Oman’s future needs anticipatory governance

A port is built for decades. A university programme takes years to produce graduates. A pension commitment extends across generations. Yet the assumptions behind these decisions can change long before their consequences have run their course.
For Oman, the challenge is to make decisions today that remain useful under tomorrow’s conditions — and to recognise early when they need changing.
It is time to embed anticipatory governance across our institutions.
The expression may sound unfamiliar, but its purpose is practical. Anticipatory governance connects the exploration of possible futures with the authority, resources and accountability needed to act today. It brings foresight, participation, experimentation and continuous learning into the way institutions govern.
The OECD’s work on anticipatory innovation governance develops these connections. Its central implication is straightforward: understanding change becomes valuable when institutions can use that understanding to shape their choices.
For Oman, this approach has a firm national foundation. Oman Vision 2040 already envisages flexible, innovative and future-shaping administrative bodies operating through good governance. The next task is to translate that direction into routine decisions, budgets and leadership responsibilities.
A long-term vision establishes where a country wants to go. Anticipatory governance helps institutions examine whether their present choices can get them there as circumstances change.
Why does Oman need this now?
Because many of the decisions shaping its future involve long commitments under considerable uncertainty. Economic diversification requires investment in infrastructure, enterprises and skills. Technological change can alter the value of those investments. Climate pressures can affect where and how development remains viable. Changes in trade, energy demand and financing can reshape opportunities before projects mature.
These forces also interact. A promising industrial investment might depend simultaneously on affordable electricity, export demand, shipping access and specialised workers. Examining each assumption separately may conceal the consequences of several changing together.
Anticipatory governance makes those connections part of the decision.
Consider education. Planning university places around current vacancies provides useful information. It leaves a further question: what capabilities will graduates need when they enter employment several years later? Institutions should explore different possibilities, engage employers and students, and design programmes that can evolve as evidence develops.
Consider digital government. A service may become faster while becoming harder for some citizens to access. Anticipation means examining exclusion, data quality and dependence on technology suppliers before expansion makes correction expensive. A limited trial can reveal weaknesses while there is still room to change the design.
The same approach can uncover opportunities. An emerging technology might enable an Omani enterprise to serve a new market. Changing consumer preferences might create demand for local products. Foresight should help institutions invest and innovate, as well as prepare for disruption.
None of this requires pretending that the future can be predicted precisely.
Scenarios explore plausible conditions and test choices against them. Their value lies in revealing vulnerabilities, opportunities and options. Some decisions remain sensible across several futures. Others depend heavily on one favourable assumption. Leaders should know the difference before committing public money or shareholders’ capital.
Information alone, however, cannot provide this capability.
An institution may commission excellent studies and still continue unchanged. Someone in management must be responsible for reading their findings, explaining their implications and proposing action. The governing authority must then decide, allocate resources and require follow-up.
The same discipline applies to audit findings, complaints and operational warnings. Repeated errors reveal a failure to turn available knowledge into better decisions. An institution that cannot learn from an existing weakness will struggle to anticipate an emerging one.
Oman can begin through its existing structures.
Each ministry, major public enterprise and company board could select one consequential decision and examine its critical assumptions. What could change? Who would be affected? Which alternatives preserve room to manoeuvre? What evidence would justify reconsideration?
The decision should identify an implementation owner, a review date and conditions requiring earlier escalation. Where lawful and appropriate, institutions should test alternatives on a manageable scale before wider adoption.
Participation matters throughout. Employees closest to delivery, businesses, researchers and service users can reveal consequences that senior decision-makers overlook. Their contribution should influence the choice.
Leadership culture is equally important. Staff must be able to question an assumption without appearing disloyal. Managers should receive credit for identifying a problem early and correcting it responsibly. Accountability should examine how leaders used the information available to them, alongside the eventual outcome.
Anticipatory governance gives practical expression to an ambition Oman has already articulated: institutions capable of shaping the future. Its success will be visible when an early signal changes a budget, a trial improves a service, or a timely review prevents an avoidable failure.
Oman’s future is already being shaped by today’s decisions. Those decisions deserve institutions equipped to think ahead — and obliged to act on what they learn.