Ministry of Justice, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Saudi Ministry Modernizes Administration with Data Warehouse Solution

The Saudi Ministry of Justice (MOJ) needed a resilient and scalable data warehouse to support the modernization of courts administration and notaries who act in non-contentious matters. It chose Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise data management software and interrelated technologies. Eventually, 500 internal entities will connect to the data warehouse. The MOJ now plans to upgrade to Microsoft SQL Server 2012.

Since 1970, the MOJ in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been responsible for improving the administration of a vast system of courts and judges in a country the size of Western Europe. Technology is now playing an increasing role in standardizing the business processes of legal administration and improving the business intelligence (BI) information available to judges and notaries.

Modernization of the administration of the courts and judicial system has the full backing of King Abdullah. His government has allocated SAR7 billion (U.S.$1.9 billion) to a rebuilding and upgrading program covering 478 judicial facilities.

The project entails creating an IT infrastructure at all court buildings and notary facilities in the kingdom. Majid Ibrahim Al-Adwan, Chief Information Officer, Ministry of Justice, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, says: “We’re working towards upgrading 400 new courthouses and notary facilities. The aim is to computerize work processes. A large number of the courts in the kingdom are now connected to the ministry’s centralized system and can be monitored and checked through it.”

The courts administration system in Saudi Arabia—which is conducted only in Arabic—has in recent years been developed using Oracle running on physical servers. Responding to the government’s policies on the modernization of business processes, the MOJ wanted to further develop and modernize its services through a heterogeneous environment involving another major vendor.

Specifically, it needed to develop a BI system for courts and other legal services, with a public portal for greater transparency and a collaboration environment for notaries. It also needed to update its IT infrastructure, including operating systems and messaging solutions.

The MOJ started using Microsoft products such as Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft SQL Server technologies in 2010. One of its first projects was to build the BI system for courts and notaries using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.

Al-Adwan says: “The ministry started evaluation of different BI solutions on the market and discovered that Microsoft provides one of the most complete offerings, with Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SharePoint products.”

System development has been undertaken in-house using the Microsoft .NET Framework. The MOJ has also signed a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement for low-cost volume licensing of software. This agreement has helped extend collaboration with Microsoft, giving the ministry access to interrelated technologies on a highly cost-effective basis.

Since 2010, the MOJ has commissioned several other projects using Microsoft products for the nationwide courts rebuilding and upgrading program being financed by the government. The ministry portal using Arabic has been built by the MOJ development team using SharePoint Server 2010. Its messaging and collaboration system now relies on Microsoft Exchange 2010, the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, and Active Directory for identity management.

For its development team, the MOJ is using Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and is now starting a project to introduce Microsoft Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management features. These include integrated development environments, source control, and reporting tools. The development team also uses Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server.

In addition, the ministry is working on deploying the Microsoft System Center 2012 suite of products to improve the manageability of its diverse IT environments, including server infrastructure and client devices.

The MOJ has invested in a range of Microsoft technologies to better manage the modernization of its courts and notaries support systems. In time, more than 500 internal entities will connect to its data warehouse based on SQL Server 2008, with its capacity to manage the Arabic language being a particular advantage. The project is helping to sustain the government’s vision of a computerized administrative environment for the benefit of the justice system.

Microsoft technology helps support court modernization program. Al-Adwan says: “A growing number of courts in the kingdom are now connected to the computerized system, and we’re fulfilling the government’s policy of speeding up implementations to achieve the highest level of precision.”

SQL Server data warehouse scales to connect up to 500 internal entities. The data warehouse solution is capable of managing a huge increase in users. Al-Adwan says: “We currently have more than 40 courts and 140 notaries using the Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse. In the coming months, this will expand to more than 200 courts and 260 notaries, making more than 500 in total.”

Arabic language support and simplified architecture prove decisive. Al-Adwan says: “Other technologies contain complex architectures with multiple products. SQL Server offered support for the Arabic language, which made our decision to work with Microsoft even easier.”

BI system integrates easily with other technologies. Al-Adwan says: “The Microsoft BI solution provided integration with all the products we need, such as reporting and analysis services, integration services, and SharePoint Server 2010.”

System Center suite improves manageability and efficiency. Al-Adwan says: “Microsoft System Center solutions provide an interoperable, extensible platform for managing IT resources, which is helping the ministry become more efficient.”