The Ministry of Culture begins digital preservation of heritage.

The Ministry of Culture is starting to implement organizational arrangements for the Saudi Culture Memory Center, which aims to preserve, maintain, and highlight the cultural memory of the Kingdom through documenting, digitizing, and managing national cultural heritage, archiving it, making cultural heritage elements accessible, enhancing integration and coordination with relevant entities, and building a national knowledge reference that supports Saudi cultural identity.

The new regulation clarified that the center's competencies include developing policies, plans, programs, and projects related to its areas of specialization, and submitting matters that require completing regulatory procedures; setting standards and procedures related to the center's areas of specialization; establishing controls, rules, and requirements for inventorying and documenting Saudi cultural heritage and its digital archiving, including Saudi cultural heritage located outside the Kingdom, and supervising their implementation in coordination with relevant entities; supervising the national digital platform concerned with preserving the origins and elements of Saudi cultural heritage, and regulating related matters, including enabling access to and benefiting from its content, in coordination with relevant entities; supervising the central register that includes basic information about Saudi cultural heritage of all types and ways to preserve it, and a central database for protecting Saudi cultural heritage; organizing inventory lists for records in the cultural sector, reviewing and approving them in coordination with relevant entities; collecting information and data related to inventorying, documenting, and archiving Saudi cultural heritage from the public and private sectors and individuals, and indexing, classifying, encrypting, and maintaining them, and regulating their circulation and making them available to the public in accordance with regulations and in coordination with relevant entities; conducting studies and research related to the center's specialization.

And developing national plans and initiatives in the field of inventory, documentation, and digital archiving to preserve the elements and origins of Saudi cultural heritage and safeguard Saudi cultural identity; holding conferences, seminars, and workshops related to the center's areas of specialization and participating in them inside and outside the Kingdom in accordance with the applicable regulatory procedures. The center will have an oversight committee chaired by His Excellency the Minister, and membership of representatives from the Heritage Authority, King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives, King Fahd National Library, the National Center for Documents and Archives, the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property, and three experts and specialists.