KSA national authority ships sovereign digital…

01 · The challenge

Problem

Citizen identity was fragmented across multiple ministries. The kingdom needed sovereign rails — biometric-ready, OIDC-compliant, and certified for sensitive sectors including health and finance.

02 · How we delivered

Solution

Sovereign identity rails on certified national cloud, mobile-first wallet, FAPI-grade APIs, federated relying-party onboarding. Operations transferred to local team in month 7.

03 · Outcome

Impact

18M citizens onboarded. 38 federated relying parties live in 9 months. 100% biometric coverage. First service to go live in 90 days.

How we delivered

Programme phases.

Five phases. One accountable team. Every phase had a named decision point and a measurable outcome.

Discovery & alignment

2–3 weeks

Workshops with the Leading Middle East National Authority executive team, baseline metrics, target outcome tree, programme governance set up.

Design & architecture

4–6 weeks

Reference architecture, security blueprint, joint squad model agreed. Data model and integration contracts published.

Build & live-parallel

Q2 onwards

Vertical slice built and run live-parallel against the existing system. Continuous integration, daily deploys, weekly business demos.

Cutover & scale

Mid-programme

Phased cutover, audit-aligned reconciliation, scaling out of squads, capability transfer to Leading Middle East National Authority teams.

Run & continuous improve

Steady state

Managed run with named SLOs, quarterly value reviews, and a 15% optimisation budget reserved for improvement work.

Engineering view

Architecture overview.

Foundations

Cloud landing zone, identity, network, security baseline. Data fabric with lineage-by-default. Audit-grade observability stack from day one.

Application & integration

Domain-aligned microservices behind a published API surface. Event-driven core with CDC into the data fabric. Live-parallel capability built in, not bolted on.

Trust & governance

RBAC, audit logs, lineage, policy-as-code. Model risk records for every production model. Compliance posture on the executive dashboard, not in a quarterly slide.

Built on

Technology stack.

Production-grade choices, defended by track record. The stack is one engineering decision among many — but a load-bearing one.

OpenID Connect FAPI HSM Sovereign Cloud Postgres Kong

Trust by design

Governance & assurance.

01

Programme assurance

Independent assurance reviews at each phase gate. Findings tracked in a single risk register with named owners and remediation deadlines.

02

Security & data

ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II controls applied throughout. Data lineage captured by default; sensitive data tokenised at the edge.

03

NESA / sovereign cloud

Deployment aligned to national cybersecurity authority controls. Sovereign cloud where data residency requires it.

04

Accessibility & inclusion

WCAG-AA on every citizen-facing journey. Arabic-first design with parallel English; user-research panels include accessibility users.

A foundational programme — done at sovereign-grade and on schedule.

D Director General · KSA national authority

What we learnt

Three things we would do again.

01

9 months from kickoff to first regulated outcome — squad density and decision velocity matter more than headcount.
02

Joint squads with Leading Middle East National Authority engineers stayed in place after go-live. Ownership did not transfer in a hand-off — it grew in place.
03

Live-parallel for a meaningful window before cutover bought us trust. The cutover itself was a flag flip, not a war room.