Digital Transformation, Responsible Practices, and Sustainable Management as Drivers of Institutional Performance: Evidence from Saudi Arabia’s National Transformation Program (2016–2025)

National development programs increasingly integrate digital transformation, responsible business practices, and sustainable management to achieve governance outcomes aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the literature remains divided on whether institutional quality is a prerequisite for or an outcome of digital transformation, with Gulf-specific empirical evidence remaining sparse. This study develops and applies an indicator-based evaluation framework—the Saudi Triple Nexus Model (STNM)—to assess how the three dimensions of digital transformation, responsible practices, and sustainable management co-evolved within Saudi Arabia’s National Transformation Program (NTP, 2016–2025). A longitudinal documentary–analytical design was adopted, combining systematic classification of 78 strategic performance indicators, gap analysis drawn from the NTP Annual Report 2025, and cross-national benchmarking against UAE, Qatar, and digitally advanced economies. Findings reveal that all three nexus dimensions recorded significant improvements simultaneously, with Saudi Arabia advancing from rank 36 to rank 6 globally on the UN E-Government Development Index and achieving rank 1 in cybersecurity—a pattern descriptively consistent with concurrent rather than sequential institutional development, and with the moderation configuration identified in the broader governance literature. These findings contribute the STNM as a replicable indicator-based framework for evaluating national transformation programs in high-income developing economies, while identifying civic participation and R&D investment as persistent gaps requiring targeted policy intervention.