Oman maps policy stress tests for Oman Vision 2040

SALALAH: Oman’s National Foresight Office has laid out an operating model that would feed early warnings and policy stress tests into Oman Vision 2040 decision-making, allowing assumptions behind national targets to be challenged and alternative routes developed when conditions change.
Mubarak bin Khamis al Hamdani, Director of the Office at the Ministry of Economy, presented the framework in Salalah on Wednesday during the 25th Annual General Conference on ‘Government Readiness for a Sustainable Future’.
The model seeks to move government planning beyond reliance on a single expected outcome by monitoring emerging signals, constructing multiple scenarios and testing whether policies can withstand economic, technological, climate and geopolitical shocks.
“Foresight complements planning by widening the range of possibilities”, the presentation said, adding that it should provide plans and decisions with more resilient pathways.
Unlike conventional strategic planning, which generally works towards a predetermined objective over a short-to-medium period, foresight considers several plausible futures over longer horizons.
The aim is not to predict one outcome, but to improve preparedness by regularly reviewing assumptions, identifying emerging risks and developing options before disruption occurs.
The proposed operating model has four analytical levels: general strategic foresight; Oman Vision 2040; the economic system; and the wider development system.
The first level would continuously monitor global transformations, emerging technologies, domestic issues and changes affecting the operating model of the Omani economy. It also provides for an emergency foresight track to examine unexpected developments requiring rapid assessment.
At the Oman Vision 2040 level, the framework would monitor the expected trajectories of national indicators, assess how global scenarios could affect priorities and test the resilience of policies linked to the Vision.
It would also identify potential implementation gaps, examine interdependencies between national priorities and design alternative routes to targets if the conditions or assumptions underpinning them change. Its analytical horizon extends beyond 2040.
The economic component covers future sources of growth, the distribution of value added, diversification, economic complexity, productivity and competitiveness.
It also examines fiscal sustainability, investment and finance, foreign trade and export markets, employment and skills, supply chains and economic security.
Individual sectors and wider economic systems would be tested against potential shocks arising from technological change, energy transitions, climate risks and geopolitical developments.
The development component covers demographic shifts, education and skills, health and quality of life, social protection, public services, spatial development, water and food security, natural resources and fairness between generations.
The model’s intended outputs include early warnings, foresight-based situation assessments, scenarios, Oman Vision 2040 readiness reports, risk and opportunity maps, policy alternatives, transition pathways and decision-support notes.
These would feed into government decision-making, policy formulation, economic and development planning, reviews of national programmes and responses to emerging risks.
The framework also contains a feedback mechanism under which the effects of policies and decisions would be measured, new developments monitored and assumptions and scenarios updated. Issues could then be reordered as risks or opportunities evolve.
Al Hamdani’s presentation identified six foundations for proactive government: anticipatory services; integrated digital infrastructure, data and artificial intelligence; anticipatory regulation; institutional foresight capacity; future-ready human capital; and evidence-based, participatory policy-making.
However, it warned that adopting technology without improving institutional flexibility could create an “execution gap”, in which technological capabilities advance faster than government bodies’ ability to adapt and deliver public value.
A fully proactive government would combine integrated technology with institutional flexibility, enabling services to respond to life events and data, policies to be tested before full implementation and government systems to learn from results.
The presentation identified five main governance challenges: a disconnect between foresight findings and decisions; short policy cycles set against long-term risks; uneven capabilities across government bodies; governance of data and artificial intelligence; and difficulty translating long-term ambitions into measurable outcomes.
Proposed responses include linking foresight formally to planning and budgeting cycles, establishing permanent institutional mechanisms, developing capabilities across government and applying privacy, transparency and accountability safeguards.
The presentation detailed the model’s structure and intended functions but did not indicate which elements are already operational or provide a timetable for applying it across government.
The conference was held on August 11 and 12 as part of Labour Forum 2026. It was organised by the Arab Administrative Development Organisation, an affiliate of the League of Arab States, in cooperation with Oman’s Ministry of Labour.