RIYADH: The president of the Saudi General Auditing Bureau (GAB), Hussam Al-Anqari, on Monday launched the Wathiqa electronic platform at its headquarters in Riyadh. The platform allows the creation, storage and exchange of government documents between departments under the GAB’s supervision, once they have been approved by the Saudi National Center for Documents and Archives. “The Wathiqa electronic platform is an added value provided by the bureau for the governmental entities under the GAB’s supervision,” Al-Anqari said. “This new platform gives these entities access to all of GAB’s documents through the cataloging regulations system, which is a central database of all laws and regulatory provisions issued by all legislative authorities in the Kingdom, gathered and collected over a period of 50 years.” Under the new system, documents will have to go through five different phases. The first one is “reception,” where a document is received and assigned a number. The bureau then registers the document’s date, attachments and level of confidentiality. The second phase is “registration”, where the bureau defines the source of the tool, then registers the tool’s number, type and date, and finally uploads short and long versions of the text. The bureau, through the third phase of “linking and classification,” links the tool or provision with appropriate legal tools or with the thematic classification. In the fourth step, “review and audit,” the bureau reviews the previous phases, ensures the safety of the copied version, the accuracy of data, the validity of linkages, and finally moves the document to the database. In the fifth phase, the origin of the document is archived and during the sixth and final phase, the document is published. Wathiqa is an initiative of the Digital Transformation Program, part of the Vision 2030 reform plan, which aims to modernize the Saudi government, economy and society.