The Virtual Court is a structure that digitally implements the procedures for enforcement, without human intervention and under the supervision of the judicial department, to fulfil the review of all applications before the automatic referral.
Virtual Court was conceived to address the needs of Saudi citizens, allowing them to have better and more time-effective interactions with the government. Previously, it was necessary to attend to and hand in requests manually, taking several visits to courts and public agencies, sometimes up to seven visits, regardless of how crowded it was inside or outside the court, which resulted in enormous waiting times. The citizen also had to make payments in check or cash, manually or through the court cash box. These procedures were inefficient, burdensome, and time-consuming for all the parties involved.
Virtual Court uses artificial intelligence to request data, verify information, determine spatial jurisdiction, take legal decisions, and make automatic transfers of money to the beneficiaries. Virtual Court has already processed around 1.5 million decisions without requiring any visit to the courts, reducing the time to complete a process by nearly 65%, court visits by 90% and decreasing paper and ink usage, CO2 emissions and traffic in the surroundings of the courts.

https://www.moj.gov.sa/ar/Ministry/Pages/VirtualCourtForEnforcement.aspx

• Saudi Arabia

• Older persons
• Women
• Indigenous and nomadic peoples
• People with disabilities
• Remote and rural communities
• Citizens, Residents and Visitors - Individual and business

The Virtual Court is an initiative that uses multiple third parties to obtain and validate individual and company-level information, as mentioned above in the Partnerships section, and is an initiative that looks to automate processes and integrate with external parties to provide a zero human resource process. This model, which relies on integration and collaboration between agencies, can be replicated by other government sectors, including in Saudi Arabia, to reach faster and more agile processes. In what concerns replicability by the judicial sectors of other countries, the concept is replicable, but adjustments would always have to be made depending on the specificities of the legal and regulatory frameworks of each country, for example in what concerns the share of data between agencies.

The Virtual Court is a sustainable project and is also a project that is contributing to environmental sustainability. Virtual Court is getting full support from high-level management, which guarantees commitment to the project and continuous enhancement and updates of the project in accordance with the legal legislation. The project is also part of the Kingdom Vision 2030, which guarantees financial support and sustainability for the foreseeable future. By providing virtual digital court services, this project is also contributing to environmental sustainability. The aim is that all the required processes use online services, and internally the processes are fully automated, substantially reducing the use of paper. Virtual Court is contributing to reducing traffic, CO2 emissions and overcrowding of the court buildings, by reducing the number of visits to the courts by more than 90%. It also contributes to reducing paper, printing, and usage. As each request uses an average of 20 sheets of paper, Virtual Court allows saving around 200 thousand sheets of paper per month.

Virtual Court promotes and contributes to achieving multiple WSIS values. It is also aligned with the action line of the role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development. By automating the claim life cycle, the Virtual Court enhances cooperation among stakeholders, through mainstreaming ICTs, multi-stakeholder partnerships, national e-strategies, and public-private partnerships. Also, it provides an easy communication channel for beneficiaries to apply and follow the whole claim cycle through the internet using any device that has a web browser. An API infrastructure to connect government institutions and service providers with the Ministry of Justice to achieve beneficiaries’ justice was built for this project, which relates to the access to information and knowledge action line. Additionally, to enhance access to information and knowledge, the Ministry of Justice is providing access to information about the laws and legal processes for the public, in addition to giving the public access to all claims. VC is also building confidence and security in the use of ICTs. Accessing and applying a claim uses multiple authentication levels. By integration with “Absher” (a platform which allows citizens and residents of Saudi Arabia to use a variety of governmental e-services), the user must be authorized to access the governmental services, in addition to validating all claim parties and the relation between them systematically. Additionally, all internal users use the system based on their roles and permissions. VC is also aligned with enabling environment as explained in the answer to the previous field. Finally, it relates to ICT applications that benefit all aspects of life, having a relevant role in the digital transformation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and having a disaster recovery plan. It helps and enhances the following-up and monitoring of the Ministry of Justice key performance and other indicators, helping in the internal evaluation, follow-up and definition of goals.