It is mandatory for the public sector
Government entities and their data processors must comply, and performance is published through the National Data Index. For govtech vendors it is effectively a condition of doing business with the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia's national data-governance standard for government and its vendors.
The NDMO Data Management and Personal Data Protection Standards (Version 1.5) are Saudi Arabia's national data-governance standard, issued by the National Data Management Office under SDAIA. They are mandatory for government entities and the partners and processors that handle government data, and are measured nationally through the National Data Index.
The standard
NDMO Data Management and Personal Data Protection Standards, Version 1.5 (National Data Management Office, SDAIA)
Who needs it
All Saudi public and government entities, and the private-sector partners, vendors and processors that handle government data. Private firms increasingly adopt it as a baseline to win and keep government contracts.
191
Specifications, fully mapped
The basics
The Standards organise data governance into 15 domains, 77 controls and 191 scored specifications, covering data governance, catalog and metadata, quality, operations, document and content management, architecture, reference and master data, analytics, sharing and interoperability, value realization, open data, freedom of information, classification, personal data protection, and data security (the last owned by the National Cybersecurity Authority).
Each specification is scored on a simple pass or fail basis and carries a priority of P1, P2 or P3 that sets a three-year implementation roadmap. Compliance is audited each year by the entity's Chief Data Officer and rolled up into the National Data Index, alongside the national data policies for classification, sharing, open data, freedom of information and monetization.
Why it matters
Government entities and their data processors must comply, and performance is published through the National Data Index. For govtech vendors it is effectively a condition of doing business with the Kingdom.
The PDPL governs personal data; the NDMO Standards govern data as a whole, quality, catalog, classification, sharing, open data and more. Many Saudi tenders ask for NDMO maturity by name.
Priorities P1, P2 and P3 translate directly into a year-one, year-two and year-three plan. Knowing what is P1 is the difference between a clean first audit and a scramble.
Strategy, policy, the Data Management Office, the Chief Data Officer, the Personal Data Protection Officer, data stewards and the entity data committee.
Catalog and metadata, quality, operations, architecture and reference and master data, the machinery that makes data trustworthy and usable.
Analytics, value realization, open data, freedom of information and the four-tier data classification (Top Secret, Secret, Restricted, Public).
The PDP domain (notice and consent, data-subject rights, breach, register) which maps to the PDPL, and the NCA-owned data-security domain.
Done by hand, NDMO means self-scoring 191 specifications against evidence, keeping a data catalog and classification current, running data-sharing and freedom-of-information processes to fixed clocks, and assembling an annual Chief-Data-Officer audit for the National Data Index. That is a register-and-evidence problem, which is exactly what a platform is for.
Do it once, reuse it everywhere. Evidence you collect for KSA NDMO is automatically mapped to every other framework whose controls it also satisfies — and since these standards overlap heavily, most of that work isn't repeated.
See exactly how Compliance One maps KSA NDMO to your environment in a 30-minute walkthrough — and how much of it we handle for you.