When geography becomes an administrative cost

Oman has spent considerable effort removing friction from government services.
By the end of 2025, procedures for 3,166 priority government services had been simplified, while 2,277 priority services and permits had been digitised. Average beneficiary satisfaction with digital services across 48 government entities reached 78 per cent.
These figures matter because administrative efficiency is not simply about convenience. It has economic value.
Every form eliminated, visit avoided and procedure shortened saves time for citizens, businesses and institutions. At sufficient scale, those minutes become working hours, and those hours become productivity.
But there is another type of administrative friction that is harder to digitise. It exists in the way people deal with one another.
A recent professional experience made me consider a simple question: can geography and familiarity influence how seriously a professional role is treated?
The same employee may carry the same title, represent the same institution and perform the same responsibility, yet encounter different levels of responsiveness depending on where the interaction takes place.
Sometimes distance creates formality. A person arriving from elsewhere may immediately be seen through the institution they represent. Familiarity can blur that distinction. Someone known locally may first be seen as a familiar face rather than as a professional carrying out a specific task.
This is not necessarily intentional, and a personal experience cannot establish a wider pattern. But the economic question is still worth examining.
If a straightforward request requires several calls, repeated explanations or movement between different people before it is completed, something has been lost even if no money has visibly changed hands.
THAT SOMETHING IS TIME
Businesses understand this instinctively. A delayed approval can hold up a project. A contractor waiting for information may lose working hours. An entrepreneur moving between offices instead of running a business is paying a cost. An employee spending part of the day following up on something that should have been resolved in one interaction is also consuming an institutional resource.
None of these losses necessarily appears as a separate line in a budget. Collectively, however, they become part of the cost of doing business and the cost of running institutions.
This is why productivity should not be discussed only through technology, automation, skills or headcount. There is also productivity hidden inside everyday interactions.
How quickly is a routine request understood? How clearly is responsibility assigned? How many people need to become involved? Does the response depend on the procedure, or on who knows whom? Would two people making the same legitimate request receive broadly the same service?
These may sound like questions about workplace culture. They are also questions about economic efficiency.
Oman Vision 2040 calls for administrative bodies characterised by high productivity, flexibility and effectiveness, and for high-quality, high-performance government services. The direction is clear: better institutions are part of better economic performance.
Considerable progress has already been made on the technical side. Government procedures have been simplified, services digitised and common platforms introduced. These changes reduce physical visits and limit some of the variation that naturally occurs when transactions depend heavily on individual interactions.
Technology, however, can standardise a form more easily than it can standardise behaviour.
A digital platform can ensure that two applicants see the same requirements. It cannot, by itself, ensure that every professional interaction outside the platform receives the same degree of attention.
THAT IS THE NEXT LAYER OF EFFICIENCY
It becomes particularly important as economic activity expands across Oman's governorates. Companies, government bodies and professionals increasingly operate across geographical boundaries. People travel between Muscat and other governorates not simply as visitors, but as investors, managers, engineers, journalists, contractors, consultants and public servants.
THEIR PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY SHOULD TRAVEL WITH THEM
A professional role should carry broadly the same institutional weight wherever it is exercised. A legitimate request should not gain or lose importance because the person making it is local, unfamiliar, well-connected or personally known.
This is not an argument for giving outsiders preferential treatment. Nor is it an argument that local employees deserve special consideration. It is an argument for consistency.
One measure of a mature institution is that personal familiarity becomes largely irrelevant to the quality of service it delivers.
Clear procedures matter. Defined responsibilities matter. Reasonable response times matter. Digitalisation matters. Professional culture matters too.
The objective should be to make the shortest route to getting legitimate work done the official route - not the personal one.
Perhaps this is one of the less visible frontiers of productivity in Oman.
We measure how many services have been digitised, how many procedures have been simplified and how satisfied users are with them. We should also pay attention to the effort that remains between a legitimate request and its completion.
Because the real cost of administrative friction is not always found in rials.
Sometimes it is measured in the hours we should never have needed to spend.