 2026
momah

The Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing is undergoing a digital transformation in all areas, in order to enhance digital transformation and achieve the Ministry’s strategic objectives in the municipal and housing sectors, according to a sustainable digital system that aims to reach leading services for smart and innovative digital cities that provide a prosperous life for customers, develop new business models and innovative customer journeys, enable investment opportunities from data and services, raise the level of customer satisfaction and participation, as well as provide unified and reliable data to improve the flexibility and efficiency of the digital system .

In the municipal sector, the digital transformation strategy adopted by the Supreme Steering Committee for Digital Transformation, chaired by His Excellency the Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing, Mr. Majid bin Abdullah Al-Hogail, is based on three pillars: enriching the customer experience through innovative and sustainable business models, raising the quality of digital city services, and improving the quality and efficiency of the digital system. Through 8 strategic goals, 10 programs and 72 initiatives.

The “Baladi” platform is the platform that supports the municipal community, as the portal includes several key services, foremost among them are interactive services that help to promote the concept of community partnership to improve the quality of services provided to customers, electronic services that help to submit electronic requests to obtain the most used licenses, in addition to informational services that help customers to make related decisions in a way that contributes to improving the level of satisfaction with the entities of the municipal sector.

“Baladi” aims to improve the quality and level of municipal services provided across all municipalities and governorates of the Kingdom, and to activate the role of customers as active partners. The digital platform achieved a number of accomplishments during 2021, as it received more than 3 million service requests from more than 1.8 million beneficiaries through 124 services that meet 80 percent of the digital needs of customers in the municipal sector. It also contributed to the issuance of more than 115,000 commercial licenses for various activities and more than 88,000 construction licenses during the past year. More than 25 entities related to municipal services have been integrated with the platform, in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030, which focused on activating partnership and transparency between government sectors and citizens.

The “Baladi” application also launched 12 digital services in 2021, most notably the “Snap and Send” service to encourage citizens and residents to monitor manifestations of visual pollution, which enabled users to easily submit reports within 30 seconds. The satisfaction rate of city residents regarding the improvement of the urban landscape increased to 76% through 800,000 photo reports via “Snap and Send.” In addition, there is a system for issuing health certificates and mobile shop licenses, a service for group housing licenses for workers, and the “Mumtali” monitoring platform, which enables the planning and implementation of monitoring work through the latest technologies. In addition, there is the “Nasaq” platform for excavation licenses, which contributes to improving the beneficiary’s journey in obtaining public service excavation licenses.

The Ministry has made available the “Opportunities” portal for municipal investment, which has more than 8,600 diverse investment opportunities in their activity, size and location for investors in the municipal sector in various cities and regions of the Kingdom, with all ease and convenience without visiting the headquarters of the secretariats and municipalities to learn about these opportunities.

In the housing sector, housing initiatives and programs have received full support for digital transformation and automation of its services, as it is one of the sectors that influence the state’s economy and lifestyle and societal trends, and it intersects with more than 120 economic and social activities. Because the housing sector in the Kingdom enjoys this importance, it was necessary to accelerate the development of its regulations, legislation and service channels, and to work on creating digital ideas within the efforts made to facilitate the procedures for owning the first home for Saudi families with ease and convenience, with the aim of reaching a rate of 70% by 2030, in fulfillment of the objectives of the housing program.

The "Sakani" program, through its digital platform and smartphone application, is considered the pioneer of digital housing initiatives in the sector. It is a comprehensive electronic platform that provides many diverse housing solutions that enable families eligible for housing support to choose the housing solutions that suit them through easy and convenient digital steps. The platform achieved remarkable figures last year, as the Sakani application recorded more than 5 million visits last year in addition to more than 1.4 million visits in the first quarter of this year. More than 1.2 million families benefited from the instant eligibility service through the Sakani application, including 500,000 families who moved into their homes. More than 607,000 real estate transaction certificates were issued through the platform. The platform provides several digital services, most notably the instant eligibility service and the electronic booking service for housing units in 115 projects that provide more than 150,000 housing units.

The program recently launched the upgraded Sakani platform, which added four new services to its previous package of services: (electronic financing service, real estate market service, interior design service, and Sakani loyalty service).

Among the digital solutions provided by the Ministry is the “Ejar” network, an integrated digital electronic network that aims to regulate the real estate rental sector in the Kingdom and preserve the rights of the parties to the rental relationship. The platform contributed to regulating the rental payment process, and during 2021, more than 1.23 million rental contracts were documented on the platform, including 991,000 residential contracts and 240,000 rental contracts.

The Real Estate Developers Services Center “Etmam”, through its electronic platform, is accelerating the pace of work on residential projects in the Kingdom and increasing the volume of investment in the real estate sector, as real estate development services have been gathered in one digital portal to facilitate and enable real estate developers to obtain approvals and licenses. The center, through its platform and electronic linking with the concerned authorities, completed the approval of more than 732 million square meters through the platform since its establishment last year.

To enhance the contribution of individuals and organizations to housing donations and to involve them in the achievement journey in the sector, the Ministry provided the “Jood Housing” platform, which is the integrated electronic platform that aims to involve society in all its categories in providing a helping hand to charitable housing donations, as it provides its services through three paths: “supporting the provision of housing, providing rent and general contribution,” where the number of contributors in it reached approximately 3.8 million contributors who provided more than 700 million riyals, benefiting approximately 35,000 beneficiaries.

These efforts culminated in the Digital Government Authority adopting the Baladi platform, the Sakani platform, and the Ejar platform as unified platforms for digital city services, and the Ministry achieving the “integration” stage in the ninth digital transformation measurement supervised by the Digital Government Authority, and achieving a 70% rate in the institutional maturity index.

The ministry also won the Ministry of the Year Shield in the Smart Government Award 2021, in addition to achieving 8 awards, which are: the category of remote government work - the category of government achievements - the category of government innovation - the category of government websites - the category of smart applications - the category of government social media accounts - the category of government social responsibility - the category of community participation.

 

 

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia