Saudi Arabia's Board of Grievances wins two categories at GovMedia Conference & Awards 2026

Two digital platforms, Mushir and the Smart Court, modernise Saudi judicial operations.

Saudi Arabia's Board of Grievances has been honoured at the GovMedia Conference & Awards 2026, claiming both the Saudi Arabia Digital Initiative of the Year - Justice and Saudi Arabia Digital Transformation of the Year - Justice accolades.

The dual recognition celebrates two complementary platforms — the Mushir Digital Platform and the Smart Court System — that together reimagine how legal work is performed and how hearings are conducted across the Saudi judiciary, all whilst keeping human judgement firmly at the centre.

The Mushir Digital Platform

The Board of Grievances won Saudi Arabia Digital Initiative of the Year - Justice for Mushir, an AI-enabled internal platform that unifies legal and knowledge-based operations across specialised departments within the Legal Affairs Office.

Before Mushir, legal and knowledge-management activities relied on fragmented procedures and manual coordination, leading to duplicated effort, lengthy processing times, inconsistent methodologies, and difficulty retrieving valuable institutional knowledge built up across studies, judgements, and memoranda. Mushir replaced that patchwork with a single operational system, integrating litigation management, judgement classification & publication, and research & studies management.

Rather than acting as a traditional document store, the platform embeds AI directly into daily workflows to support drafting, review, analysis, classification, contextual search, and knowledge retrieval, always preserving full human control over approvals and final outputs.

The efficiency gains are substantial. Judgement classification and publication cycles that once took roughly 295 days are expected to fall to around 90 days, a reduction of nearly 69%. Preparation time for legal studies is projected to drop from about 10 days to four, whilst litigation-related operational effort is expected to decline by nearly 50%.

Beyond speed, the platform has strengthened governance, improved consistency, and established a practical model for responsible AI adoption in legal environments. A phased, four-stage rollout — beginning with Research & Studies Management and culminating in organisation-wide AI capabilities — allowed each business area to be optimised individually while reducing implementation risk.

The Smart Court System

The Board's second honour, Saudi Arabia Digital Transformation of the Year - Justice, recognises the Smart Court System, a digital courtroom platform that turns virtual hearings into a fully integrated judicial environment.

Previously, judges, clerks, lawyers, and litigants relied on separate meeting links for each hearing. This was a setup that created complexity, wasted time, and raised the risk of missed sessions whilst lacking essential judicial functions such as private deliberation and reliable attendance verification. The Smart Court replaces this with a single unified entry point that mirrors the structure and workflow of a physical court.

A standout innovation is the introduction of virtual waiting rooms that replicate real courtroom procedures, letting litigants verify case details, monitor their place in the queue, and wait in a structured digital space. Judges can conduct private deliberations before admitting parties, pause hearings for consultation, and move seamlessly between sessions without new links or technical setup.

Court clerks can verify attendance, organise priorities, and manage admissions, whilst litigants benefit from automated audio and video readiness checks, document exchange, screen sharing, and integrated chat, with all written communications securely preserved as part of the hearing record. The system also reduces storage consumption and eliminates the need to maintain multiple simultaneous sessions, with a flexible architecture built for continuous enhancement.

Together, Mushir and the Smart Court System show how a single institution can transform both the back-office work of legal professionals and the front-line experience of citizens in the courtroom. By combining workflow automation, institutional knowledge management, and responsible AI within secure, citizen-focused environments, the Board of Grievances has set a benchmark for digital justice, advancing the broader digital transformation strategy of the Saudi judiciary while ensuring that technology enhances, rather than replaces, human judgement and accountability.

GovMedia Conference & Awards gives recognition to the trends and best practices that transform the public sector in the Asia Pacific. The awards programme promotes excellence and provides a platform for exemplary government initiatives.

The GovMedia Conference & Awards is presented by GovMedia Magazine. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2027 awards programme and be recognised for your organisation's government projects and initiatives, please contact Marni Marco at +(65) 3158 1386 and [email protected].