Continuous digital transformation and AI innovation at the Shura Council of Bahrain: Towards a fully integrated digital parliament

The Shura Council of Bahrain launched a range of innovation, digital transformation and AI initiatives throughout 2025. These have played a central role in strengthening and advancing parliamentary work by streamlining procedures, improving operational efficiency and protecting data, while providing parliamentarians with a fully integrated and interactive digital experience.

The various initiatives were developed within a comprehensive strategy, adopted by the Shura Council’s General Secretariat, that aims to keep pace with national and global trends relating to the fully digital parliament. The flagship initiative is Shura 360, a digital platform that brings together all of the General Secretariat’s services in one place. Designed with MPs in mind, it offers fast access to information and full management of parliamentary responsibilities from any location, all within a unified and secure environment. The system also provides full integration across the Shura Council’s existing systems, including the sessions management system, the Legislative Tracker Platform and the Digital Library.

Shura 360 features an AI-powered virtual assistant named “Senad” – a name drawn from Arabic meaning “support and assistance”. Senad facilitates research and information retrieval across topics, legislation and resolutions, providing MPs with fast and accurate responses, thereby enhancing access to information and raising the standard of digital services offered.

The Council has also advanced its session documentation processes through the Intelligent Hansard System. This sophisticated platform manages session records, using AI to convert spoken content into written text with high accuracy, significantly accelerating transcription, editing and verification. The system features a fully Arabic-language interface, centralized document management and detailed performance reporting to support oversight and decision-making, along with intelligent summarization of lengthy documents, while maintaining data and document security.

The Legislative Tracker Platform is another of the chamber’s flagship initiatives. It draws on digital solutions and AI to track the full legislative workflow at the Shura Council since 2002, with complete transparency and ease of access. The platform delivers comprehensive, end-to-end workflow management across all stages of the legislative process, supported by advanced multi-criteria search capabilities and AI-powered real-time translation into multiple languages. The platform is publicly accessible through the Shura Council’s official website.

Also in 2025, the General Secretariat launched “Innovate for Parliamentary Work”, a digital competition aimed at young people with the objective of engaging the wider community in developing innovative digital solutions that enhance the quality of legislative work. Following several evaluation and review stages, 10 projects were ultimately selected. The Shura Council is currently working to integrate them into its processes.