sharqia_logo
Oct-26
3دقائق مدة القراءة

Eastern Province Emirate (Sharqiah)

The Emirate of the Eastern Province (Sharqiah) is a key government entity in Saudi Arabia, responsible for the administration and development of the Eastern Province and its governorates.
As one of the Kingdom’s major regions, the Eastern Province has a significant role in Saudi Arabia’s economic, social, and developmental landscape. Its digital presence needs to serve a broad audience while communicating government information, initiatives, news, services, statistics, and development priorities in a clear and accessible way.
The new Sharqiah digital platform was developed to provide a modern, structured, and scalable government web experience aligned with Saudi Arabia’s digital government direction.

sharqia thumbnail screenshots

Sprintive designed and developed the new Sharqiah website as a Drupal-based government digital platform, combining a standardized government design foundation with a flexible architecture capable of supporting the Emirate’s extensive content and future digital requirements.
The project covered the complete digital delivery lifecycle, including:

  • UX and UI implementation
  • Drupal development
    Content migration and structuring
  • Arabic and English content
  • Translation and localization
  • SEO implementation
  • Accessibility and government compliance
  • Performance optimization
  • Structured content architecture
  • Interactive data visualization

Integration of strategic and sustainability frameworks
A key requirement was to deliver the platform within a highly compressed timeframe. Using Sprintive’s specially-developed tools, the website was designed, developed, populated, translated, optimized, and prepared for launch in 10 days!.

Project Details

Accelerating Government Website Development with SAUD

One of the key accelerators behind the project was SAUD, Sprintive's internal tool for developing Saudi government websites.
SAUD incorporates reusable government-focused templates, components, and interface patterns designed around the requirements of Saudi digital government platforms.
The platform is designed to work with the Platforms Code design system, Saudi Arabia's unified national design system developed by the Digital Government Authority (DGA) to standardize digital interfaces across government websites, portals, and applications.
Rather than rebuilding common government interface patterns from scratch for every project, SAUD provides a reusable foundation that can be configured and customized according to the individual entity's requirements.
For Sharqiah, this approach enabled the team to:

  • Rapidly assemble standardized government interface components
  • Maintain consistency with national digital design requirements
  • Customize layouts and components for Sharqiah's content
  • Reduce repetitive development work
  • Establish a consistent design language across the platform
  • Accelerate implementation without sacrificing flexibility

Three-Tier Architecture with TRIO

The website was also built using TRIO, Sprintive's architecture framework for implementing a three-tier digital platform architecture.
TRIO separates the platform into distinct layers, helping establish clearer boundaries between the presentation layer, application/business logic, and data layer.
This architecture supports:

  • Separation of concerns
  • Improved maintainability
  • Scalability
  • Reusability
  • Better security boundaries
  • Easier future integrations
  • Independent evolution of platform components

The architecture aligns with the direction toward structured, scalable digital platforms within Saudi Arabia's government digital ecosystem.
By combining Drupal with TRIO, the project was able to maintain the flexibility of a CMS while establishing a structured technical foundation for future digital services and integrations.

Connecting Government News to Strategic Objectives

A distinctive feature of the Sharqiah platform is the way government news is connected to the Emirate's strategic goals.
Instead of treating news as isolated chronological content, the content architecture allows news items to be associated with relevant strategic objectives.
This creates a relationship between:
News → Strategic Goal → Government Direction
This structure provides users with additional context around government activities while creating a more meaningful relationship between day-to-day government communications and long-term strategic priorities.
From a content-management perspective, the approach also creates a structured data relationship that can be reused across the website, enabling strategic content to be surfaced dynamically in relevant sections.

Mapping Sharqiah's Development to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The platform extends this structured approach by connecting relevant government news and initiatives to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This creates an additional layer of contextual metadata around government activities, allowing content to demonstrate how initiatives and developments relate to broader sustainability objectives.
The resulting content model can connect:
News / Initiative → Strategic Objective → SDG
This provides a clearer representation of the relationship between the Emirate's activities, its strategic priorities, sustainability objectives, and the broader development framework.
It also supports the communication of the Kingdom's progress toward the objectives of Saudi Vision 2030.

An Interactive Map of the Eastern Province

One of the platform's key interactive experiences is the presentation of the Eastern Province's governorates through an interactive geographic map.
Rather than presenting the governorates as a conventional list, the website provides a visual representation of the region that allows users to interact directly with the map.
When a governorate is selected, users can access relevant information including:

  • Governorate profile
  • Demographic information
  • Population statistics
  • Key geographical information
  • Development-related data
  • Other relevant statistics and indicators

The experience transforms structured regional data into an intuitive visual interface.
From a technical perspective, the map is connected to structured Drupal content, allowing governorate information and statistics to be maintained through the CMS rather than hard-coded into the interface.
This creates a scalable foundation where information can be updated as regional data changes.

Structured Content Architecture

The platform was designed around structured content rather than treating pages as isolated documents.
Content entities and relationships allow information to be reused across different parts of the website.
For example, a strategic objective can be associated with multiple news items, while a governorate can maintain its own structured profile and statistical information.
This approach provides several benefits:

  • Reduced content duplication
  • Consistent information across the platform
  • Easier content maintenance
  • Better internal linking
  • More powerful filtering and discovery
  • Greater flexibility for future digital experiences
  • Improved SEO through structured relationships

Drupal's content modeling capabilities were central to implementing this architecture.

Multilingual Content and Localization

The platform supports both Arabic and English, with content structures designed to maintain alignment between the two language versions.
The project included the translation and localization of the website's content as part of the accelerated delivery process.
The bilingual architecture ensures that language is treated as part of the content model rather than as a separate version of the website, helping maintain consistency across navigation, metadata, structured content, and key information.

SEO and Digital Content Optimization

SEO was incorporated into the development process rather than treated as a post-launch activity.
The implementation included structured optimization across:

  • Page titles
  • Meta descriptions
  • Heading structures
  • URLs
  • Internal linking
  • Image alternative text
  • Arabic and English page relationships
  • Search-engine-friendly content structures
  • Structured content relationships

Delivered in 10 Days

The combination of Drupal, SAUD, TRIO, reusable components, structured content architecture, and Sprintive's integrated delivery process enabled the complete website to be delivered in 10 days.
The delivery scope covered more than development. Within the same accelerated timeline, the team handled:
Design → Development → Content → Translation → SEO → Compliance → Optimization → Launch Preparation
This demonstrated how reusable digital-government infrastructure can significantly reduce delivery time while maintaining the technical and content requirements expected from a modern government platform.