The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority (SDAIA) has connected the national registry of persons with disabilities, run by the Authority for the Care of Persons with Disabilities, to the National Data Bank, allowing its data to be integrated and used within approved frameworks and access rights, according to the head of SDAIA’s National Data Management Office.

Speaking today at the main panel session of the Seventh International Conference on Disability and Rehabilitation, he said governance is not an obstacle to using data but what enables it, making data ready for building services and supporting decision-making. The conference is organized by the King Salman Center for Disability Research under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud from 11 to 13 October at the InterContinental Riyadh – King Faisal Conference Center.

He explained that the registry’s data belongs to the national data ecosystem and is spread across health, education, labor and social services, and that bringing it together gives a more reliable and complete picture. The task, he said, is to protect the data, keep it accurate and up to date, and regulate access and use according to defined permissions and purposes.

The Kingdom has built a national data governance system through a regulatory framework that includes the Personal Data Protection Law, national data governance policies, and principles and ethics for artificial intelligence and generative AI. To apply it, more than 314 data management offices have been set up in government entities, and the national data index “Nudhee” measures how mature entities are in managing their data and how well they comply with regulations.

The National Data Bank links more than 600 government systems and is integrated with the Government Service Bus; the disability registry is one of these systems. This integration, he noted, lets the registry draw an individual’s data from approved national sources instead of collecting it again or duplicating it, improving its quality and reliability while protecting privacy.